The Demonic in an Age of Modern Science

In 'How Can You Punish an Evolved Criminal?" David Coppedge reports that left-leaning evolutionary biologists (materialists) have never given up on the 19th century notion that criminals are born, not made. In other words, if man is a chance product of evolution then he is a genetically preprogrammed psychochemical machine compelled to 'think' speak and act at the direction of his genes, therefore genes are ultimately responsible for evil thoughts, speech and actions. (crevinfo.com, April 26, 2013 )

A recent story, “Deep Divide of ‘Evil Genes," published in the Age of Technology raises the question of whether criminals might evade responsibility for their crimes by blaming their genes:

"Adam Lanza was a loner: highly intelligent with a ghostly pallor; awkward but seemingly pleasant; described by his own brother as a ''nerd''. On December 14 last year, Lanza, 20, walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in the affluent town of Newtown, Connecticut, and over the next two hours shot 20 children and six adults dead, before turning the gun on himself. Already that day, he had killed his mother with her shotgun.

Why had this young man, as opposed to millions of other ''geeky'' outsiders, murdered 27 innocents? The media talked about Lanza's mother's gun collection; the fact he had no Facebook page and no photo of him appeared in his high-school yearbook, only the words ''camera-shy''. But at the same time, scientists at the University of Connecticut were embarking on a different line of inquiry. The genetics department was analysing Lanza's DNA. The university refused to give any details about these investigations - possibly of cells from Lanza's brain, but equally likely from cells taken from his hair or the gun he used - or what they hoped they could reveal from the analysis. But the news shone a light on an area of behavioural genetics that provokes deeply divergent opinions both within the scientific community and in wider society. Is it possible that there is a gene that makes some people ''evil''? Could future murderers be spotted before they have committed a crime? And should they be punished if they are simply prisoners of their own biology?" (Deep divide of 'evil genes, Julia Llewellyn Smith, Apr. 11, 2013)

So controversial are the links between biology, psychopaths and violence that projects set up to investigate the issue have been shelved after public uproar:

"Scientists are haunted by the ghosts of the pseudoscientific eugenics movement, which held that mankind could be improved by breeding out the bad. Peaking in the early 20th century, its influence led to the sterilisation of mental patients and prisoners and, by extension, to Hitler's ''final solution'' of eliminating the ''Untermenschen." (ibid)

Eugenicists, like Hitler and Stalin were psychopaths. Psychopaths are human predators who wear a mask of sanity to disguise the fact that their conscience and empathy are dead. They can imitate feelings but what drives them is a sort of predatorial hunger for what they are after, which is making others suffer. Just as normal humans enjoy seeing other people happy, the psychopath enjoys the opposite. In "Leftism as Psychopathy, " John Ray, M.A., Ph.D. provides a brief summary of the chief characteristics of psychopathy:

"(the psychopath) is unmoved by brutality (except to enjoy perpetrating it); he has no moral or ethical anchors or standards; he is deeply (but discreetly) in love with himself (narcissism) so secretly despises others and thinks they are fit only to be dominated and exploited by him and those like him; he is a great manipulator who loves getting others to do his bidding by deception or otherwise; he is the master of the lie and the false pretense but sees no reason to be consistent from occasion to occasion; he will say anything to gain momentary praise or admiration; his only really strongly felt emotions seem to be hate and contempt and he is particularly enraged by those who have what he wants and will be totally unscrupulous in trying to seize what others have for himself. But above all, the psychopath does not seem to be able to tell right from wrong and, as a result, does sometimes commit or connive at murders and other heinous crimes with what seems to be a clear conscience."

"That seems to me to constitute, by and large, a fairly comprehensive description of your average Left-wing intellectual -- particularly of the many intellectuals who did (and often still do) support in various ways the old Soviet system in Russia."

Che Guevara for example, is still worshipped by the young Leftists of Western universities but as a Cuban writes of him:

"He did not have any business in Cuba but he went there to kill Cubans. He did not have any business in Africa but he went there to kill Africans. He did not have any business in Bolivia, but he went there to kill Bolivians, where he eventually died on his own sword.... As far as I am concerned, Ernesto Guevara was the Bin Laden of his time.... It will be very insulting for millions of people if, 30 years from now, they were to see in the streets people wearing Bin Laden T-shirts, as it is now for us to see people using Che Guevara's T-shirts." (ibid, Ray)

Ray writes that Paul Hollander's book "Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society" recounts what Leftist intellectuals did for many decades in the Soviet era. To quote one Amazon reviewer:

"Political Pilgrims is the amazing story of how Western intellectuals embraced Marxist tyrants at the very moment their colleagues were rotting in prison cells, and the common people everyone claimed to be concerned for, were starving. The book relates how cultural and religious leaders from the West, including familiar names, visited the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other communist countries, and told the most appalling lies." (ibid, Ray)

Psychopaths seem to have a mind of metal and exist in a demonically twisted, upside-down atmosphere more bizarre than Bedlam as affirmed by the Communist magazine 'Iuni Kommunist' which characterizes the atmosphere of Communists as a 'devilish antiworld,'

"...which externally is completely like ours (but wherein) man must reply with evil to every success in life." Then it brazenly affirms the slogan of Satanism, "Satan is not the foe of man. He is Life, Love, Light." (Marx and Satan, Richard Wurmbrand, p. 106)

The affirmation of Satan runs throughout the old Soviet system. In his poem "The Pale Maiden," Karl Marx, the father of the Communist Manifesto affirms the existence of God, heaven, his own soul and hell and that he has forfeited heaven,

"My soul, once true to God, Is chosen for hell." (ibid, p. 22)

Kaganovitch, Stalin's brother-in-law and closest collaborator describes Stalin as not possessing a single human characteristic:

"Even when he exhibited some emotions, they all did not seem to belong to him. They were as false as the scale on top of armor...He was not human at all..." (ibid, p. 53)

Milovan Djilas, Communist leader of Yugoslavia, perceptively describes the powerfully mesmerizing satanic energy emanating from the 'no longer human' Stalin:

"Was it not so that the demonic power and energy of Stalin consisted in this, that he made the (Communist) movement and every person in it pass to a state of confusion and stupefaction, thus creating and ensuring his reign of fear..." (ibid, p. 54)

The article ends with a quotation from Uspenski expressing the reality of ideas, that they are of the unseen world, and further, that some will forever mark and poison the spirit of man:

"There are ideas which touch the most intimate corners of our lives. Once these are touched, the marks remain forever....They will poison life." (ibid)

Though numbers vary, researchers believe that thousands of psychopaths exist at every level of American society---each one emanating a mesmerizing demonic energy. Among prominent ones, John Ray lists Leftist intellectuals throughout academia, Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Obama.

If evolutionary biologists are correct in their assumptions, then all of these people cannot help but be psychopaths as they are fully caused and determined by evil genes. But increasing numbers of anthropologists, scientific psychiatrists, and other professionals from the counseling and medical field are jettisoning as useless materialist explanations. These researchers take very seriously the fact that something frightening, hideous and unexplainable by modern Western science is going on here in America and throughout the West. In their search for answers a "new" consensus is emerging: Men have souls and demons exist:

"...we need to understand a number of different concepts in order to comprehend the worldwide phenomenon of possession and exorcism. On the psychological level, we have come to know the notion underlying all possession, namely, that the body is a shell, inhabited by a soul, and that this shell may on occasion be surrendered to an intrusive alien entity. " (How about Demons? Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World, Felicitas Goodman. IndianaUpress:1988)

"Dr Frank Lake in a talk on the demonic recalled the occasion when 'Hans Rudi Weber was giving a talk on Christ's Victory over the Demonic Powers to this large gathering of psychiatrists and theologians. It was quite amusing to see how uncomfortable the theologians were at this strange exhibition of what I think they regarded as Medievalism from a distinguished member of their own theological group. It was as if they were apologizing to the scientific psychiatrists present that a theologian had returned to the era of demons and evil possession. By contrast the psychiatrists were in fact leaning forward eagerly recognizing that the collective demonic is something with which they are continually dealing. As they said afterwards, 'Why didn't some theologian tell us about this before? We know what he's talking about, we live with it'" (But Deliver us From Evil: An Introduction to the Demonic Dimension in Pastoral Care, John Richards, London, Dartman, Longman and Todd,1974)

Possession takes two forms, communal and individual:

"...central possession is communal, strongly institutionalized, and ritualistically induced, but peripheral possession is more normally individual and spontaneous." (Demonic Possession: A Medical, Historical, Anthropological, and Theological Symposium, John Warwick Montgomery (ed.), Bethany,1976)

"In later life, Jung admitted that he was open to the ideas that all these metapsychic phenomena could be explained better by the theory of spirits ....in the long run (he said) I have to admit that the spirit hypothesis yields better results in practice than any other." (The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview: Conflict and Dialogue, John P. Newport, Eerdmans,1998)

In "Hostage to the Devil: the Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans," (1992) Malachi Martin presents five cases of possession which express important elements and basic attitudes popular in our own society. In the possessed person, such as the 'no longer human' Stalin, these elements and attitudes are pushed to a very narrow and frightening extreme.

Martin summarizes these elements and attitudes in the following points:

1. All sense suddenly seems like nonsense
2. Hopelessness is confirmed as the only hope
3. Death and cruelty and contempt are normal
4. Nothing is ever right
5. Moral relativism and/or postmodernism: the insistence that there is no essential difference between good and evil
6. All moral values are subject to one's personal preference
6. The supernatural must be resolved in 'natural' or rational and empirically verifiable scientific explanations
7. There can be no relevance for the modern person in anything that cannot be rationally understood and no 'truth' important beyond what is this-worldly and rational
8. There are multiple and ever-expanding 'genders' and expressions of 'love'
9. A fatal confusion between spirit (mind, will) and psyche (soul). Of this Martin said, "If everything (of) spirit can be made to seem a product merely of human psyche...then love can be made to seem only a chemical interaction, and love's paradigm is killed."
10. Confusion: One basic note of possession is confusion of the things of God with untruth, sex with gender, truth with lie, good with evil, supernatural with natural. Confusion is a prime weapon of evil, said Martin.

In "Three Characteristics of the Diabolical, and How they are Manifest in the Modern World," Msgr. Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington provides three more elements and attitudes expressive of the diabolical:

1. Love of Nudity - This is clearly manifest at several levels. First there is the widespread tendency of immodest dress. We have discussed modesty here before and ought to note that modesty comes from the word “mode” referring to the middle or to moderation. Hence, while we want to avoid oppressively puritanical notions about dress that impose heavy burdens (especially on women) and regard the body as somewhat evil, we must also critique many modern forms of dress at the other extreme. These “fashions” reveal more than is reasonable and generally have, as their intent to draw attention to aspects of the body that are private and reserved for sexual union in marriage. Too many in our culture see little problem parading about in various stages of undress, wearing clothing that are more intended to disclose and call attention to, than to conceal the private areas of the body. This love of disclosure and titillation is surely an aspect of the Evil One’s love of nudity, and he has surely spread his obsession to many in the modern West.

2. Pornography, though nothing new in this fallen world, has surely reached epidemic proportions via the Internet. Any psychotherapist, counselor or priest will tell you that addiction to pornography is a huge problem among people today. Pornographic sites on the Internet outpace all others tenfold. Multimillion Americans are viewing enormous amounts of pornography and the “industry” is growing exponentially. What was once hidden away in adult bookstores is now one click away on the Internet. And the thought that browsing habits are easily discoverable matters little to the addicts of this latest form of slavery. Many are on a steep slope downward into ever more deviant forms of porn. Many end up at illegal sites before they even know what has happened to them, and the FBI is knocking on their door. Satan’s love of nudity has possessed many!

3. The overall sexualization of culture also ties in to Satan’s love of nudity. We sexualize women to sell products. We even sexualize children. Our sitcoms chatter endlessly about sex in a very teenage and immature sort of way. We are, collectively, goofy and immature about sex, and our culture giggles like horny teenagers obsessed with something we don’t really understand. Yes, Satan loves nudity, and everything that goes with it.

In agreement with Malachi Martin's observation that confusion is a prime weapon of evil, Msgr. Charles Pope adds:

"And then of course there is the utter confusion, that celebrates homosexual activity. What Scripture calls gravely sinful, disordered, and contrary to nature (= παρὰ φύσιν – para physin – Rom 1:26) many in our culture now openly celebrate. And those afflicted as such, openly identify themselves with what tempts them. Rather than lament the difficulty and trial of such affliction and offer love, support and truth that they, may live celibately, (as all the unmarried are called to do), our sex saturated culture, blinded and darkened by its own wild lust, affirms and encourages them to indulge what can only bring further harm to them, and others, for it is of the darkness and contrary to nature. They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie… Romans 1:25)  (blog.adw.org, Apr. 8, 2013)

In "Uncle Ponto and the Mushroom Souper," Martin provides us with an example of what is overtaking millions of Americans, Christian and non Christian alike, without their realizing it and without those around them taking cognizance of it.  While we have been cast into confusion and paralyzed into amazed silence by the counter-intuitive, idiotic proclamations of the so-called scientifically enlightened community of Godless leftist psychopaths and their useful idiot liberal lapdogs, an individualism,

"...which exceeds by far the bounds of what used to be known as selfishness and egotism....has produced in thousands of people an aberrant and idiosyncratic behavior which is truly destructive." (p. 25)

These are the conditions of the society in which we now all live. From the highest, most powerful office of our land to our universities, churches, Hollywood, 'news' media and back-alleys, these are the spiritually convoluted, pathologically sick conditions of the society in which we now all live. To a far greater degree than most of us could have imagined fifteen or so years ago, said Martin,

"...a favorable climate for the occurrence of demonic Possession has developed as the normal condition of our lives." (p. xi)

Twenty-one years have passed since Malachi Martin warned America of the demonic energy overspreading our society. Dr. Carl Raschke, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver and America's leading authority on America's spreading subcultures of darkness concurs with Martin's analysis. In "Painted Black," the frightening story of the wave of hatred, insanity and violence sweeping our nation Raschke fully documents the chilling facts and cases behind an invisible wave of evil that holds our youth by their minds and parents by their hearts. He points out that the decadence, pornography, mass murders, criminality, 'new religions,' and Satanism in American culture have certain social and spiritual ties that bind them together, revealing that they are part of a similar spiritual genus.

In "Satanism and the Devolution of the 'New Religions," Raschke notes that Satanism is so widespread today that there are even U.S. military personnel who are members of secretive Satanist groups.

Raschke concludes that the upsurge of Satanist practices,

"...must be interpreted not as some kind of odd wrinkle...but as a culminating phase of the "New Age" movement...The Satanist mindset is not "religion" in the regular sense of the word, but a mystification of the most corrupt secular passions and values...Satanism is but the spiritual Frankenstein created by a social order that has attempted to sustain itself without God." (Satanism and Witchcraft: The Occult and the West — Part 6, Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon)

One of the devil's greatest achievements in our age of 'science and reason' has been to convince us that all that exists is matter.

@Linda Kimball

The Human Condition: Basically Good or Inherently Sinful?

Are "Mormons morphing Boy Scouts into 'Girl Scouts'?" asked Stephen Stone, president of Renew America.  Stone reports that the influential Mormon church is bowing to pressure from 'gay' activists and like-minded supporters who demand admittance of 'gays' into the Boy Scouts.

A central premise of both 'gay' activists and their supporters is that 'gayness' is genetically caused the same as skin color, thus 'gays' have little choice but to behave as they do because they are 'born that way.'

Many people do not buy this argument.  Nor does Stone,

"... no one is inherently gay, even if they behave that way. If they adopt homosexual practices, they do so by choice, willful yielding to inordinate self-centeredness and desire for easy gratification — not victims of innate "gender confusion." (Stephen Stone, Renew America, May 16, 2013)

At stake here are three fundamental issues. First is evil. Why does it exist? Second is the human condition, is it fallen or essentially good? Third is the moral agency of man. Is man able to choose or not choose to engage in sodomy, bestiality, pederasty, lesbianism, and pedophilia as well as hate, kill, lie, deceive, cheat, steal, rape, seduce and pervert children or is he a psychochemical machine or evolved monkey helpless to resist genetically caused instinct and stimuli?

Merely to answer any of the three questions is to demonstrate moral agency (free will) and voice of conscience.    The truth is that man can in fact choose to lie or not lie, and the genocidal murderer Joseph Stalin amply demonstrated his own free will and demonically occluded conscience when he not only ordered the liquidation of millions of people but pointed out that whoever controls the mind of man can be the engineer of his soul, in other words, play at being God.

The Biblical view of man is the antithesis of the world's view which believes that men are basically good and evil is something external to man.  Guns for example are evil, while the human who pulls its trigger is somehow not really responsible unless he is a bona fide NRA member. 

What we believe at the level of man's nature is not just a matter of how we feel or what our opinion may be, for men are either fallen, thus inherently sinful, or not fallen and basically good.  The Biblical view of man is the antithesis of the other view. Either the first position is true or the antithesis is---they cannot both be true.

President Ronald Reagan was a Christian, thus he believed that man is fallen, that mankind is created good but because he is also fallen he contains within himself the seeds of corruption and evil. However, because mankind is endowed with free will, he has the ability to say “no” to bad impulses.  As this is true, then man's character, whether noble or ignoble, is determined by,  

“... a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the ‘little’ choices of years past - by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that ‘it really doesn’t matter.’ It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away - the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self- indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity - or dishonor and shame.” (Ronald Reagan)

By extension of Christian reasoning, man must be held personally responsible for the bad choices he makes.  Thus from the architects of the Benghazi scandal to practicing sodomites, thieves, liars, pedophiles, pederasts and murderers---all are responsible for the wrongs they have committed and society has a duty and obligation to punish them.

But if the Christian view is wrong, then the living God does not exist and man does not contain within himself the seeds of evil, nor does he have to account to the living God for his actions here in this world.  If this is so then why not, as Donald Kaul suggests, repeal the Second Amendment and declare the National Rifle Association,

 ".... a terrorist organization and make membership illegal.... (I would also raze the organization's headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that's optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that "prying the guns from their cold, dead hands" thing works for me."(Des Moines Register publishes gun-ban column advocating deadly violence against NRA, GOP leaders, Tim Graham, foxnews.com, Jan. 2, 2013)

As Dostoevsky said, if God does not exist then all things are possible, so why not stir up hate and murderous intent against anyone you hate, envy, and desire to see destroyed?   Why not seduce and sodomize young men in the military, in our schools and in the Boy Scouts?  

Why not overhaul straight America by way of a carefully orchestrated campaign to psychologically manipulate Americans into accepting 'gay' behaviors as "just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders," for then "your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won."  (After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's, Marshall Kirk & Hunter Madsen  http://www.amazon.com/After-Ball-America-Conquer-Hatred/dp/0452264987 )

If you can get away with it, then why not do what you want?

"There's nothing to fear but fear itself. So why not go ahead? What's to stop you?"  Go ahead, "make my day." whispers the devil in sadistic anticipation.

@Linda Kimball

Idolatry and Human Sacrifice

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness" Romans 1:18

God has revealed Himself and His truth with clarity.  Even apart from the explicit revelations of the Bible beginning with the Genesis account of creation, God has made sufficiently clear some of the principle elements of spiritual truth to all people through creation and conscience (Romans 1:19-20, 2:14-16) so as to leave the entire human race without excuse.(Roman's 1:20) But from the beginning, many have refused to profit by the light they have, and love the darkness rather than the light. All who do not live up to the spiritual truth they possess, who choose to do worse than they know, hold the truth in unrighteousness. They resist and obstruct the truth, rather than let it have free scope.

In the beginning wickedness did not exist said Church Father Athanasius.  It was men who later on began to contrive it and to elaborate it to their own hurt and the hurt of others.

The truth as to evil said Athanasius,

"....is that it originates, and resides, in the perverted choice of the darkened soul" which, "materialized by forgetting God" and engrossed in lower things, "makes them into gods," and thereby "descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition," whereby "they ceased to think that anything existed beyond what is seen, or that anything was good save things temporal and bodily; so turning away and forgetting that she was in the image of the good God, she no longer... sees God the Word after whose likeness she is made; but having departed from herself, imagines and feigns what is not (and then) advancing further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed...." (Against the Heathen, New Advent)

With their understanding sundered from God they fell lower in their ideas and imaginations and "gave the honor due to God first to the heaven and the sun and moon and the stars, thinking them to be not only gods, but also the causes of the other gods lower than themselves."  Advancing still further in evil, "they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed..."  And then, creeping in the slime like land-snails, the most impious of mankind, "set up as gods men, and the forms of men, some still living, others even after their death (and they even) transferred the divine and supernatural name of God at last even to stones and stocks, and creeping things both of land and water, and irrational wild beasts, awarding to them every divine honor..." 

But going even further in their audacity these foolish men mixed "up the rational with the irrational, and combining things unlike in nature, they worship the result as gods, such as the dog-headed and snake-headed and ass-headed gods among the Egyptians, and the ram-headed Ammon among the Libyans." 

Still others, straining impiety to the utmost, "have deified the motive of the invention of these things and of their own wickedness, namely, pleasure and lust, and worship them, such as their Eros, and the Aphrodite at Paphos. While some of them, as if vying with them in depravation, have ventured to erect into gods their rulers or even their sons, either out of honor for their princes, or from fear of their tyranny, such as the Cretan Zeus.. and the Arcadian Hermes; and among the Indians Dionysus, among the Egyptians Isis and Osiris and Horus, and in our own time Antinous, favourite of Hadrian, Emperor of the Romans whom, although men know he was a mere man (and) full of licentiousness, yet they worship for fear of him that enjoined it. For Hadrian... ordered (Antinous) to be worshipped; being indeed himself in love with the youth even after his death, but for all that offering... a proof (of the) idolatry... of the lust of them that imagined it." 

 "According as the wisdom of God testifies beforehand when it says, 'The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication. Wisdom 14:12 .” (Against the Heathen, Athanasius, New Advent)

The Decalogue shows that the beginning of idolatry (preference for self over God) is pride, since a proud man makes an idol out of himself, thereby assuming he possesses honor and rights.  This is why idolatry leads to contempt for truth, law, wisdom, norms, authority, rules and other people in combination with any or all of the following existing within a climate of treachery, deceit and violence: lying, gluttony, greed, cheating, promiscuity, sodomy, pederasty, pedophilia, adultery, theft, and the dehumanization of other people resulting in slavery, population control schemes, abortion, brutality and murder.  

The Carthaginians for instance, worshipped Saturn, the Roman name for Cronus, the lord of the titans in Greek mythology.  The Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans had given the honor due God to Saturn, the second largest planet to which they attributed their own self-serving motives. The Syro-Palestinian archeologists Lawrence Stager and Samuel Wolff suggest that:

"Among the social elite of Punic Carthage the institution of child sacrifice may have assisted in the consolidation and maintenance of family wealth. One hardly needed several children parceling up the patrimony into smaller and smaller pieces . . . for the artisans and commoners of Carthage, ritual infanticide could provide a hedge against poverty. For all these participants in this aspect of the cult, then, child sacrifice provided special favors from the gods."  (Stager, L.E. and Wolff, S.R., op. cit., pp. 50,51 from Abortion and the Ancient Practice of Child Sacrifice, Andrew White, MD, 1/5/2012, Associates for Biblical Research)

Dr. White reports that in 1921 the largest cemetery of sacrificed infants in the ancient Near East was discovered at Carthage.  Hundreds of burial urns filled with the cremated bones of infants, mostly newborns but even some children up to age six years old, as well as animals, have been uncovered at Carthage.  All of the sacrificial victims had been burned to death on the altars of idolatrous men and women.

The actual rite of child sacrifice at Carthage has been graphically described by Diodorus Siculus:

"There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire." (ibid, Dr. White)

Plutarch, a first and second century A.D. Greek author, adds to the description that:

"...the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people." (ibid)

The earliest reference to child sacrifice in the Bible is found in Leviticus where the practice is forbidden by Moses in connection with Molech, "the detestable god of the Ammonites" (I Kings 11:7):

"Do not give any of your children to be passed through (the fire) to Molech for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord." (Lev. 18:21; 20:1-5)

Dr. White reveals that the Hebrew word Molech is the same Semitic root as the Punic word mulk which was found inscribed on several burial monuments at Carthage giving linguistic evidence for the continuity between the practice of child sacrifice in Canaan and at Carthage:

"But whereas at Carthage the word refers to the sacrificial offerings including human sacrifice, in Leviticus it refers to the god who demands child sacrifice. The "passing through" refers to sacrificing by burning in a fire. For this "passing through to Molech" (same Hebrew words in Leviticus and Jeremiah) took place later in Israel's history in the region of the high places of Ba'al in the Valley of Ben Hinnom in Jeremiah 32:35."

This murderous scene was described by the Lord through the mouth of Jeremiah in earlier chapters:

"For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built me the high places of Ba'al to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Ba'al -something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth  or the Valley of ben Hinnom, but the Valley of slaughter. (Jeremiah 19:4-6; 7:31-32)" (ibid, Dr. White)

 Moshe Weinfeld, an Old Testament scholar, connects cultic prostitution with child sacrifice in Isaiah and Ezekiel saying,

"The children born of cultic prostitution associated with Molech were presumably delivered to the idolatrous priests, even as the offspring of a regular marriage may have been handed over to Molech." (Dr. White)

Many of the children offered to Molech were conceived illegitimately either by way of adulterous affairs or prostitution, so it seems probable that sacrificing babies to Molech was a convenient way to dispose of the consequences.
 
By New Testament times idolatry took on a broader meaning.  Commenting on the New Testament authors' understanding of idolatry, Herbert Schlossberg notes that,

 "a man can place anyone or anything at the top of his pyramid of values, and that is ultimately what he serves. The ultimacy of that service profoundly affects the way he lives." (Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction, p. 6)

And so Church Father Tertullian sees no difference between the idolatrous Carthaginian practice of child sacrifice and the equally idolatrous Roman practice of infanticide:

"...there is no difference as to baby killing whether you do it as a sacred rite or just because you choose to do it."

 No matter how it is rationalized it is still murder, and for followers of Christ,

"murder is once for all forbidden; so even the child in the womb, while yet the mother's blood is still being drawn on to form the human being, it is not lawful to destroy. To forbid birth is only quicker murder. It makes no difference whether one take away the life once born or destroy it as it comes to birth. He is a man, who is to be a man, the fruit is always present in the seed." (Tertullian, Apologeticus IX.- 6, 8)

In Pauline theology idolatry is recognized as any worshipping or serving the creature (i.e., 'self,' nature, cosmos, elements, matter, chemicals, genetic material, or mystical concepts such as natural selection, and evolution) rather than the Creator as this is equivalent to exchanging the truth of God for a lie (Rom. 1:23,25):

"Placing anything above the Creator and His truth is idolatry, for in this idolatry the creature's erroneous value judgments are substituted for the Creator's correct ones. Sadly, people know the truth but suppress it , Rom. 1:18." (Dr. White)

In 1977 British journalist William Rees-Mogg saw that the West had lost its faith, and like a fish out of water or a drowning man was,

"...desperately thrashing around for lack of oxygen.  Since the time of Christ there has been no period in which there has been the same feeling of...spiritual impoverishment."  (from Idols for Destruction, Schlossberg,p. 2)

Thirty-six years later, but for a remnant, Christendom is dead and America's idolatrous, nihilistic post-Christian culture and narcissistic postmodern church are quickly following suit.   While there are as yet many churches, pastors, evangelists, distinguished Christian laypeople and missionaries here in America and around the world proclaiming Christ crucified for the sins of all men and fulfilling their vocations with humility and integrity, the culturally-relevant church of "what's happening now," the contemporary Church consisting of trendy, disaffected Roman and Eastern Orthodox Catholics and 'new' Protestant evangelicals practices a spirituality that is Christian in name only, a spirituality that is trivial, irreverent, self-affirming, fun-loving, irrelevant, and permissive to the point of practicing abortion:

"..the practice of abortion by Christians is spiritual prostitution to an idol, defiles God's sanctuary and profanes His holy name. God alone is the Author of life and it is not the creature's prerogative to question the Creator's wisdom in bringing to life a fellow human being at conception. Whenever men disregard their Creator's wise judgment by destroying His innocent creation, they are serving another god. They are, in fact, spiritually prostituting themselves to the idolatrous self whom they believe is wiser in its value judgments." (Andrew White)       

Consequently, our land is being filled with the blood of the innocent, spilled not on the altars of Cronos, Molech and Saturn but in charnel houses run by executioners like Kermit Gosnell.

We are an idolatrous people who hold the truth in unrighteousness, and unless we repent and are cleansed by his merciful forgiveness, the Lord will set His face against this nation. This is what the Lord says:

"Look I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions." (Jeremiah 18:11)

@Linda Kimball      

Whatever became of Truth and Sin?

Our age is an age when the very idea of transcendent truth is being attacked and scorned, even within seminaries and the church where clergy who ought to revere truth most highly instead boast of thinking outside the box, of not being restricted by rules, and in the spirit of postmodern contemporary church leader Brian McLaren of having,

 "....captured, stuffed, and mounted truth on the wall." (The Truth War, John MacArthur, p. x)

In 1973, secular psychologist Karl Menninger took aim at the attack on truth when he pointed out in a book entitled, Whatever Became of Sin? the fact that American churches were in the process of suppressing the reality of guilt in accord with the concept of a divine standard of right and wrong.  

Menninger's definition of sin was distinctly Biblical and thus entailed the idea of willful rebellion against the transcendent truth and moral laws of God, and it was this unique concept of sin that was disappearing from the American consciousness and by extension, from public discourse.

Forty years later, increasing numbers of people within the Church either wittingly or unwittingly accept Robert Sculler's postmodern arguments in "Self-Esteem: The New Reformation."  Today's church said Schuller, can no longer afford to think in a God-centered fashion but must put humans and their needs first.  It was appropriate for Calvin and Luther to think theocentrically but now,

"the scales must tip the other way" towards a "human needs approach."  In fact, "classical theology has erred in its insistence that theology be 'God-centered,' not 'man-centered."  In this context, the new definition of sin is, "any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem...And what is 'hell'?  It is the loss of pride that naturally follows separation from God---the ultimate and unfailing source of our soul's sense of self-respect...A person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem."  (Schuller, from "Christless Christianity, Michael Horton, p. 33)

Osteen reflects this broader assumption among contemporary evangelicals.  No longer do we fall short of God's glory (Rom. 3:23) as "new" sin now means falling short of self-esteem.   So we are not sinners saved by Christ's objective work for us but by our subjective personal relationship with Jesus through missional works that we perform.  Being saved is as simple as making a decision to have a personal relationship with Jesus. 

Yet given the lack of any serious account of the human predicament before a holy God said Horton, 

"....it is unclear what this personal relationship might accomplish."  Nor is it obvious "how or why an average American today would even care to have a personal relationship with a Jewish rabbi who lived in the Middle East two thousand years ago."   (ibid, p. 73)

Besides the fact that Scripture never refers to the gospel as having a personal relationship with Jesus nor defines faith as a decision to ask Jesus to come into our heart, this concept of salvation fails to realize that everyone has a personal relationship with God already:

"either as a condemned criminal standing before a righteous judge or as a justified coheir with Christ and adopted child of the Father." (Horton, p. 74)

For America's postmodern Church, salvation is no longer a matter of divine rescue from judgment that is coming on a sinful world. Today the Cross merely sanctifies narcissism (self-esteem) and Paul's admonition to Timothy, "But understand this...in the last days...people will be lovers of self..." is a statement of hate that must not be preached lest it "hurt a lot of beautiful people," said Schuller.   

For forty years both Christian and secular have been told how special and unique they are, that they should not submit to rules, authority, processes or other restrictions and above all, trust your feelings to guide you.  Relying upon absolute principles and immutable truth places unrealistic limitations on you and damages your self-esteem.  So esteem 'self,' have lots of fun, actualize your dreams, embrace change and reject tradition, realize that God helps those who esteem and help themselves, and revel in the moment.    

In this light it comes as no surprise that to increasing millions of Americans Jesus Christ serves as a mouthpiece through which both narcissistic clergy and Christian masses self-righteously affirm 'self' and the great things that 'self' thinks and does. 

Today's Church is not interested in truth but in feeling good about self.  George Barna agrees. Based on numerous studies he concludes,

"....if we even believe in a supernatural deity (he) exists for the pleasure of humankind.  He resides in the heavenly realm solely for our utility and benefit.  Although we are too clever to voice it, we live by the notion that true power is accessed not by looking upward but by turning inward." (ibid, p. 31)

From 2001 to 2005 University of North Carolina sociologist Christian Smith investigated teen spirituality in contemporary America.  From his extensive research he concluded that the dominant form of spirituality among teens is "moralistic, therapeutic desism" in which God is restricted to the inner sphere's of one's private world. 

Smith defines moralistic, therapeutic deism in the following five points:

1. God created the world
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when needed to resolve a problem
5. Good people go to heaven when they die 
(ibid, Christless Christianity, pp. 40-41)

While there are as yet many churches, pastors, evangelists, distinguished Christian laypeople and missionaries here in America and around the world proclaiming Christ crucified for the sins of all men and fulfilling their vocations with humility and integrity, Michael Horton sees that the postmodern Church is well on its way to falling into what he calls Christless Christianity.

Already we have arrived at a point where the message of the contemporary Church has simply become trivial, irreverent, sentimental, self-affirming, and irrelevant. 

We do not realize the extent of our schizophrenia said Horton.  While we annually decry the commercialization of Christmas we enthusiastically embrace the consumer-product-sales-approach formulated by 'church growth' experts like Hybels, Warren, Thom Rainier and other transformational gurus.  While calling our capitulation to self-affirming narcissism "mission and relevance" we charge secularists,

"..with emptying public discourse of beliefs and values that transcend our instant gratification." And as we lament "the growing secularization of American society...we ensure that the generations currently under our care will know even less than their parents..."  (pp. 22-23)

After citing a series of reports, Barna concluded that the spirituality of America is Christian in name only:

"We desire experience more than knowledge.  We prefer choices to absolutes.  We embrace preferences rather than truths....Faith must come on our terms or we reject it. We have enthroned ourselves as the final arbiters of righteousness, the ultimate rulers of our own experiences and destiny.  We are the Pharisees of the new millennium." (Horton, p. 31)

Unless something changes warned Barna,

"It will be every man for himself, with no second thoughts or regrets about the personal or societal implications of this incredibly selfish, nihilistic, narcissistic way of life..." (ibid)

A spirit of pride and rebellion flows throughout America's contemporary Church.  The sin of pride begets the vice known as hatred of truth.   In "Against the Heathen," early Church Father Athanasius reveals that pride and a haughty spirit preceded the fall of pre-flood men into idolatry (love of self), superstition (hatred of truth) and violence. Violence always accompanies man's fall into worship of self, selfish ambition, status, pleasures and acquisition of things.

Violence is the effect of a human will not in submission to the will of God. It is the use of force, which may be psychological (i.e., shunning, ignoring, belittling, slandering), physical or both, in order to dominate, control, outrage or transgress the dignity and integrity of a righteous man.

In his book, "The Truth War," John MacArthur writes that one of the distinguishing qualities of every true believer is love for the truth:

"...a genuine love for the truth is built into saving faith...In Jesus' words, they have known the truth, and the truth has set them free. John 8:32" (p. xi)

The reverse is true of those who will not enter the kingdom of God. The primary characteristic of those who perish (2 Thessalonians 2:10) is non-submission to truth:

"...where there is true faith in the Gospel of Christ, and in Christ the substance of it, there is salvation; the reason therefore of these men's perishing is not the decree of God, nor (for) want of the means of grace, (or) the revelation of the Gospel, but their rejection and contempt of it." (Clarke's Commentary on the Bible)

The haughty spirit rejects personal sin and holds truth in contempt and is therefore aligned with the will of Satan, the father of lies, narcissism, nihilism, and violence (John 8:44). Thus it is to haughty spirits that Jesus said,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Matthew 7:21

@Linda Kimball

The Postmodern 'New Church:' a trendy mausoleum for the children of unbelief

In his book, "The Truth War," John MacArthur writes that all 'true' truth, as opposed to man's rationalizations and feelings passed off as truth, begins with what is true about the living, supernatural God.  Truth is what His will approves, what His holiness entails, what His mind knows.  Truth then is determined and properly explained by the being of God, thus by extension,

"A biblical perspective of truth also necessarily entails the recognition that ultimate truth is an objective reality.  Truth exists outside of us and remains the same regardless of how we may perceive it.  Truth by definition is as fixed and constant as God is immutable." (MacArthur, p. xx)

God has revealed Himself and His truth with clarity.  Even apart from the explicit revelations of the Bible beginning with the Genesis account of creation, God has made sufficiently clear some of the principle elements of spiritual truth to all people through creation and conscience (Romans 1:19-20, 2:14-16) so as to leave the entire human race without excuse.(Roman's 1:20)

This being the case, all those who are condemned in the final judgment said MacArthur,

"...will be held responsible for rejecting whatever truth was available to them....a just and righteous God holds unbelievers and believers alike responsible for obedience to His revelation is irrefutable proof that He has made the truth sufficiently clear for us.  To claim that the Bible is not sufficiently clear is to assault God's own wisdom and integrity." (pp. xxi-xxii)

Yet today tens of thousands of people who call themselves Christians claim to follow Jesus but reject His truth, claiming instead that personal feelings and experience are more important then revealed truth.  These Christians are adherents of today's contemporary or postmodern 'new way of doing church.' 

in 'Postmodern Youth Ministry,' Tony Jones, a leading contemporary and/or emergent pastor says:

"Stop looking for some objective truth that is available when we delve into the text of the Bible." (Emerging Church/New Spirituality: Part 3 Postmodernism, ImmanuelCommunity.org.uk)

In agreement, Brian McLaren says:

"Arguments that pit absolutism versus relativism, and objectivism versus subjectivism, prove meaningless or absurd to Postmodern people." (ibid)

Postmodernism is a reaction against the 'modern' age of Enlightenment which began around the beginning of the 18th century and lasted until about 50 years ago.  The Enlightenment was a philosophical, intellectual and cultural revolution that elevated the mind of man--his reason, logic, and criticism over the mind of God together with superiority of empirical scientific thought  over doctrine and creeds, which were dismissed as blind faith and superstition.

Modernism represented the pursuit of absolutism (i.e. Darwin's absolute law of natural selection), the empirical method as the only reliable way to determine truth, and rationalism (mind of man over God).

The Modern mind dismissed the idea of the supernatural, miracles, and even man's soul and sought scientific and rationalistic explanations for everything.  According to John MacArthur:

"Those presuppositions gave birth to Darwinism, which in turn spawned a string of humanistic ideas and worldviews.  Most prominent among them were several atheistic, rationalistic, Utopian philosophies - including Marxism, fascism, socialism, communism and theological liberalism." (p. 9)

Overconfident rationalism, human conceit, arrogance, men usurping the throne of God---all of this characterized the Modern era which finally issued in organized hatred of God---a universal totalitarian atheism that unleashed catastrophic destruction and rivers of human blood during the 20th century.

As noted previously, postmodernism is a reaction against the modernist mindset characterized by arrogance, inflexibility, omniscient reason, the need to be right at any cost coupled with the burning desire to be in control which brought the world to the brink of disaster.  Postmodernism therefore reflects a loss of confidence in the power of human reason and scientific inquiry to understand the nature of true reality.  

With the rise of postmodernism our view of man, of what we can and cannot know, of reality and the world changed, said business management guru Peter Drucker in the introduction to his 1957 book ‘Landmarks of Tomorrow.’ At some unmarked point during the last twenty years we have moved out of the Modern Age,

" ....and into a new, as yet nameless era.  Our view of the world changed…. There is a new spiritual centre to human existence." (ibid, ImmanuelCommunity.org.uk)

With Pilate, postmodern thinkers derisively ask, "What is truth?" (John 18:37-38) and claim therefore that we can't be certain about anything, including God's self-revelation through the scriptures.  In his book, "A Heretic's Guide to Eternity," Spencer Burke, expresses this uncertainty:

"I’m not sure I believe in God exclusively as a person any more." (ibid)

Postmodern thinker Peter Drucker played a key role in the development of the contemporary 'new way of doing church' formulated by Bill Hybels, Rick Warren and countless other contempory 'new church' gurus and slavishly cloned by thousands upon thousands of infatuated pastors.   In "Peter Drucker's Mega-Church Legacy" Herescope (Discernment Research Group) reports:

"One perhaps unexpected example of Druckerism is the modern mega-church movement. He suggested to evangelical pastors that they create a more customer-friendly environment (hold back on the overt religious symbolism and provide plenty of facilities). Bill Hybels, the pastor of the 17,000-strong Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, has a quotation from Mr Drucker hanging outside his office: 'What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?'" ("Trusting the teacher in the grey-flannel suit" The Economist, Nov 17th 2005, Herescope, November 18, 2005)

The Drucker-style contemporary church model de-emphasizes immutable truth, moral absolutes, Original Sin, hell, confession, repentance, vertical spiritual growth, apologetics, and traditional hymns and proposes instead a horizontal approach tailored for unbelievers and their felt-needs rather than for the spiritually-mature.   This way of thinking is in keeping with the belief of the postmodern Church that theology must be constructed from human experience, needs, desires, and passions and not from divine revelation.  For postmodern pastors there is no supernatural authority that determines truth, moral absolutes, the shape of theological vision, or doctrine.  They hold in contempt statements of faith, appeals to transcendent Authority, definition, rules and doctrinal boundaries and reject any concept of certain, objective, and universal knowledge as well as all who profess them.  These people, the most spiritually mature, are most generally disparaged, marginalized and ridiculed as 'traditionalists.'

In this light it makes sense that Hybels solution was to poll unbelievers and tailor Sunday morning service to their expressed needs. What unbelievers want is to feel unthreatened as well as entertained in a creative, humorous, culturally relevant atmosphere,

" ... a place designed for [the unbeliever]. We have put a lot of time and thought into what non-churched people want from a Sunday morning service. And we have concluded that they basically want four things: (1) anonymity; (2) truth presented at an introductory level; (3) time to 'make a decision'; and (4) excellence in programming, creativity, humor, contemporary [worship], relevancy, etc." ( Hybels' 1990 message: "Who We Are at Willow Creek.")

Thousands of postmodern people attend Willow Creek's "seeker sensitive services" where they can dress down and dine on earthly bread without guilt or shame. There is no room for heavenly bread in Willow Creek-- no uncomfortable sermons against sin, nothing about judgment, and no call for repentance.

Instead 'worshippers' are lavishly entertained by a 20-piece "Christian" rock band with laser lights and an elaborate sound system, energizing pop-rock singers, multi-media displays, plays, stories and thin gruel punctuated by jokes geared to those who are investigating Christianity. To further entice the seeker-sensitive crowd there are darts, basketball, and coloring for the youngsters, a massive food court and a fully-out-fitted exercise gym. (Bill Hybels, Biblical Discernment Ministries)

As is the case with all postmodern 'new church' formulas, the Hybels model weaves the reigning secular system of the world with the sacred, the dark with light, thereby compromising the Revealed Word and rejecting the proposition that truth "by definition is as fixed and constant as God is immutable." (MacArthur, p. xx)

As its focus is on supplying unbelievers with earthly bread, there is no heavenly bread, hence no possibility of renewing the spirit of the mind (Ephesians 4:23-24):

"The spirit is the human spirit, having its seat in and directing the mind...The renewal takes place, not in the mind, but in the spirit of it. "The change is not in mind psychologically, either in its essence or in its operation; and neither is it in the mind as if it were a superficial change of opinion either on points of doctrine or practice: but it is in the spirit of the mind; in that which gives mind both its bent and its materials of thought. It is not simply in the spirit as if it lay there in dim and mystic quietude; but it is in the spirit of the mind; in the power which, when changed itself, radically alters the entire sphere and business of the inner mechanism" (Vincent's Word Studies).

The spirit of the mind that has not been renewed walks according,

"...to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief." Ephesians 2:2

In the final analysis, the postmodern church is not a place of life but of death.  It is a trendy, culturally relevant mausoleum for the children of unbelief.

@Linda Kimball

Thousands of Pastors Seduced by 'New Church' Gurus

For most of a generation thousands of evangelical pastors have been seduced by church growth guru Bill Hybels “seeker sensitive” formula that spawned the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. For thirty years now, Hybels, Randy Frazee, Robert Lewis, Carl George, Rick Warren, C. Peter Wagener, Leonard Sweet, Thom Rainier and other church growth gurus too numerous to list have been telling gullible, shallow thinking evangelical pastors to throw out everything they have previously thought and been taught about church and replace it with a new way of doing church.    

Along with this new way of doing church comes a de-emphasis on Original Sin, hell, confession, repentance, vertical spiritual growth, Bible study, apologetics, and traditional hymns combined with a horizontal approach necessitating emphasis on felt-needs--especially the needs of youth--fun programs, energetic pop rock, slick marketing and cheap grace.

In "A Shocking Confession from Willow Creek Community Church," Bob Burney summarizes the 'new' measures of success:

"If the crowd was large then surely God was blessing the ministry. Churches were built by demographic studies, professional strategists, marketing research, meeting “felt needs” and sermons consistent with these techniques. We were told that preaching was out, relevance was in. Doctrine didn’t matter nearly as much as innovation. If it wasn’t “cutting edge” and consumer friendly it was doomed. The mention of sin, salvation and sanctification were taboo and replaced by Starbucks, strategy and sensitivity."   (Burney, Townhall.com, Oct 30, 2007) 

Thousands of star-struck pastors hung on every word that emanated from the lips of the church growth experts said Burney,

"Satellite seminars were packed with hungry church leaders learning the latest way to “do church.” The promise was clear: thousands of people and millions of dollars couldn’t be wrong. Forget what people need, give them what they want. How can you argue with the numbers? If you dared to challenge the “experts” you were immediately labeled as a “traditionalist,” a throwback to the 50s, a stubborn dinosaur unwilling to change with the times." (ibid)

But then things began to go wrong. In September of 2006 Willow Creek canceled its highly acclaimed Axis experiment, the “church-within-a-church” designed for 20-somethings.  The experiment failed to connect young adults with the rest of the congregation, and once they outgrew Axis they found it hard to transition into the rest of the Chicago-area mega church.  This failure led Gary Gilley to sardonically ask,

"Who would have thought that separating the young people from the body of Christ for a decade would result in integration issues when they grew up?  Somebody must have missed the fine print in a Barna survey. At any rate, Willow recognized its error and folded Axis into the larger congregation.  This move came too late however for hundreds of Willow clones who were in lock step with the mother church.  Many started similar church-within-a-church congregations under Willow’s leadership and most will now suffer the same fate."  ("Willow Creek's Big Adventure, Gilley, inplainsite.org, December 2007)

Following quickly on the heels of the Axis failure came another, this one a real bunker-buster.  In the words of Senior Pastor Bill Hybels, “We made a mistake.”  Hybels is speaking of Willow’s new way of “doing” church.  Gilley elaborates:

"This is the approach pioneered by Hybels and company, honed to perfection and dissimulated to eager church leaders worldwide.  This is the approach which distinguishes the seeker-sensitive model from other models."

In a multi-year study on the effectiveness of the Hybels model published in the book, "Reveal: Where Are You?," co-authored by Cally Parkinson and Greg Hawkins, executive pastor of Willow Creek Community Church," Hybels himself called the findings “earth shaking,” “ground breaking” and “mind blowing.” And no wonder: it seems that the church growth gurus were wrong.  (ibid, Gilley)

What Hybels and his 'new church' strategists discovered to their shock is that vertical spiritual growth requires heavenly bread rather than earthly bread in the form of pop rock, programs and community service out-reach. 

Our strategy said Greg Hawkins, was to try to get people, far from Christ, plugged into these missional activities.  We believed that the more people,

"....are participating in these sets of activities with higher levels of frequency it will produce disciples of Christ.” (ibid, Gilley)

Hawkins identifies three major discoveries.  First, that participation in missional activities does not predict whether a person will become a disciple of Christ.

Second, in every church there is a spiritual continuum in which,

"....you can look at your congregation and put them [the people] in one of five unique segments.  The segments are aligned around someone’s intimacy with Jesus Christ and how important that relationship with Christ is to their lives.”  (ibid, Gilley)

Accroding to Hawkins, the 5 segments are:

1. Unbelievers drawn to attend church on account of activities and services provided by the church.

2-3 New Christians and nominal believers who “might pray, read the Bible and have thoughts of God” on a daily basis.

4-5 Devoted followers of Christ and nominal Christians who do not invest time and effort to their relationship with Christ even though they regularly attend church and take part in missional activities.

The study concludes:

 “....it is the ones in the first two segments who are the most satisfied with local churches.." while “the last three segments have increasing dissatisfaction; they are disappointed with the role that the local church is playing in their lives.” They are quite unhappy with Willow, saying “they are not being fed; they want more of the meat of the Word of God; serious-minded Scripture taught to them; they want to be challenged more.” 

And finally, it is those in the last two groups who are thinking about leaving the local church.

In order to remedy these “mind-blowing” mistakes Hybels and his team of change-making gurus are working hard “to rethink how we coach people to full spiritual development.”  They are inventing new and improved “personal spiritual growth plans – customized spiritual growth plans for everyone at Willow.” (ibid, Gilley)

Hybels 'seeker sensitive' prototype is but one of many transformative models premised on a counter-cultural, counter-traditional agenda that from its' beginning has been bent on utterly transforming traditional churches away from supernatural theism toward a natural or nature-based religion.

By the turn of the century, the beginnings of this movement under the leadership of apostate Protestants and Catholics had arisen and Pope Pius X noted with alarm that 'modernist thinking' was taking hold of the contemporary mind, and in that way taking possession of Western civilization.

The Pope called this movement  "Modernism" and in 1907 declared it and its' primary doctrine, evolution, a synthesis of heresies in the encyclical called 'Pascendi Dominici Gregis." (On The Doctrine Of The Modernists, Encyclical Of Pope Pius X, Sept. 8, 1907, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10pasce.htm )

In his analysis, the Pope noted that Modernist "Christian" heretics were claiming that Christ is in us (mystical pantheist monism) and that through continuous evolutionary change an immanentist Christ-force emanated from matter spontaneously and of itself.

Since evolution implies continuous change, becoming, or transformation, heretics claim that immutable (unchanging) truths do not exist, therefore there is nothing immutable in the Bible.  By extension of this reasoning, Original Sin, hell, confession, repentance, vertical spiritual growth, Bible study, apologetics, and traditional hymns must in fact be changed since the Bible and the Church 'live' and evolve.

Today's transformational models of which Hybels and Rick Warrens have thus far been most successful, have modernism and its primary doctrine evolution, though redefined as General Systems theory, as their source  and taproot:

"Systems theory has been rapidly disseminated in Christian seminaries during the past decade. It is a surrogate theological paradigm, replacing the old traditional doctrines about the nature of man and God with a new evolutionary worldview in which man is transforming himself, his community and society. Systems theory is derived from esoteric philosophies prevalent in 1800s Germany, most notably Theosophy (Luciferianism)." (The Pied Pipers of Purpose, Lynn Leslie, Sarah Leslie, Susan Conway, discernment-ministries.com, May/June 2004)

Like Marxist Communism and National Socialism before them, today's gurus of transformation believe it is possible to harness the mystical forces of change so as to restructure the church, society and man. Like yesterday's socialist utopians they seek to create a new 'church' and a new order of peace and plenty populated by a new more perfect man.  And there are thousands of shallow-thinking, starry-eyed pastors who have jumped on the gurus bandwagon of transformational success built upon a modernist foundation of heresy, psychology, sociology, humanism, esotericism, communitarianism, and evolutionary change.

"Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye on the ways, and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way, and walk ye in it: and you shall find refreshment for your souls. And they said: we will not walk." Jeremiah 6:16

Whereas modern church growth gurus peddling seeker sensitive, purpose driven and simple church formulas exhort Christians to embrace change the prophet exhorts us to seek the old unchanging paths; the traditional paths of righteousness and holiness which from of old,

"...Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others, walked in, and follow them; and the way of salvation by Christ, which, though called a new way, Hebrews 10:20, yet is not newly found out, for it was contrived in eternity; nor newly revealed, for it was made known to Adam and Eve immediately after the fall; nor newly made use of, for all the Old Testament saints were saved by the same grace of Christ, and justified by his righteousness, and their sins pardoned through his blood, and expiated by his sacrifice, as New Testament saints; only of late, or in these last days, it has been more clearly made known; otherwise there is but one way of salvation; there never was any other, nor never will be; inquire therefore for this old path, which all true believers have trodden in..." (Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible)

But for increasing numbers of Christians the old paths are no longer visible, for through its' primary doctrine evolution, modernist and post modern gurus of transformation have introduced a whole new scale of inverted values grounded in the first instance, on the idea that everything in nature is the fruit of a constantly evolving process of upward growth (change) rather than the original creation of God, and in the second, that in a constantly evolving (changing) world, perfection is obviously somewhere in the future.

So complete has the contamination and transformation of Western and American consciousness been that the diabolical spirit of modernism has successfully inverted the order of creation and reversed the direction of Biblical theism.  With creation ex nihilo virtually replaced by evolution, it is now believed, even by many Christian theologians, that men have not fallen from perfection but instead are gradually evolving upward from their ape beginnings toward greater and greater spiritual perfection. Self-perfecting man no longer needs the grace of God as the idea of evolution means he can perfect himself, and perhaps even attain god-hood.

Modernism and its primary doctrine evolution are the fruit of apostasy, thus all who step out into its' seductive vortex of change will neither preach for very long from the pulpit of a successfully transformed mega-church nor progress upward toward perfection but rather swirl ever downward in a spiraling vortex issuing into outer darkness unless they repent and turn away.

@Linda Kimball

Heaven and Hell, Angels and Demons

In "Why so many people–including scientists–suddenly believe in an afterlife" Brian Bethune reports that thousands of cases of "near death experiences" have produced a pack of witnesses who claim to have actually entered into the afterlife before coming back again to write mega-selling accounts of what they saw and felt there:

"Afterlife speculation has become a vibrant part of the zeitgeist, the result of trends that include developments in neuroscience that have inspired new ideas about human consciousness, the ongoing evolution of theology, both popular and expert, and the hopes and fears of an aging population. Heaven is hot again. And hell is colder than ever." (Bethune, Macleans.ca, May 7, 2013)

While eighty-one per cent of Americans still believe in heaven, or some version of it, only seventy-one percent believe in hell, finding annihilation and similar concepts more to their liking.

Elsewhere in the Western world,

"... the gap between heaven and hell believers is more of a gulf—a 2010 Canadian poll found more than half of us think there is a heaven, while fewer than a third acknowledge hell. What’s more, monotheism’s two destinations are no longer all that are on offer. In December a survey of the 1970 British Cohort group—9,000 people, currently 42 years old—found half believed in an afterlife, while only 31 per cent believed in God." (ibid)

Of course hard-core materialists refuse to believe in an afterlife despite that they are unable to account either for life or their own cognition.  Predictably, they foolishly scoff at NDEs, attributing them to,

"...too much carbon dioxide in the blood perhaps or, as a recent study from the University of Kentucky posits, NDEs are really an instance of a sleep disorder, rapid eye movement (REM) intrusion." (ibid)

Trans-humanists and other seculars however, are very open to some sort of nonreligious afterlife, described by one academic as the natural continuation of human consciousness after physical death.

For millions of post-Christian Westerners---including increasing numbers of Christians--- reincarnation, ghost stories, psychic-powers, out of body experiences, contact with highly evolved deep space beings commonly described as Nordics, greys and reptilians, sightings of shadow people, moth man, werewolves and other terrifying creatures; obsession with the paranormal, vampires, personal spirit guides, dreams, visions, science fiction and evolutionary thinking in conjunction with a whole host of fallacies has become a fascinating, even obsessive, substitute religion. 

If there is anything new about any of this it is that these experiences have been updated for our age.   Such experiences have occurred from antiquity right down to the present century and are mainly attributable to demonic activity.   UFO encounters for example, are but waking experiences of demons as they are in themselves, but only after one's spiritual eyes have been opened to see these beings who are normally invisible to human eyes.

Bill Wiese’s "23 Minutes in Hell" (2006) for example, recounts his horrifying experiences after being translated into hell at 3 a.m. on the night of Nov. 22, 1998. A California realtor, Wiese was sleeping peacefully when suddenly he found himself in a five-by-three-meter cell occupied by two gigantic, evil, reptilians who proceeded to smash him against the walls before shredding his flesh. Wiese continued in seemingly endless pain, tormented as well by “the terrible, foul stench.” At precisely 3:23 a.m., Jesus Christ rescued Wiese and returned him to his home. 

The silver-lining of Wiese's horrifying experience is that it prompted him to warn people that hell really does exist:

"I am in the flames---pull me out!" "Oh save me! They drag me down!"  "I am going to hell!"  "The devil is coming to drag my soul down to hell!"  ('Voices from the Edge of Eternity,' John Myers, 1973, pp. 71, 109, 167, 196)

"Voices from Eternity'" is a collection of death bed visions from more than two hundred individuals dating as far back as the first century AD and including eighty-five famous people such as Charles Darwin.

For some, death was accompanied by the vision of a being of light welcoming them into a beautiful place.  For others, there was agony and terror as demons pulled their souls down into hell.  In "Dialogues," early Church Father Gregory the Great explains this phenomenon:

"It frequently happens that a soul on the point of death recognizes those with whom it is to share the same eternal dwelling for equal blame or reward."  (Dialogues, IV, 36)

From the same Dialogues, St. Gregory said with regard to the righteous that on the point of death they are comforted by the vision of the heavenly company,

"...without experiencing any fear or agony." (Dialogues, IV, 12)

Upon death, the spirits of the righteous are conveyed by ministering angels to heaven. Luke 16:22

Wiese's  reptilians however, are not of the heavenly company, not God's ministering angels but  the devil's legion and bear an uncanny resemblance to the Overlords, the 'aliens' in Arthur C. Clarke's book, "Childhood's End."  After the long anticipated public emergence of the Overlords the world entered a golden age of peace, security, and plenty in fulfillment of the dream of countless socialist utopians. 

Before a vast crowd, Karellen, the chief of the Overlords came forth into the sunlight:

"There was no mistake.  The leathery wings, the little horns, the barbed tail---all were there.  The most terrible of all legends had come to life, out of the unknown past.  Yet now it stood smiling, in ebon majesty, with the sunlight still gleaming upon its tremendous body, and with a human child resting trustfully on either arm." (Clarke, p. 61)

In turn, Clarke's Overlords are very similar to the "extraterrestrial" reptilians encountered by UFO abductees.

Prompted by these encounters, some secular evolutionists now claim that a powerful mechanism is presently available to man from Nordics, greys, and reptilians---the 'extraterrestrials' who will solve mankind's problems and conduct man to a new "cosmic" age. All three alien-types are busily transforming the consciousness of abductees and other Westerners and through them teaching evolution, naturalism and occult New Age philosophy as well as warning of a coming planetary apocalypse, denying the living God, the supernatural dimension and hell.

 All of this has led French physicist and UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vallee to conclude that something is happening to human consciousness that is causing a major shift in man's belief systems and his relationship to the concept of the invisible. Vallee believes that the same "powerful force' that influenced the human race in the past is influencing it again:

".....human belief...is being controlled and conditioned, man's concepts are being rearranged, and we may be headed toward a massive change of human attitudes toward paranormal abilities and extraterrestrial life." (Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 109)

In other words, "aliens" are deliberately effecting a spiritual transformation of their human subjects as well as causing them to be receptive toward "extraterrestrials," spirit-powers, signs, wonders and manifestations. UFO entities are perpetrating a massive deception on an apostate West and America.

The striking similarity between modern "alien" abductions and ancient accounts of demons was not lost on UFO researcher John Keel. Keel wrote:

"Demonology...is the ancient and scholarly study of the monsters and demons who have seemingly coexisted with man throughout history. Thousands of books have been written on the subject, many of them authored by clergymen, scientists, and scholars, and uncounted numbers of well-documented demonic events are readily available to every researcher. The manifestations and occurences described in this imposing literature are similar, if not entirely identical, to the UFO phenomenon itself. Victims of demonomania (possession) suffer the very same...symptoms as the UFO contactees...The devil and his demons can, according to the literature, manifest themselves in almost any form and can physically imitate anything from angels to horrifying monsters with glowing eyes. Strange objects and entities materialize and dematerialize...just as the UFOs and their...occupants appear and disappear, walk through walls, and perform other supernatural feats." (Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection, Gary Bates, p. 260)
 

Dr. Kurt Koch (1913-1987) is considered by many researchers as one of the foremost experts on occult spirituality and spirit contact. Koch described UFO "aliens" as the devil's elite troops, the heralds of the coming Antichrist:

"They often step out of their invisibility by means of materializations to create the greatest possible confusion (and) they turn up in ever greater concentrations as we approach the time of the return of Jesus." (Occult ABCs, p. 342)

From civilizations to men---everything finally dies.  From the moment of birth we are headed toward death.   Jesus Christ, fully God fully man, appeared to put away sin, the sting of death, by the sacrifice of himself:

 "And as it is appointed to men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin to salvation."

There will be no repeat offering of Christ for the lot of men.  Heaven and hell really do exist and once men die judgment follows.  Either eternity in paradise or for the unrepentant, at the point of death the devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his own said Jonathan Edwards (1739) in his powerful sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God:

"They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. The Scripture represents them as his "goods" (Luke 11:21). The devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey, and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back; if God should withdraw his hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls."
 
@Linda Kimball

Thought-Control in Sovietized America

"Thought crime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for awhile...but sooner or later they were bound to get you." George Orwell, 1984

 "The fact is we are witnessing an all-out drive to impose thought control that seeks to ban the ability — the right — to think or speak for one's self. Thinking is becoming a crime." (Globally Acceptable Truth and the Crime of Thinking, Tom DeWeese, Address to the 10th Annual Freedom 21 Conference, 10/16/09)

The imposition of thought control in America follows the Soviet model where all means of information dissemination including news media, liberalized seminaries, the education establishment, science, and entertainment and music industries were in the hands of trained bureaucratic commissars, or conditioners.  

Bruce Walker, author of "The Sovietized American Media," agrees and writes that Kremlin bosses,

"...had no interest in their subjects knowing anything about the world or having any honest opinions expressed." So what "happened in the Soviet media was the systematic suppression of all real news and a purging of all serious intellectual inquiry.  All news made the party leaders look good, or it simply wasn't news...The media, wholly controlled at every level by the dull Politburo functionaries who desired only to hold their power, perks, and coerced prestige, existed for a single purpose:  prevent any real news from reaching the ordinary subject in the Soviet Union."

"Isn't that the way things are in America today?  The leftist establishment media, which includes entertainment, education, and all the other conveyor belts of information and ideas, ignore the vast ocean of muck which could affect the political bosses in Washington (more and more our Moscow) and instead either present absurdly fluffy pieces intended to make sock puppets like Obama look good or portray the notional enemies of the people as vicious and corrupt."

Not only is there no news as such, but much of what passes for news is gossip, slander and destructive criticism presented as investigative journalism; lifestyle pieces that condition us to accept the latest imperative from the food-police or alternative lifestyle-choice directors; fear-inducing arguments for more gun control since racism, homophobia and sexism are serious problems caused by traditional Judeo-Christian religious values that make people dangerous maniacs.

Those familiar with Orwell's Oceania in 1984 recognize the patterns, said Walker,

"The Ministry of Truth published stories about an increase in the chocolate ration even as the chocolate ration was actually being decreased.  Those people whose very existence might have threatened the totalitarian control of the Inner Party became "unpersons" (and all) news, all education, all recreation was consumed with hatred of whoever the Inner Party demanded was the enemy -- and those "enemies" could change, literally, overnight -- and with a sludge pipe of pseudo-news intended to create the pretense of information while scrupulously stripping off anything of genuine substance or value in understanding the world."  (Walker, America Thinker, May 5, 2013)

Beginning at least eighty years ago, Leftists and fellow travelers initiated an agenda for the take-over of our traditional Christian based culture and religious and tradition sustaining institutions. They succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings.  Today America is a post-Christian society quickly transitioning into the universal atheism and social justice agenda that characterized the former Soviet Union. 

Both communism and the Left are alive and thriving here in America.  They favor code words: social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, gender justice, peace, reproductive rights, choice, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, tolerance, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity.  All together, this is communism disguised as multiculturalism.

Birth of Multiculturalism

In anticipation of the revolutionary storm that would baptize the world in an inferno of red terror and blood, leading to its rebirth as the promised land of social justice and proletarian equality-Frederich Engels wrote,

"All the...large and small nationalities are destined to perish...in the revolutionary world storm... (A general war will) wipe out all...nations, down to their very names.  The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only reactionary classes...but...reactionary peoples."  ("The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Jan. 13, 1849)

By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's working class (proletariat) had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and embrace communism instead.  They wondered what had gone wrong.

Separately, two Marxist theorists-Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary-concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order.  The West would have to be conquered first.

Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 2000 years, not only was it fused with Western civilization, but it had corrupted the now worthless workers class.  The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a stealthy "long march through the culture."  Additionally, a new proletariat must be created.  In his "Prison Notebooks," he suggested the new proletariat be comprised of criminals, women, and racial minorities.

The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, seminaries, grade schools, universities, news media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history.  All of these things must be radically transformed, Americans demoralized and dumbed-down, and the social and cultural order gradually turned upside-down with the angry, resentful, immoralist 'new' proletariat placed in power at the top.  Rather than Daniel Boone as a role model for boys, now there would be soft, poly-gendered males and gender-neutral rock stars to emulate.

The Prototype

In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary.  He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary.  Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children then both the hated traditional family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow, Lukacs launched a perverse sex education program in the schools.  Obscene sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority.  All of this was accompanied by a reign of psychological and physical terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and dissenters. 

Hungary's youth, having been fed a steady diet of atheism, Darwinism and perverse sex education while  encouraged to rebel against all authority, easily turned into delinquents ranging from bullies and petty thieves to sex predators, murderers, and sociopaths.

Gramsci's prescription and Lukacs' plans were the precursor to what Leftism in the guise of SIECUS, GSLEN, and the ACLU--acting as judicially-powered enforcers--later brought into American schools.

Building a base

In 1923, the Frankfurt School-a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany.  Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno.  The school was a multidisciplinary effort which included sociologists, sexologists, and psychologists.

The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into deceptive cultural terms. It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of constant change, or continuous revolution based on culture, and harnessing new oppressed groups such as homosexuals and lesbians for the faithless proletariat. Smashing Christianity, truth, morals and Western tradition, it also built a constituency among small-minded academics who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression and agitating for tolerance, gun control, rights of terrorists and 'gay' marriage.

Toward this end, Marcuse-who favored polymorphous perversion-expanded the ranks of Gramsci's new proletariat by including homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals.  Into this was spliced Lukacs perverse sex education and cultural terrorism tactics.  Gramsci's ‘long march' was added to the mix, and then all of this was wedded to Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological mind-conditioning techniques. The end product was what is now known in the West as multiculturalism.

Additional intellectual firepower was required: a theory to pathologize everything and everyone marked for destruction. In 1950, the Frankfurt School augmented multiculturalism with Theodor Adorno's idea of the ‘authoritarian personality.'  This concept is premised on the notion that Christianity, individual liberty, the traditional family, privately-owned businesses, and self-defense and gun ownership create a character prone to racism and fascism.  Thus anyone who upholds America's traditional moral values and institutions is both racist and fascist.  Children raised by traditional morals parents, we are told to believe, will almost certainly become racists and fascists.  By extension, if fascism and racism are endemic to America's traditional culture, then everyone raised in the traditions of God, family, patriotism, gun ownership, and free markets is in need of psychological help, primarily in the form of brain-altering drugs.

The pernicious influence of Adorno's ‘authoritarian personality' idea can be clearly seen in some of the research that gets public money:

"In Aug., 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million tax-payer funded study.  It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed.  Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives...suffer from ‘mental rigidity,' ‘dogmatism,' and ‘uncertainty avoidance,' together with associated indicators for mental illness." http://www.edwatch.org/  ‘Social and Emotional Learning" Jan. 26, 2005)     

A corresponding and diabolically crafted idea is political correctness.  The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the ‘new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance.  Political correctness is a psychological ‘command and control' technique.  Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior.

Critical theory is yet another psychological ‘command and control' technique.  As stated by Daniel J. Flynn,

"Critical Theory, as its name implies, criticizes.  What deconstruction does to literature, Critical Theory does to societies."  (Intellectual Morons, p 15-16)

In practice, critical theory issues in an ongoing and brutal psychological assault by way of vicious criticism, ridicule, slander, character assassination, defamation and seething scorn relentlessly leveled against Christians, creationists, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects of traditional American culture and society. 

Both political correctness and critical theory are in essence, psychological bullying.  They are the psychological battering rams by which Frankfurt School disciples such as the ACLU are forcing Americans to submit to and obey the will and the way of Leftist immoralists.  These devious techniques are but psychological versions of Georg Lukacs and Laventi Beria's ‘cultural terrorism' tactics.  In the words of the demonically energized Beria,

"Obedience is the result of force...Force is the antithesis of humanizing actions.  It is so synonymous in the human mind with savageness, lawlessness, brutality, and barbarism, that it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possessions of force." ("The Russian Manual on Psychopolitics: Obedience," by Laventi Beria, head of Soviet Secret Police and Stalin's right-hand man)

Double-thinking ‘fence-sitters,' otherwise known as dazed, confused, cowardly moderates, centrists, RINOs and culturally-accommodating priests bear the imprint of these psychological ‘obedience' techniques.  These people are afraid of incurring the wrath of name-calling obedience trainers and have opted to accommodate themselves, their politics, morals and even their churches to our morally degraded culture lest they be found guilty of politically incorrect thought.  At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written:

"I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"

Genetic Determinism

The linchpin of multiculturalism is genetic and/or cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity.  In its turn, genetic determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but an evolved aggregate of matter, a soulless animal whose identity is genetically determined by skin color or sexual and/or erotic preferences.  This proposition rejects the concepts of the human spirit, Original Sin, individuality, free will, and morally informed conscience (paired with personal accountability and responsibility) because it emphatically denies the existence of the transcendent living God of the Bible. 

Consequently, and by extension, it also rejects the first principles of our liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.  These are our "unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  Multiculturalism rejects these principles because they "are endowed by our Creator," who made man in His image.

Cultural determinism, states David Horowitz, 

"(is) identity politics-the politics of radical feminism, queer revolution, and Afro-centrism-which is the basis of academic multiculturalism...a form of intellectual fascism and, insofar as it has any politics, of political fascism as well."  (Mussolini and Neo-Fascist Tribalism: Up from Multiculturalism, by David Horowitz, Jan. 1998) 

It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear of persecution and rejection will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth.  Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, confusion, apathy, cowardice and submission----the chains of tyranny----is the purpose behind psychological terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must at all costs, be clothed in secrecy and darkness.

The antidote is courage and the light of truth.  We must put aside our fear of rejection and persecution and muster the courage to fearlessly expose the Left's immoralist, evil totalitarian agenda to the Light of Truth.    Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.

@Linda Kimball

Good and Evil in Liberalism's Land of Oz

“The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the ‘little’ choices of years past - by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that ‘it really doesn’t matter.’ It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away - the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self- indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity - or dishonor and shame.” (Ronald Reagan)

As a Christian, Ronald Reagan believed that man is fallen, that is, mankind is created good but because he is also fallen, he contains within himself the seeds of corruption and evil. However, because mankind is endowed with free will, he has the ability to say “no” to bad impulses, the sort, for example, that lead to lying, stealing, and murder.  

By extension of Christian reasoning, man must be held personally responsible for the bad choices he makes.  Thus thieves, liars, pedophiles, and murderers are responsible for the wrongs they have committed and society has a duty and obligation to punish them.

Because Liberalism is a reinvention of paganism, its view of evil and man is a complete reversal of the Christian view.  In this system, man is born good and all sources of evil exist externally to man.

Liberalism sees two primary sources of evil: genetic inheritance and oppressive social institutions and mystical concepts such as individual freedom, free markets, private property, the traditional family and self-defense.  In sum, whatever Christianity declares good liberalism declares evil, and whatever Christianity declares evil, liberalism declares good. 

Liberals believe their inverted morality is validated by evolution.  As evolution is a primary doctrine of liberalism, and evolution implies continuous change, then history as a record of events in space and time is as useless and absurd as unchanging higher truths , moral absolutes and "He made them male and female." 

In light of this belief, liberalism holds that Biblical sexual ethics and Christian-based life and culture sustaining institutions such as procreative traditional marriage must be gradually undermined, destroyed, and replaced with "free love" (promiscuity, homosexuality), abortion and alternative lifestyles.  As well, the personal wealth of the “haves” must be redistributed to the “have-nots" and the "evil" concept of individual liberty must be replaced with the pagan concept of “oneness.” 

Liberals believe that out of chaos will emerge a new, more perfect order.  In practice this means that by destroying everything about the "old" Christian-based order a perfected “new man” and a peaceful kingdom of heaven on earth will be attained.

These remedies only account for social evils however.  So what about evils caused by genetic inheritance, which liberals believe are the cause of politically incorrect “wrong thought,” “wrong speech,” and “wrong actions”?  

As a reinvention of superstitious pagan reasoning, liberals think that mankind does not possess free will. As a consequence, he cannot choose to behave and think other than how his genes determine he will think and behave.  In other words, mankind is a machine preprogrammed by his genes.  In this way of thinking, some individuals - usually thought to be the criminal element - can be rehabilitated.   After all, criminals aren’t really criminals but helpless victims of oppressive systems and concepts.  In other words, they are just good machines cast into confusion and wrong behavior due to the bad influences of the oppressive systems and politically incorrect thought in which they are presently living.  By extension of this reasoning, capital punishment is cruel and unusual punishment and terrorists aren’t really bad guys, but freedom fighters.

So on one hand, rehabilitation is one method liberals resort to in order to “save” the lost.  On the other, abortion, eugenics, euthanasia, and other population control schemes are methods employed by liberals to rid the world of evil caused by genetics.  Since human machines can do no other than to think and behave as determined by their genes, it just makes sense, think liberals, to simply weed out the undesirables.

But what about the unredeemable?  Those so contaminated by bad ideas and concepts that they are beyond any hope of redemption?   Hitler called his response “The Final Solution,” and liquidated millions of unredeemable machines. Marxist Communists called it “class warfare” and liquidated many millions more than did Hitler.  In the 1930s, here in America, progressive liberals devised a eugenics program for the purposeful breeding of a perfected New Man.  Abortion and homosexual behavior were actively promoted among the undesirables, which at that time were viewed as Catholics, blacks, Irish, and Italians.  So advanced was this program that both Tojo and Hitler sent delegations to our nation to study the progressive liberal eugenics processes.

When we understand how liberals think, we can see that underlying the current mortgage fiasco is liberalism’s irrational belief system at work.   That is, by forcing lending institutions into financing mortgages to unsuitable borrowers, liberals believed they were “fixing” the evils caused by America’s oppressive old order.  The devastation wrought by their machinations is likewise seen as a good thing, as it lends itself to the undermining of our traditional institutions, infrastructures, and way of life.

Ideas have consequences.  Liberalism’s ideas are morally and intellectually bankrupt, and as a consequence lead to devastation, poverty, suffering, and monstrous evil.  

Because liberalism’s ideas are out of touch with reality, liberals are themselves out of touch with reality.  They are not sane.

@Linda Kimball

The Doctrine of Demons in America's 'Sleeping' Church

The pagan intellectuals reclothed their original ideas in a garment of christian phraseology but bestowed the keys of the symbolism only upon those duly initiated and bound to secrecy”  Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Catholic philosopher and historian Thomas Molnar (1921-2010) agrees with Manly's claim:

"....the occult penetrates the lowered defenses of the Christian tradition...The entire symbology of Christianity yields to other, sometimes older symbologies with their underlying creeds and doctrines."  (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, pp. 166-167)

Examples of important occult doctrines that have supplanted the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo under cover as modern science are for example, the Great Chain of Being (as above, so below) which with the addition of time became a full-fledged evolutionary theory, ancient anti-human Gnostic cosmogonies such as Darwinism, and Teilhard's Hindu-pantheist Hermetic immanentist version which has a god-force emerging out of matter after billions of years of evolution.

In 1993 journalist Terry Mattingly attended the occult pagan syncretistic services celebrated by the West's occult intelligentsia at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  Mattingly wrote:

"Before the bread and wine were brought to the altar, the musicians offered a rhythmic chant that soared into the cathedral vault: "Praises to Obatala, ruler of the heaven; Praises to Yemenja, ruler of the waters of life; Praises to Ausur, ruler of Amenta, the realm of the ancestors; Praises to Ra and Ausar, rulers of the light and the resurrected soul." (On Global Wizardry: Techniques of Pagan Spirituality and a Christian Response, Peter Jones, chapter 5, Dave Doveton, p. 75)

St. John the Divine is actually a masonic cathedral built by the Brotherhood in 1925.  Its' completion was such a prized accomplishment for the Brotherhood that it was featured on the front page of “Masonic World” of March 1925:

“It is particularly fitting that the Masons, who were the principal builders of cathedrals and churches during the greatest cathedral-building period, should now have a prominent part in the movement to build America’s greatest cathedral (…) Little need be added to the story of Freemasonry during the cathedral-building period; its monuments are its best history, alike of its genius, its faith and its symbols.” (Sinister Sites – St. John The Divine Cathedral, Vigilant Citizen, Feb 13th, 2009)

Two occult symbols, an illuminati pyramid and all-seeing eye crown the cathedral:     http://i2.wp.com/vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/fed.jpg

Vigilant Citizen argues that the most shocking aspect of the cathedral are its' prophetic pillars, conceived in 1997,  depicting the destruction of New York city (including the Twin Towers) and the rise of a new world order:

http://i1.wp.com/vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/divin1.jpg

http://i0.wp.com/vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/divine2.jpg

http://i0.wp.com/vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/divine3.jpg

http://i1.wp.com/vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/divine4.jpg

The Twin Towers collapsing:

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_sociopol/masontemplar11_04.jpg

While ancient Egyptian and West African deities are invoked in St. John the Divine, undiscerning, uninformed Protestant and contemporary evangelical denominations are unwittingly following suit by incorporating pagan, Gnostic symbols, rituals, doctrines, devices, mystical techniques and language into their worship. 

Symbols are nonverbal ways of communicating truths enshrined in our Christian faith.  The 'cross' not only refers to Christ's finished work of redemption but as a symbol for the entire gospel message.  Other Biblical symbols are the lamb of God, dove, fire, earthly stones, heavenly bread and living water.  

Among occult symbols, rituals, devices, techniques and language being adopted by Christian churches are labyrinths,  the Enneagram, African story-telling (churches now have their own unfolding story), yoga, communal festivals, in-Church dramas, dance, and occult pagan versions of the Christian contemplative tradition like those of Richard Foster, Thomas Keating, Tilden Edwards, and Richard Rohr.  

Foster embraces  Teilhard's Hymn of the Universe which initiates Christians into the ways of inner mystical contact with the world depicted  as a divinely-infused living organism, Omega or the goddess Gaia.  Occult pagan mystical techniques are being adopted uncritically by many evangelical churches including Willow Creek.   

Haley Barton was trained  as a spiritual director at the interreligious Shalem Institute for Spiritual Foundation founded by Tilden Edwards. Barton describes today's spiritual technologies, or mystical stream as a bridge:

"This mystical stream is the Western bridge to Far Eastern spirituality." (Pagan Contemplative Techniques, Pamela Frost, p. 197, On Global Wizardry)

 And then there's the rock music so very popular in both our degraded culture and emergent and contemporary evangelical churches:

"Were we to scour the globe in search of the most aggressively  malevolent and unmistakably evil music in existence, it is more than likely  that nothing would be found anywhere to surpass voodoo  in these attributes ... as the rhythmic accompaniment to satanic rituals and  orgies, voodoo is the quintessence of tonal evil. ... Its multiple rhythms,  rather than uniting into an integrated whole, are performed in a certain kind  of conflict with one another. ... What is certain is that to hear this music  is to become instantly encompassed by the sound of its raw, livid power. ...  Musicologists and historians are in no doubt that the drum rhythms of Africa  were carried to America and were transmitted and translated into the style of  music which became known as jazz. Since jazz and the blues were the parents of rock and roll, this also means that there exists a direct line of descent from the voodoo ceremonies of Africa, through jazz, to rock and roll and all other forms of rock music today." (The Secret Power of Music, David Tame, pp. 189-190)

Over the past three hundred years the Western Judeo-Christian tradition grounded in the Revelation of God has been incrementally eclipsed by an apostate Christian occult intelligentsia that emerged out of the Renaissance and has been the real power behind the counter-cultural, anti-tradition and sexual revolutions issuing in socialism and communism. Through their insidious machinations, occult pagan spirituality has been artfully revamped and revised for modern Western consumption. 

In "The Making of the New Spirituality," James Herrick masterfully demonstrates how each major tenet of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, which he calls the Revealed Word,  has been radically reinvented and disseminated throughout our culture and in our schools by apostate theologians, spiritual directors, new religious cults,  and through books, speeches, magazines, popular TV programs, plays, radio interviews, music, and websites.   

With regard to the Revealed Word, Herrick lists seven major tenets:

1. The supernatural authority of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures: Beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo, the Bible is taken to be divinely delivered, thus uniquely authoritative as a source of  ultimate truth.

2. A personal, creating and wholly other God: God is all-knowing, all-powerful, present everywhere and possesses traits of personality---thoughts, motives, and the capacity to form relationships.  He created the physical and spiritual worlds ex nihilo, or out of nothing.  Moreover He is neither contained in nor equivalent with the created order, meaning that man does not have a share of God's substance.

3. God's creation of the human race: The Revealed Word teaches that the human race is a special creation of God, the only part of the creation to bear His spiritual image (mind/spirit).  Man then is not a product of strictly natural processes.

4. An intervening God: The Revealed Word affirms that God's activity includes involvement in the lives of individual human beings.  On occasion God's  personal involvement is in the form of communication and at other times He miraculously alters the ordinary course of cause and effect.  Though He invites address and petition through prayer He is not at the command of human beings.

5. Humankind's Fall:  The human race fell into sin at the beginning of its existence as a consequence of their refusal to accept divinely mandated limitations on their activities. The Fall carried with it various catastrophic consequences including spiritual confusion, a state of spiritual separation from God and the inevitability of death.

6. Jesus Christ is God Incarnate: Jesus Christ uniquely manifested God in human form.  Jesus is a revelation of God's nature in person and the only human being to ever fully express the divine nature.  His death and resurrection are uniquely redemptive of fallen humanity.  These events are the sole provision by the living God for the salvation of the human race.  There is no other way but His offer of salvation.

7. Human destiny and divine judgment: The Revealed Word insists that the eternal destiny of the human race is to be determined only by God.  Neither the present earth nor the human race exists indefinitely.  Human beings live but one life.  They do not spiritually evolve or reincarnate.    A final judgment of the human race will occur, and each individual human being will be held accountable for the life lived.  

 Herrick calls the new spirituality "the New Religious Synthesis" and lists seven of its major components:

1. History is not important: As evolution is a primary doctrine of the new spirituality, and evolution implies continuous change, then history as a record of events in space and time is as useless and absurd as unchanging higher truths , moral absolutes and "He made them male and female."

2. The dominance of reason:  Reason---also mind, consciousness, intellect, awareness, divine spark,  pattern, or imagination---is the mystical divine essence in humans.  It is virtually unlimited in its potential development through scientific study, evolution, and mystical experiences.  The divine essence is the gateway to human apprehension of spiritual insights such as 'oneness' and 'interconnectedness' coming to those with the most highly evolved consciousness:

"Perhaps the most vital function of psychedelic drugs and plants is their ability to reliably produce spiritual or mystical experiences. These transpersonal experiences of “oneness,” or inseparability, often result in an increased sense of ecological awareness, a greater sense of interconnection, a transcendence of the fear of death, a sense of the sacred or divine, a desire to help humanity, and an identification with something much larger than one’s body or personal life."  (Psychedelic Drug Research Heralds the Future Science of Divinity, David Jay Brown, Santa Cruz Patch, June 2012)

3. The spiritualization of science: The tool employed by divine reason to acquire new spiritual truths

4. The animation of nature: Nature (matter) is infused with and animated by divine spirit, the Force, Zoe, consciousness or life force.  This is animism.

5. Hidden knowledge (gnosis) and spiritual progress: Gnosis is the key to spiritual insight and human progress and is the preserve of some scientists, spiritual directors, gurus, god-men, mediums and a new class of Western shaman.  Such knowledge comes by means of science and spiritual technologies that lead to direct communication with the Ultimate Source (nonliving monistic One Substance, Omega, Universal Consciousness, Christ Consciousness, Chaos, Divine Abyss, Primordial Matter).    Emptying the mind and disconnecting from reality are the goals of spiritual technologies:

".....spiritual power and a vibrant connection with the universe (is attained by) emptying the mind, leaving reality and getting “high” within. Meditation (sometimes facilitated by, in a Woodstock way, listening to rock music, experimenting with sex, and smoking pot or popping hallucinatory drugs—you know, a little help from “my friends”) often induced what can be called “altered state[s] of consciousness...."    "Ecstasy can be deliberately induced using religious or creative activities, meditation, music, dancing, breathing exercises, physical exercise, sex or consumption of psychotropic drugs.” (Altered States: A Different Gate, Sarah Leslie and Pastor Larry DeBruyn, Herescope, April 2011)

This essay has briefly examined a few of the symbols, rituals, doctrines, devices, and language common to contemporary occult pagan spirituality whether in its' "Christian" guise or non-Christian forms. 

With respect to supernatural Christian theism, pagan spirituality is its' exact opposite or antithesis and under no circumstances are Christians to accommodate the Church to paganism.  

The Apostle Paul aptly describes pagan knowledge as the futility of minds and foolish, hardened, darkened hearts.  (Romans 1:21)  Paul is not naïve.   He knows that pagan thinking is neither innocent nor neutral for they knowingly  suppress the truth about God in preference to 'self.'(Rom. 1:18).

Apart from God human thinking is idolatrous because it raises 'self' up in preference to God.  Such intellectual pride is an expression of "the doctrine of demons" as Paul says in 1 Tim. 4:1.

@Linda Kimball

The Fellowship of Trendy Catholics and Contemporary 'New' Evangelicals

In a Biblical reply to those who prefer a trendy, compliant church,  Msgr. Charles Pope notes that during the recent Papal Conclave  the media had a field day interviewing various degrees and types of disaffected Catholics,

"... who all presented their wish list (or list of demands) of how the Church should change to be tenable and relevant to modernity and regain their “loyalty.” Most of the demands of course had to do with sex and power: that the Church should approve contraception and promote it, homosexual activity and same sex unions should get the thumbs up, divorce and remarriage should be approved, women and active gays ordained, priest should be able (sic) to get married, abortion approved, euthanasia applauded, etc." (Is the Church a Thermometer or a Thermostat? A Biblical reply to those who prefer a trendy and compliant Church, Msgr. Pope, Apr. 11, 2013, Archdiocese of Washington)

Though Msgr. Pope's reply is primarily aimed at disaffected Catholics, it speaks as well to 'new' evangelicals, the youth-idolizing seeker-sensitive contemporary and emergent evangelicals who are traveling the same broad, smooth highway to destruction taken previously by liberal mainline Protestants. 

Both disaffected Catholic and contemporary 'new' evangelicals are united by the demand that the Church update her teachings,

"….be more modern in her thinking, teachings and structures.” She needs to “Listen more to young people and speak their language and share their vision.” Put more in a hostile way, the Church, “needs to abandon her medieval ways, cease being hostile, judgmental, intolerant, bigoted, sexist, homophobic, hateful etc” (and the usual list of modern accusations that reflect more the accuser’s personal issues than the Church). (ibid)

If the Church does all this, said Msgr. Pope, then our parishes will be filled again and all will be right with the world:

"Never mind that the Liberal (mainline) Protestants have tried all this for decades, approving whatever the people and the polls demanded, and with that approach their numbers have plummeted, far lower that any Catholic Parish. Never mind too that the only Protestant denominations that are growing at all are the more biblically conservative Evangelical Protestants who reject a good bit of the list of demands above." (ibid)

As Msgr. Pope points out, only the more biblically conservative evangelical churches that reject the contemporary influence are growing at all.   As for the rest, their fall into irrelevance and death is happening with breathtaking speed, said Michael Spencer:

"Collapse....will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former “glory.”

"New" evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. And in what must be the most ironic of all possible factors, the expenditure of billions of dollars by 'new' evangelicals on youth ministers,

"....Christian music, Christian publishing and Christian media has produced an entire burgeoning culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures that they will endure." (The Coming Evangelical Collapse, Michael Spencer)

Fueling the demands of both trendy Catholics and contemporary 'new' evangelicals is the spirit of accommodation in the guise of 'love' whose purpose is winning souls and making the world a better place.  To do these things the Church should accommodate the felt-needs, appetites and desires of its' patrons, and to do this it must parrot pop-culture.

Decades ago Francis Schaeffer noted this spirit already at work amongst new-evangelicals.  In The Great Evangelical Disaster he wrote:

 "Accommodation, accommodation. How the mindset of accommodation grows and expands. . . . For the evangelical accommodation to the world of our age represents the removal of the last barrier against the breakdown of our culture. And with the final removal of this barrier will come social chaos and the rise of authoritarianism in some form to restore order. "  Schaeffer then adds, “To accommodate to the world spirit about us in our age is the most gross form of worldliness in the proper definition of the word.”  (Schaeffer, “Evangelical Disaster,” 401)

In "Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture," Herbert Schlossberg exposes the timeless seductive promise underlying the mindset of accommodation:

"....the antinomian idea that Christian love can be used to nullify the requirements of the law and so free autonomous man to determine good and evil for himself (which) repeats the serpent's blandishments."  (p. 48)  

The Apostle Paul linked the performance of the duties of Christian love with the keeping of God's commandments, specifically the second table of the Decalogue, the "thou shalt nots."  In this sense, love is the "fulfilling of the law," Rom. 13:8-10 through submission (obedience) to the law:

"That thou mightiest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of thy life; that thy days may be prolonged." Deuteronomy 6:2-3

The Decalogue shows that idolatry (preference for self over God) leads to adultery, contempt for law, norms, authority, rules and other people.   In this light, no matter how accommodation of church to culture is rationalized it is adultery via the lust of the eyes (materialism), the lust of the flesh (eroticism) and the pride of life (egoism):   

“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”  (James 4:4, KJV)

 The preference for one's self instead of God reveals that 'self,' the self-deserving, autonomous, imperial "I" deserves something more than God and this is the seed of envy.  If 'self' is primary then 'self' deserves everything it can get.   The Bible however, does not argue from a human-self point of view but from a thoroughly theocentric worldview in which mankind deserves nothing. 

The deceit of Adam and Eve as well as of today's fellowship of trendy disaffected Catholic and  contemporary 'new' evangelical antinomians is their own self-serving idea that they actually deserve and have a right to whatever they want, and worse, the church should accommodate their desires, ambitions, dreams and self-serving visions.    This is self-idolatry.

The awakening of Adam and Eve from their delusion that they deserved to eat of the Tree came with the onset of death, for  their inward turning selfishness tore the fabric of their being from communion with God.   Thus we can see that the reason God does not execute self-idolaters, be they Christian or otherwise, is that those who violate God's Law in effect execute themselves by tearing away from God in preference of self.   It follows then that all attempts at transforming the Church into a culturally compliant institution will die as well.

@Linda Kimball

What Ails America? Moral Imbecility and Diabolical Psychopathy

The April edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Professor Steven Landsburg of the University of Rochester recently posed a “hypothetical” question to his students through his personal blog which went viral and immediately drew mass condemnation. (University of Rochester Professor of the Year Says, “Rape Might Be OK,” University Officials Plan No Disciplinary Action, Joe Calandra Jr., April 30, 2013, patriotaction.net)

He asked the question:

“Should rape be illegal if the victim is unconscious and if no physical harm results?”

Daniel Nelson, the doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester, immediately began organizing students to petition campus leaders to discipline Landsburg.  He said:

“We feel like this is just too much. A line has been crossed.  The professor’s comments are offensive…But more troubling…is that they could be harmful; We’re worried that a professor who teaches hundreds of students, who was voted professor of the year, and is in a position of great power and influence, is telling the community at large that rape might be OK.”

University leaders however, side with Landsburg, saying he was within his rights to be academically free to spark discussion among his students as he sees fit and plan to take no action against him. (ibid)

While Lansburg embraces rape, anti-Christian leftist Mike Weinstein, Obama's choice as consultant to the Pentagon in charge of developing new policies on religious tolerance, decries what he calls the “virulent religious oppression” perpetrated by conservative Christians, whom he refers to as “monstrosities” and “pitiable unconstitutional carpetbaggers."  Weinstein adds:

"If these fundamentalist Christian monsters of human degradation … and tyranny cannot broker or barter your acceptance of their putrid theology, then they crave for your universal silence in the face of their rapacious reign of theocratic terror. Indeed, they ceaselessly lust, ache, and pine for you to do absolutely nothing to thwart their oppression. Comply, my friends, and you become as monstrously savage as are they. I beg you, do not feed these hideous monsters with your stoic lethargy, callousness and neutrality. Do not lubricate the path of their racism, bigotry, and prejudice. Doing so directly threatens the national security of our beautiful nation."  (Pentagon Taps Anti-Christian Extremist for Religious Tolerance Policy, Ken Klukowski, Breitbart.com, 28 Apr 2013)

God help us now when someone with such visceral hatred of conservative Christians—literally tens of millions of Americans—who says sharing this gospel is “spiritual rape” is helping develop policies for how to deal with Christians in the military, said Klukowski: 

"Weinstein says those guilty of this “treason” must be “punished.” Under federal law, the penalty for treason is death. And the Obama administration is sitting down to talk with this man to craft new policies for “religious tolerance” in our military." (ibid) 

Ideologically, Weinstein, Landsburg and his university defenders are usually described as either Liberals or Leftists.   Ideology aside, some of them are moral imbeciles, others are dangerous psychopaths who, like vast numbers of American adolescents in adult-size bodies, are ruled by some or all of the following: narcissism, malignant narcissism, boredom, restless seeking, felt needs for diversions, self-indulgent compulsions, itching appetites, gnawing envy, dark fantasies, paranoia, death-wishing and even thoughts of murder that cloud, unbalance, and darken the mind resulting in deceptive, disjointed, self-contradictory, hypocritical, paranoid reasoning. 

Liberalism is the default position of  self-centered children notes Reb Bradley, author of "Born Liberal Raised Right."  No child needs to be taught how to be self-centered, to lie, covet, disrespect, resent, hit, spit, kick and otherwise rebel against discipline, order, rules and authority because in greater and lesser degrees, negation and rebellion are natural to all children.  

 Today increasing numbers of Americans at every level of society, on both left and right, Christian and secular, are controlled by their passions.   Adding to the problem is the 'seeker-sensitive' church model attended by thousands of Americans that caters to felt-needs and self-indulgent emotional feel-goodism.   Thus  America itself is "a nation ruled by its passions," said Bradley.  This is why  heinous acts,

"...of casual disregard for life, unheard of fifty years ago, have become a familiar item on the evening news; students killing classmates, children murdering their playmates....these gruesome crimes are merely symptomatic of a breakdown of moral fiber..."  (ibid, pp. 2-3)

Sanity is the ability to recognize right from wrong  independently of  passions which when massaged can easily inflate into uncontrollable narcissism, sexual lusts, fits of rage, seething hatred, covetousness, dark obsessions, diabolicism and paranoia. 

Rational thinking is reasoning disciplined to resist the corrupting influence of personal feelings or passions, thus allowing for the acceptance of higher truths, order, and authority that contradicts feelings, desires, and fancies.   In short, rational thinking is morally-informed reasoning.   It is dispassionate, rightly-ordered  and logical, and is the fruit of self-control and unswerving commitment to enduring higher truths, moral law, and principle.  

Moral imbecility is the inability to recognize right from wrong independent of  feelings,  impulses, and compulsions.   By the degree to which the moral sense is corrupt, so too is reason.   The greater the degree of corruption, the more depraved is reason, meaning that moral imbecility can shade into diabolicism, or psychopathy.

 In his paper, "Leftism as Psychopathy," John Ray (M.A.;Ph.D.) provides a clinical description of psychopathy:

"The characteristics of the clinical psychopath can be summed up as follows:  He is not obviously "mad"; he is often highly intelligent; he is unmoved by brutality (except to enjoy perpetrating it); he has no moral or ethical anchors or standards; he is deeply (but discreetly) in love with himself (narcissism) so secretly despises others and thinks they are fit only to be dominated and exploited by him and those like him; he is a great manipulator who loves getting others to do his bidding by deception or otherwise; he is the master of the lie and the false pretense but sees no reason to be consistent from occasion to occasion;  he will say anything to gain momentary praise or admiration; his only really strongly felt emotions seem to be hate and contempt and he is particularly enraged by those who have what he wants and will be totally unscrupulous in trying to seize what others have for himself. But above all, the psychopath does not seem to be able to  tell right from wrong and, as a result, does sometimes  commit or connive at murders and other heinous crimes with what seems to be a clear conscience. " (http://jonjayray.tripod.com/psycho.html )

Although leftists form only a small fraction of the total population said Ray,

" ....their influence and their grasp on the levers of power in the media, in the bureaucracy, in the universities and, at times, in politics, make what they think, say and do very important indeed.  And it is my contention that this type is eerily reminiscent of a well-known psychiatric category:  The psychopath. So the ULTIMATE explanation for all the core characteristics of Leftism that have been described so far lies in many Leftists being sub-clinical psychopaths. " 

 The most frightening aspect of America's descent into moral imbecility and diabolical psychopathy is that through the White House, legislatures, media, Hollywood, courts, academia, pentagon and seminaries such people have the power to lead our country farther down the path toward disintegration, breakdown and implosion and from there to totalitarianism, concentration camps and mass murder.  

 In observation of this eventuality an astute commentator to the Prager Zeitung said:

 "The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency.  It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president."   "The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.  Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince...The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool"  "It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."  (Prager Zeitung, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2559666/posts )

@Linda Kimball

The Psychology of Evil

The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis:

"Now the Witch said nothing at all, but moved gently across the room, always keeping her face and eyes very steadily towards the Prince. When she had come to a little ark set in the wall not far from the fireplace, she opened it, and took out first a handful of a green powder. This she threw on the fire. It did not blaze much, but a very sweet and drowsy smell came from it. And all through the conversation which followed, that smell grew stronger, and filled the room, and made it harder to think. Secondly, she took out a musical instrument rather like a mandolin. She began to play it with her fingers - a steady, monotonous thrumming that you didn't notice after a few minutes. But the less you noticed it, the more it got into your brain and your blood. This also made it hard to think. After she had thrummed for a time (and the sweet smell was now strong) she began speaking in a sweet, quiet voice."

"Narnia?" she said. "Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia."

"Yes there is, though, Ma'am," said Puddleglum. "You see, I happen to have lived there all my life."

"Indeed," said the Witch. "Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?"

"Up there," said Puddleglum, stoutly, pointing overhead. "I - I don't know exactly where."

"How?" said the Queen, with a kind, soft, musical laugh. "Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?"

"No," said Puddleglum, struggling a little to get his breath. "It's in Overworld."

"And what, or where, pray is this . . . how do you call it. . . Overworld?"

"Oh, don't be so silly," said Scrubb, who was fighting hard against the enchantment of the sweet smell and the thrumming. "As if you didn't know! It's up above, up where you can see the sky and the sun and the stars. Why, you've been there yourself. We met you there."

"I cry you mercy, little brother," laughed the Witch (you couldn't have heard a lovelier laugh). "I have no memory of that meeting. But we often meet our friends in strange places when we dream. And unless all dreamed alike, you must not ask them to remember it."

"Madam," said the Prince sternly, "I have already told your Grace that I am the King's son of Narnia."

"And shalt be, dear friend," said the Witch in a soothing voice, as if she was humouring a child, "shalt be king of many imagined lands in thy fancies."

"We've been there, too," snapped Jill. She was very angry because she could feel enchantment getting hold of her every moment. But of course the very fact that she could still feel it, showed that it had not yet fully worked.

"And thou art Queen of Narnia too, I doubt not, pretty one," said the Witch in the same coaxing, half-mocking tone.

"I'm nothing of the sort," said Jill, stamping her foot. "We come from another world."

"Why, this is a prettier game than the other," said the Witch. "Tell us, little maid, where is this other world? What ships and chariots go between it and ours?"

.....Jill couldn't remember the names of the things in our world. And this time it didn't come into her head that she was being enchanted, for now the magic was in its full strength; and of course, the more enchanted you get, the more certain you feel that you are not enchanted at all. She found herself saying (and at the moment it was a relief to say):

"No. I suppose that other world must be all a dream."

"Yes. It is all a dream," said the Witch, always thrumming.

"Yes, all a dream," said Jill.

"There never was such a world," said the Witch.

"No," said Jill and Scrubb, "never was such a world."

"There never was any world but mine," said the Witch.

"There never was any world but yours," said they. "    

The witch is an important part of Lewis' novel because the character symbolizes the principle of nihilism (negation) and rebellion in fallen mortal men.   Though the witch is not the actual devil she is of like mind with him and her mesmerizing powers of persuasion come from him.

Like her father the devil, the witch is not by any margin morally sane but rather morally insane.  She is therefore a convincing, practiced liar, a master of the black arts of deception and manipulation who knows that Narnia exists, but being spiritually dead, her lack of empathy and malignant narcissism permits her to negate reality (Narnia) and impose on her victims a false reality made up of distortions and fabrications.

Being of like mind with the devil she seemingly possesses a limitless supply of demonic energy, especially when engaged in imposing her will over the wills of others.   Since she desires power for the sake of power, she wants the reins of control in her hands at all times as her overriding passion is to utterly control and dominate the minds and wills of others which she poisons by manipulating their perceptions.   She does this by slowly but surely isolating her victims, one from the other, in a vast black widow's web of deception.  She begins spinning her web by causing doubt, creating confusion, whispering behind backs, deftly massaging the pride and resentment of some while burdening those she perceives as threats with a false sense of guilt.  This  allows her to turn the hate and vengeance of the first group against the second, the scapegoats she quickly belittles, ridicules, undermines, discredits, denigrates and accuses of insanity should they dare to speak truth to lies:

""Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia."

The principle of negation (nihilism) rests on a foundation of pride, lust, covetousness, resentment and envy, and like the devil, the witch's  brand of  negation is so total that she lacks the capacity for empathy, making her very dangerous not only because she is motivated to scapegoat and crucify others but also because her lack of empathy negates the restraint resulting from empathy and respect for others.

Negation of empathy results in blindness to the humanity of victims which in turn permits them to be sacrificed without remorse on the altar of narcissism, for with the negation of humanity intended victims are no longer human beings but rather objects of pleasure or displeasure to be used, abused, tormented and discarded at will.    This monstrous evil finds expression over and over in the writings of the sexual sadist, the Marquis de Sade:

"The philosopher sates his appetites without inquiring to know what his enjoyments may cost others, and without remorse." (Libido Dominandi, E. Michael Jones, p. 26)

The highly respected profiler of sex crimes, Roy Hazelwood describes sexual sadists like de Sade as narcissists who are aroused by the suffering of another:

"It is not the infliction of pain that is arousing to the sadist, but the victim's suffering. The sadist may use physical or psychological pain as a tool to elicit the suffering, but it is the suffering that is crucial to his arousal."  The most successful sexual sadists are narcissists for whom "there are no absolutes, the infinity of darkness." (Roy Hazelwood: Profiler of Sexual Crimes, Katherine Ramsland, Crime Library)

For anti-God and anti-human metaphysical nihilists, the principle of negation underlies both philosophical and scientific materialism.   Materialism is not attractive because it is true, it is true because it is attractive to the principle of negation (meaninglessness) and rebellion in fallen mortal men.   Such men are crazy-makers who desire on one hand, the negation of the reality of the God of Revelation, heaven, hell, truth, moral law, meaning, purpose and Original Sin and on the other, the imposition of a false reality made up of distortions and fabrications such as the idea that men are machines. Aldous Huxley comments:

"The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned...with a problem in pure metaphysics.  He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves.  The voluntary...reasons for holding the doctrines of materialism...may be predominantly erotic, as...in the case of Lamettrie...or predominantly political as they were in the case of Karl Marx."  (Aldous Huxley, from Libido Dominandi, p. 27)

Whereas the witch negated reality (Narnia) and imposed on her victims a false reality made up of distortions and fabrications, so did materialists.  Being of one mind with the devil, they negated (murdered) God, meaning, truth and man's humanity (soul/spirit) and through force of will imposed on the West and America an alternative reality made up of deceptions.    Eric Voegelin comments:

"....the order of being (was) obliterated (and reinterpreted) as essentially under man's control." Taking control "requires the decapitation of being — the murder of God." (Eric Voegelin, "Science, Politics and Gnosticism," p. xv)

With the negation of  God and the source of man's humanity (soul) men are no longer human beings but beast-men, qualitatively no different from  rats, pigs, or apes to be used, abused, tormented and discarded at will.

The negation of the God of Revelation, immutable truth, and moral absolutes together with the disintegration of man's dignity as a creature of God is not the product of  science, reason, and biological evolution, but is rather the product of an evil will and depraved conscience that justifies the negation of God and the depersonalization and abuse of others as the exercise of freedom.  It is hatred and sadism disguised behind linguistic sophistry.

Evil people exploit good people by persuading them that it is wrong to call evil by its' name." (Persuasive Wickedness & What We Must Say About It, James Hitchcock)

Today every manner of evil, from pathological lying, hypocrisy, treachery, terrorism, the murder of aborted yet living babies, 'gay' marriage, open borders, incest, pedophilia, sodomy, bestiality (animalism), rape, thievery, vandalism, violence and disarming Americans is justified by the alternative reality of materialism, which has freed rebellious, fallen man from God and His Law.   The real horror of the fabricated reality imposed on us is its positive declaration of a "new" moral ethic, which we commonly think of as political correctness with its' two overriding absolutes, "tolerance" and "inclusion."  Thus today the shamelessly perverse claim of  "politically correct" moral imbeciles to the moral high ground from where they brazenly point an accusing finger at God, Biblical ethics, founding traditions and the Americans who hold fast to them.

The prescription is truth and the courage of conviction to speak it in the face of persecution.  The evil hate the light of truth and goodness that exposes them and penetrates their deceptions and fabrications.

"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."--John 8:32

@Linda Kimball

Matthew 7:21: Two Kinds of Builders---the Wise and Unwise

The age that saw the advent of Jesus Christ God Incarnate was an age rich in nature religions as well as philosophical and ethical systems encompassing the animism, polytheism and sex worship of the vast majority of the world to the Atomism (metaphysical nihilism) and pantheist Stoicism of Greek nature sages, the Roman pantheon of deities and the Greek mystery religions.

Into this stagnant pool of humanism and false mysticism came the Son of God, fully man, fully God; the supernatural Source of all being, personality, mind, and salvation (John 14:6) ; the self-consistent, unchanging standard of  goodness, order, truth, wisdom, and knowledge (James 1:16-18; Rom. 3:4; Num. 23:19; Ezek. 24:14); the supernatural Creator-God Who from the beginning reveals Himself to mankind by His living Word by which He created all things ex nihilo (Gen. 1; Ps. 19; John 1:1-5; Col. 1:16); and Who through His Gospel of God's Grace,  miraculous powers, death and resurrection cut through the intricate matrix of nature systems, astrology, Mystery Religions, Hermetic magic, and fatalism and across the whole web of despair and fear of death to draw men unto Him.

In keeping with His Gospel, our Lord not only announced it but foretold the trials and tribulations that would encompass His followers who have been called to be separate from the world.    Our Lord even intimates how becoming and natural persecution is to His followers by placing it among His Beatitudes:

"Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.."

After the first separation, another sword entered into the very heart of the confessional body.  From the first separation to the end of days it works to separate the wheat--the humble believers who self-sacrificially demonstrate His grace--- from the chaff: all who merely claim to be Christians....the weak, indecisive, lukewarm, compromisers and apostate clergy, or falling stars (Rev. 9:1):

"The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief."  Many thinking people came at last "to realize that it was religion, not science or social change, that gave birth to unbelief.  Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man."  (James Turner of the University of Michigan in "American Babylon, Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)

It was priests---who having ceased to be ministers of Christ  had become ministers of the devil--- who made it feasible to abandon God and to believe simply in sovereign man.  It was fallen priests who made possible the insurrection against the God of Revelation that started many centuries ago and finally  erupted in fire, brimstone and rivers of blood after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917 to found the Soviet Union.   

And the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism, said ex-atheist Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

".....Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot.”

In January 1933, just sixteen years after the October Revolution, Hitler became Reich Chancellor of National Socialist Germany.  Three months later, Dachau the first concentration camp, opened its doors to Hitler's foes. Five years later the infamous Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) triggered Hitler's holocaust of Jews and other undesirable human weeds.

Even though Hitler and his SS officers were fascinated by an occult blend of Theosophy, spiritism, Nordic mythology and Aryan racial superiority, the reigning god in their pagan pantheon was the Fuehrer himself. 

At first Hitler pretended to be a Christian, but his burning hatred for the God of Revelation soon terrorized the church said Eric Metaxas:

"[Heinrich] Himmler was the head of the SS and was aggressively anti-Christian...For Himmler, the SS was itself a religion, and its members, postulants in its priesthood. Many SS rituals were occultic in nature.... "    (Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, pp. 170-171 from  "Dietrich Bonhoeffer" Berit Kjos, 2010, Kjos Ministries)

 [Reinhard Heydrich said] 'You’ll see the day, ten years from now, when Adolf Hitler will occupy precisely the same position in Germany that Jesus Christ has now..." (ibid)

Though most of the German Lutheran church obediently accommodated itself to the demands of the Nazis pagan state, Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not.   Instead, he helped establish the Confessional Church and encouraged pastors to refuse to sign a mandatory loyalty oath to Hitler, to not reject Jewish-Christian pastors, to speak out for the persecuted Jews, and to yield to God's Truth rather than the Nazi spirit of humanism.

Most pastors however, were too fearful.  Since resistance would bring persecution, they opted for the safety of adulterated (compromised) faith.  Weak, watered-down, adulterated Christianity would save their lives, secure their positions and ensure their wages and way of life.

But this is nothing more than mere "religion," said Bonhoeffer.   It is cheap, false grace:

"....the deadly enemy of our Church....An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins.... In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required..." (The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer)

The true grace they rejected in favor of cheap grace is costly,

".....because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son....."...one’s faith must be shining and bright and pure and robust. It must be free of... mere religiosity, [otherwise] the Christ whom one was bringing into the world and the culture was not Christ at all, but a tawdry man-made counterfeit."

 Weak, indecisive, fearful, ambitious priests had dismissed man's sin and God's judgment and redemption so as to avoid the persecution that Bonhoeffer took onto himself.   For him, the cost included unrelenting criticism, merciless ridicule, rejection, slander and finally execution.

In "Accommodating the Culture" Pastor Larry DeBruyn writes that the Apostle John warns against compromise, saying that whoever compromises their Christian faith with the reigning culture’s system is guilty of adultery via the lust of the eyes (materialism), the lust of the flesh (eroticism) and the pride of life (egoism):   

“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”  (James 4:4, KJV)

Despite whatever musical ecstasy and other sensory feel-good passions might be "ginned up" during the worship celebrations in compromised churches said DeBruyn,  adulterated worship:

"... does not love the Father—let it be repeated, does NOT love the Father! (1 John 2:15-17) James tells us that the Christians’ snuggling-up with the pagan culture (And there’s no question that we’ve become a pagan nation.) is hostility toward God (James 4:4)." (Accommodating the Culture, DeBruyn, Herescope, March 21, 2013)

Like Bonhoeffer before them, many discerning Christians have been trying to warn America's compromising contemporary and Emergent evangelical church that it is dancing on the edge of a cliff.  It is following the same broad smooth highway to destruction previously taken by Russia's and Germany's compromising church.  

Decades ago Francis Schaeffer noted the spirit of compromise already at work amongst new-evangelicals.  In The Great Evangelical Disaster he wrote:

 "Accommodation, accommodation. How the mindset of accommodation grows and expands. . . . For the evangelical accommodation to the world of our age represents the removal of the last barrier against the breakdown of our culture. And with the final removal of this barrier will come social chaos and the rise of authoritarianism in some form to restore order. "  Schaeffer then adds, “To accommodate to the world spirit about us in our age is the most gross form of worldliness in the proper definition of the word.”  (Schaeffer, “Evangelical Disaster,” 401)

In "Hitler's Cross: the Revealing Story of How the Cross of Christ was Used as a Symbol of the Nazi Agenda,"  Erwin Lutzer  meticulously traced the history of Germany's accommodating church during the rise of Hitler and the Reich, and said Pastor DeBruyn,  the characteristics look eerily familiar.  

Despite Yahweh’s warnings to Israel not to allow the surrounding culture to “Canaanize” them, Russia's church and then Germany's church committed adultery with the pagan culture of their age.  Now the contemporary evangelical church is following suit:

"The face of evangelicalism has changed, but so too, I believe, has the movement’s heart. It is my view that in evangelicalism’s attempt to keep up with a debased and debasing culture, there will come a reckoning when the “relevant” church will be irrelevant to Christ. That will be a dangerous condition to be in, and for that matter, we may already be in that state as the ministry of the Word is under siege."  (DeBruyn, Herescope)

Rather than being separate from the surrounding culture, the contemporary church is more interested in making a name for itself, of being people-pleasing and relevant, thus from Willow Creek to the Purpose Driven and their thousands of look-alike satellites,  the contemporary church brings our degraded culture right into the church and like the compromised German church, preaches a watery gruel punctuated by jokes and the tossing of footballs, with a time-out for donuts and coffee and book-ended by mind-numbing drums and electric guitars. 

Like the Russian and German church before it, today's compromised contemporary church cannot influence the world when it’s under the influence of the world. The resulting mess is an increasingly irrelevant, dying church and  sinners left,

“...having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).

Bonhoeffer mourned the fate of sinners without hope due to the adultery of the German church, and despite his best efforts, an offended compromised church turned a deaf ear to him.  In April 1943 he was arrested and imprisoned at Tegel Prison in Berlin. For the next 18 months, like the Apostle Paul, he had plenty of time to read and ponder his Bible,  write letters, and encourage guards and fellow prisoners with God's grace and gospel. Among the sources of his comfort were some spiritually uplifting hymns he had committed to memory.

 The central axis of Bonhoeffer's life and theology was the Sermon on the Mount.  In "The Cost of Discipleship" he explains what it meant to him:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".  For His sake they have lost all, said Bonhoeffer, "They have no other hope but Him who called them."

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."    Refusing to accommodate themselves with the world they mourn for the compromised church and  "... for the world, for its guilt, its fate..."

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."    They renounce every earthly right of their own and "...live for the sake of Jesus Christ."

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for [God's] righteousness, for they shall be filled."    Rather than earthly bread (stones),   "....they are sustained by the Bread of Life."

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."   They go out and seek all who are "...enmeshed in the toils of sin and guilt..."

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."   They are the humble and contrite in spirit who "have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that He may reign in them alone."

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."    They overcome evil, disorder and lies with good, order and truth and "...establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate."

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:3-11       By them will the compromised church and the world "...be offended..." (Bonhoeffer, pp. 120-127, 213)

"Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 7:21

This parable said Matthew Henry, speaks of two kinds of builders.   Those who repent of sin, strive daily to live holy lives,  and love one another no matter how much suffering and rejection they must endure: "This is his will, even our sanctification."  The mere religion of the other builders rests in bare hearing and "it goes no further; their heads are filled with empty notions (and) worldly prosperity."   Upon these they build, "but they are all sand"  that will fall in the storm..."coming that will try every man's work. When God takes away the soul, where is the hope of the hypocrite? The house fell in the storm, when the builder had most need of it, and expected it would be a shelter to him. It fell when it was too late to build another. May the Lord make us wise builders for eternity." (Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, 7:21-29)

Bonhoeffer was a wise builder, and the day before his execution he delivered his last sermon and shared God's saving message with the other prisoners in his cell. The next day, he walked calmly to the gallows and facing death said his last farewell:

"This is the end...For me the beginning of life." (Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr p. 528)

 One witness to Bonhoeffer's death was the camp doctor who later wrote::

"Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. "

"At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God."    (Metaxas, p. 532)

@Linda Kimball

Nietzsche: the Devil's Prophet

Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859 and instantly and uncritically accepted by people such as T.H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel in Germany.  For antitheist and atheist alike, Darwin's theory was a wish come true and so became the center of their worldview. 

But Nietzsche (1844–1900), the German philosopher made famous by declaring the death of the God of Revelation harshly criticized Darwin's idea:

"What surprises me most when I survey the broad destinies of man is that I always see before me the opposite of that which Darwin and his school see or want to see today: selection in favor of the stronger, better-constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the opposite is palpable … I incline to the prejudice that the school of Darwin has been deluded everywhere … ." (Nietzsche: The evolutionist who was anti-God and anti-Darwin, Russell Grigg, creation.com)

Though he vehemently opposed Darwin’s conception Nietzsche was not anti-evolution as he had his own mystical conception of evolution which he called “the will to power."   

While Darwin received his idea from his pantheist grandfather Erasmus Darwin, Nietzsche's conception was preceded by mystical ecstasy:

"...in the same way as, with Spinoza, the pantheistic state of his sentiments preceded his system and his geometric form, thus, with Nietzsche mystical ecstasy preceded his scientific reasoning." (Charles Andler cited by Henri De Lubac, "The Drama of Atheist Humanism," p. 481)

Nietzsche experienced two mystical encounters.  The first occurred in August, 1881. 

Lubac records that an object was revealed to him that he was "....the first of men to know.'   The shock of it was sudden and profound.  Though no direct document relates his experience sure evidence is found in an agitated page of Ecce Homo where Nietzsche wrote:

"Suddenly, with sureness, with indescribable delicacy, a thing makes itself seen, makes itself heard.  It shakes you, it overwhelms you right to your innermost depths.  You hear it...You let it fill you....A thought blazes forth like a flash of lightening...It imposes itself as a necessity...I never had to choose it.  It is an ecstasy....You are enraptured, taken outside of yourself...All of this...is accompanied by a tumultuous feeling of liberty, of independence, of divinity...There you have my experience of the inspiration." (Lubac, p. 472)

In the months that followed he remained silent about the message he received.  But in August of 1882 he discussed his experience with Lou Salome.  Salome writes that Nietzsche spoke of it only in obscure words and with hushed voice.  Giving "every indication of the most profound horror"  Nietzsche described the terrible and marvelous revelation he had received with two words: Eternal Return. (ibid, p. 473)

In the autumn of 1882 he experienced his second encounter which he described to Lou Salome in the poem Sils Maria:

"I was sitting and waiting, without waiting for anything/Beyond good and evil, tasting Light sometimes and sometimes shade/Absorbed by this brew...When suddenly...what was one became two, And Zarathustra passed before me..." (ibid, p. 475)

It was a vision without a doubt, precise and sudden:

"I could tell you the day and the hour....Zarathustra has fallen on me, he assaults me.."  (ibid)

Zarathustra came to confirm to him the revelation already received, which included man's evolution from worms:

“You [mankind] have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now the human being is still more of an ape than any ape is." (Nietzsche,Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra’s Prologue section 3, trans. by G. Parkes, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, p. 11)

Henceforth, Nietzsche is an inspired prophet who knows for certain that God is dead and that he is Jesus Christ's successor.    Within ten days he has drafted the whole first book of his prophecy.  He calls his finished work Zarathustra, the  new Bible, and told the world to throw away all other books, you have my Zarathustra, "a new Holy Book." 

Calling himself the Antichrist, the dark prophet declared the death of God and saw that His death had already begun to,

 "....cast its first shadows over Europe," and though "the event itself is far too great, too remote, too much beyond most people's power of apprehension, for one to suppose that so much as the report of it could have reached them," still its advent was certain, and it was men like Nietzsche who were "the firstlings and premature children of the coming century," the century of the "triumph of Nihilism." (Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Eugene Rose, p. 44)

The inspired prophet went on to say that because God had died in the 19th century there would be two direct results in the 20th century.

First, the 20th century would become the bloodiest, most catastrophically destructive century in history, and second, that a universal madness (moral imbecility) would break out and turn the West upside-down.  Truth would become lie and lie truth; evil would become good, the unnatural would become natural, and the unholy would become holy.    

The Antichrist  has been right on both counts. But what is ironic about his prophetic vision concerning universal madness is that Zarathustra's dark prophet spent the last eleven years of his life insane.

Could it be as C.S. Lewis wryly observed, that when the devil is through with his tools he breaks them, breaks their minds? 

@Linda Kimball

You can be as God: Invitation of the Emerging Cosmic Christ

In the “The Christ of the New Age Movement," Ron Rhodes notes that apostate New Age theologian David Spangler defines Christ as a cosmic principle:

"Any old Christ will not do, not if we need to show that we have something better than the mainstream Christian traditions. It must be a cosmic Christ, a universal Christ, a New Age Christ." The Christ is not so much a religious figure, "but rather a cosmic principle, a spiritual presence whose quality infuses and appears in various ways in all the religions and philosophies that uplift humanity and seek unity with spirit." (Ron Rhodes, “The Christ of the New Age Movement: Part One in a Two-Part Series on New Age Christology," cited in "A Quantum Cosmic Christ," Herescope Blogspot, June 2012)

The cosmic Christ is a rephrasing of Teilhard's Omega and is as well the divine One Substance of Leonard Sweet's quantum spirituality:

"Quantum spirituality bonds us to all creation as well as to other members of the human family…. This entails a radical doctrine of embodiment of God in the very substance of creation…. But a spirituality that is not in some way entheistic (whether pan- or trans-), that does not extend to the spirit-matter of the cosmos, is not Christian." (ibid, Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic ")

By any name, Postmodern Christianity, Quantum Spirituality or Teilhard's New Religion, it is a synthesis of heresies whose primary doctrine is evolution and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was right on target when he pointed to the influence of the infamous heretic Teilhard de Chardin:

"As one looks at the various trends in our day, one sees that Teilhard’s [de Chardin] conception of spirituality is in the forefront. He knew that he had to pass through many hazards, but he was directed principally to the cosmic world. Others have been directed to the human world. This does not mean to say that Teilhard limited himself to anthropology and physics. His fundamental orientation was “to attain heaven through the fulfillment of earth. Christify matter.” (ibid, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Footprints In A Darkened Forest, p. 73)

In his book, "Utopia: The Perennial Heresy," the eminent Catholic scholar and philosopher Thomas Molnar explains that evolution, whether Darwinian or a spiritual conception such as Teilhard's idea, serves as an imaginary mechanism of perfection for both man and the One Substance, an eternally existing or self-created substance which may for example, be a Universal Consciousness, Omega Point, or Divine Mind (mystical pantheism) or perhaps a spiritless physical substance (Greek Atomism, scientific materialism, Marx's dialectical matter).  Either way:

"Through evolution the world substance becomes progressively pure, homogenous and perfect until the terminal point is reached..."  (p.235)  

At that point, there is either a perfected non-spiritual substance  or a perfectly spiritualized substance, the ultimate goal of Teilhard's alchemical great work.  

Whether the substance is physical or spiritualized, all conceptions of the One Substance are expressions of monism.

Monism is held in common by materialism, mystical pantheism, and spiritualism and dates back to pagan antiquity and was or is taught by all non-biblical thought systems from Herme's esoteric magic formula, 'as above, so below,' to Buddhism,  Greek Epicureanism, pre-Christian and Christian era Gnosticism to Quantum Spirituality, Postmodern 'Christianity' and  New Age Cosmic Humanism.

Monism teaches that all things, including mankind, are merely diverse parts of the one-substance.  God is acceptable to this monistic frame of mind only if He is not something outside of and superior to the one-substance but rather immanent or one with it.  In other words, the substance of God must be dispersed throughout the whole substance, and since this divine substance permeates everything, including mankind, it becomes possible to evolve a God out of man.

The powerfully seductive Big Lie, "you can be as God," underlies both mystical pantheist New Age Cosmic Humanism and its' materialist counterpart, Secular Humanism.   This thought is expressed openly in the teachings of Swami Vivekananda , Dr. Beverly Galyean (leading exponent of occult New Age confluent education),  David Spangler and Emergent church leader Leonard Sweet:

"The Buddhists and the Jains do not depend on God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion: to evolve a God out of man."  (Inspired Talks, Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center, 1958, p. 218)

"Once we begin to see that we are all God, that we have the attributes of God, then, I think the whole purpose of human life is to reown the Godlikeness within us...So my whole view is very much based on that idea."   (Galyean quoted by Francis Adeney, Educators Look East, Radix 12, No. 3, Nov-Dec. 1980, p. 21)

"As the energies of the Cosmic Christ become increasingly manifest within the etheric life of Earth, many individuals will begin to respond with the realization that the Christ dwells within them.."  ( “Wonderful Deception, Warren Smith, p. 122, citing David Spangler, The Revelation: Birth of a New Age, p. 177)

"The power of small groups is in their ability to develop the discipline to get people "in-phase" with the Christ consciousness and connected with one another." (Leonard Sweet, cited in "A Quantum Cosmic Christ," Herescope Blogspot, June 2012)

This same idea expressed in secular terms  such as self-realization and self-actualization (a term coined by Abraham Maslow), is a concept that underlies many contemporary psychotherapies.

In carefully couched terms, the  "Humanist Manifesto" (1973) also declares autonomous man's godhood:

"We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience.  Ethics is autonomous and situational...life has meaning because we create and develop our futures."

The conclusion of both mystical pantheist Cosmic Spirituality and so-called 'scientific' Secular Humanism is the same: human beings can be as God and invent their own "ten commandments."

Another key point at which Cosmic and Secular Humanism intersect  is evolution.    Secular Humanism adopted the Gnostic myth of biological (Darwinian) evolution as an explanation both for the origin and development of life as well as for the perfecting of the one substance and mankind.  Cosmic Humanism springboards off of Darwinism into imaginary spiritual conceptions such as  Teilhard de Chardins' (1881-1955) idea.   The apostate French Jesuit priest  taught that God emerges from matter.  According to him, this evolution of God from the world results in evolution becoming "conscious of itself" and  ultimately, in the transformation  of all matter into "Christ consciousness" or "pure spirit." He called this final stage the "Omega Point" or "the cosmic Christ."

New Age  techniques to get in touch with the "Christ consciousness" include physical exercises, special diets (especially vegetarianism),  biofeedback, chanting, psychodrama, consciousness-raising strategies, hypnosis and self-hypnosis, centering, body disciplines and therapies such as hatha yoga and aikido as well as sensitivity groups and encounter groups, Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, drumming, mind-numbing rock music, brain-altering substances, and transcendental meditation.   

Former guru Rabindranath R. Maharaj, now a committed follower of Jesus Christ, describes his former transcendental meditation ritual and its' terrifying outcome:

"Nothing was more important than our daily transcendental meditation, the heart of Yoga, which Krishna advocated as the surest way to eternal Bliss.  But it could also be dangerous.  Frightening psychic experiences awaited the...meditator, similar to a bad trip on drugs.  Demons described in the Vedas had been known to take possession of some Yogis.  Kundalini power, said to be coiled like a serpent at the base of the spine, could produce ecstatic experiences when released in deep meditation — or...it could do great mental and bodily harm.  The line between ecstasy and horror was very fine...During daily meditation I began to have visions of psychedelic colors, to hear  unearthly music, and to visit exotic planets where the gods conversed with me, encouraging me to attain even higher states of consciousness.   Sometimes in my trance I encountered the same horrible demonic creatures...depicted by the images in Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, and other religious temples.  It was a frightful experience, but the Brahmacharya explained that it was normal and urged me to pursue the quest for Self Realization.   At times I experienced a sense of mystical unity with the universe.  I was the universe, Lord of all, omnipotent, omnipresent.  My instructors were excited at this.  I was obviously a chosen vessel, destined for early success in the search for union with Brahman.  The Forces that had guided my father were now guiding me."  (Death of a Guru, Rabindranath R. Maharaj, pp. 56-57)

In 2008, Herescope explained the views of Teilhard de Chardin, father of the modern New Age movement:

 "Teilhard de Chardin's "Principle of Emergence" had to do with the consciousness of mankind breaking out collectively, creating an evolutionary convergence (a Noosphere built by spiritual formation) that would result in a "super-organism" of "collective mankind " (quotes from The Phenomenon of Man and The Future of Man). The term "emergent" itself is steeped in Teilhardian evolutionary ideology, and the modern New Age movement has popularized it to mean the manifestation of new examples of humanity's evolution towards this supposed collective consciousness."

"Teilhard also proposed an alternative eschatology, an '"eschatological' vision" in which "in order that the Kingdom of God may come..., it is necessary, as an essential physical condition, that the human Earth should already have attained the natural completion of its evolutionary growth... that the ultra-human perfection which neo-humanism envisages for Evolution will coincide in concrete terms with the crowning of the Incarnation awaited by all Christians" (The Future of Man, p. 280, which achieves "God all in everyone" The Phenomenon of Man, p. 310, italics in original)."

Over a period of decades, Teilhard's mystical pantheist theology has been incrementally incorporated into both the Roman Catholic and evangelical church.  The seeds planted by Teilhard took root in many apostate Christian theologians including Emergent church leader Leonard Sweet, were nurtured along by the Leadership Network, and have now come full bloom in the open:

"...Quantum Mystisicm ....is creating a Quantum Eschatology to deceive the church in these last days." (Herescope)

Herescope also reports that Sweet is associated with an organization called Second Billion,:

"...a downline networking global church growth group with an online Global Church Learning Center www.GCLC.tv where he is on the faculty. This group gives him a global outreach to train pastors in his Quantum Spirituality views. For example, in June 2008 He spoke at a Second Billion conference in Jarkarta, Indonesia to evangelical mission leaders."

On February 29, 2012,

 "...the Second Billion organization issued “A Special Message From Dr. Ken Blanchard” e-mail. The e-mail included a 2-minute video to hear Blanchard's “heart and vision” in promoting a “World Leaders Conference.” Conference Speakers included: Tony Blair, Erwin McManus, Bill Hybels, Laurie Beth Jones, Henry Cloud, Craig Groeschel, and others. (See “What Is the World Leaders Conference?”, FAQS and list of sponsors.)
Second Billion has the goal to “double the size of the global church.” Leadership Network’s megastar Leonard Sweet has played a key leadership role, especially at its Synergize! conferences. Second Billion is also connected with the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) at many levels, including shared personnel such as Sunday Adelaja and Jim Garlow.  An e-mail sent out 7/13/07 promoted the Dominionist ideal, “Be equipped to impact ‘seven spheres’ of society.” Sweet also co-authored Jesus Manifesto with Frank Viola, who has ties to the NAR.[li] Sweet has even published his own Bible version – The Voice Bible: Step Into the Story of Scripture –  where he employs narratives and poetry to tell Bible stories."

In one form or another, mystical pantheism is sweeping our nation.    In his book, "America's Schools: The Battleground for Freedom," Allen Quist warns that it is being taught in our schools:

"New Age religion is now aggressively being taught in our nation's public schools."  A model curriculum has been developed that "is clearly centered on pantheism."  "Much of what passes for environmental education and multiculturalism is really indoctrination in pantheistic/New Age theology.  The ACLU and other similar organizations have no objections to (pantheistic indoctrination).  It is only Christianity that these organizations object to."  (p. 51)

Pastor Larry DeBruyn  summed up the powerfully seductive quantum cosmic deception in his book Unshackled: Breaking Away from Seductive Spirituality:

 "Emergent Christians like Leonard Sweet, who allow their worldview to be influenced by such spirituality, are being taken captive by philosophy and vain deceit.  The 'elements of the world' first enrapture and then capture their souls.  Like Judah who played the harlot with other gods, their fixation upon science seduces them into spiritual bondage. Captivation with the cosmos leads to being captured by the cosmos, the very “system” which Scripture informs us, “lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19)." (Herescope)

In 1901, Herman Bavinck, a Christian theologian foresaw the raging spiritual warfare of our own time.  Temporally, it is being fought between the defenders of supernatural Christian theism and the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo and the promoters of ancient mystical pantheism, evolution and the Big Lie----all who are of one mind with the devil, the father of heresy and monism:

"Unless we are mistaken...the twentieth century...is to witness a gigantic conflict of spirits...More serious and fiercer than ever before, the conflict is between the old and the new worldview."   

 @Linda Kimball

The Grand Inquisitor's Swindle: the Abomination of Desolation Standing in the Holy Place

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, "The Brothers Karamazov," (1879-1880) the Grand Inquisitor is an important part of the novel because the character represents Dostoevsky's penetrating insight into the fallen human psyche and one of its' most important endowments: moral freedom.   In particular, the Grand Inquisitor symbolizes the principle of nihilism (negation) and rebellion in mortal men such Hegel, Max Stirner, Karl Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Teilhard de Chardin, and Sartre, who though not the actual devil are of like mind with him.  

The Grand Inquisitor is a conscious swindler who knows that the living Triune God of Revelation exists, yet perversely chooses to rebel against God as revealed through Jesus Christ despite that he knows that his own life is by the grace of the living God.  

In "Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor," Ellis Sandoz writes that when Marx found himself compelled to negate his own being (soul/spirit, or self) because of his perverse desire to show that "man owes his existence (only) to man," and to establish that the "entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man," he virtually recapitulated Aquinas' argument:

"A being only considers himself independent when he stands on his own feet; and he only stands on his own feet when he owes his existence to himself.  A man who lives by the grace of another regards himself as a dependent being (and) I live completely by the grace of another if I owe him not only the maintenance of my life, but if he has, moreover, created my life---if he is the source of my life.  When it is not of my own creation, my life has necessarily a source of this kind outside of it.  The creation is therefore an idea very difficult to dislodge from popular consciousness.  The fact that nature and man exist in their own account is incomprehensible to it, because it contradicts everything tangible in practical life."(pp. 113-114)

Being of one mind with the devil, the Grand Inquisitor (Marx) suggests that in order to affirm that man is god, the denial of the existence of God has in the past been necessary, thus to further his swindle, he asserts antitheism rather than atheism, which is merely a negation of God that nevertheless postulates the existence of man through this negation.  The complete negation of God requires that man and nature (matter) be of the same substance.  As matter is soulless, then so is man.

For the conscious swindler, the prudent course is to flatly deny the existence of God and enforce this dictate by way of psychological manipulation and if need be, by murder.  Terrorize believers into groveling submission, and even better, accommodation, by way of harsh scorn, cruel ridicule, slander and charges of insanity.   

 The Inquisitor also knows that if men are deprived of the living God they will worship something else.  Thus as Marx, the Inquisitor proffers the natural religion of scientific socialism and dialectical materialism (evolutionary theory).  But when Darwin published his own theory, the Inquisitor immediately perceived its' philosophical materialist implications.  The idea that humans evolved by chance and natural selection from primordial water or lifeless chemicals lay the axe at the very foundation of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo and provided the scientific framework to support the economic infrastructure on which Marx could build his godless communist utopia:

"...the biggest thing going for Darwinism was that it finally broke the tyranny in which Christianity had held the minds of men for so many centuries." (F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe, "Evolution From Space," 1983, pp. xiii-xxii, 81 and 145)

In the time-tested knowledge that appeals to pride work most every time, the Inquisitor describes the Genesis account as nothing but myth believed by backward unscientific rubes. All of the really forward-thinking people, cooed the Inquisitor, believe evolution.  Evolution is a scientific fact that not only tells us where we come from  but,

"....tells us where we came from, how we got here, and perhaps where we are going. Quite simply, it is science’s version of Roots, except it is the story of us all." (Professor S.J. Gould, quoted in Time, May 1983, p. 35)

The Inquisitor (Teilhard) knows that men long to deify themselves as of old so he begins a New Religion that combines Darwinian evolution, Hermetic magic and Hindu-style mystical pantheism.  This will be a better Christianity.  Look,  I've taken the personal God out of His heaven so He will,

".....become the soul of the world; our religious and cultural stage calls for this.” (Lettres a Leontine Zanta, quoted by von Hildebrand in Trojan Horse in the City of God, 1967, p. 239)

See, we have killed Him, declared the Inquisitor (Nietzsche).  And now,

"Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray...through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? ...Does not night come on continually, darker and darker?" (Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Eugene Rose, p. 108)

It was Nietzsche, the apostate Christian philosopher who was the first to gaze fully upon man's loss of the personal God and faith and its terrifying consequences.  With no living God to obstruct his vision, the nihilism he saw was agonizing.   

In "The Gnostic Religion," Hans Jonas provides a full-scale study of the heretical world of pre-Christian and Christian era Gnostic nihilism together with its modern variant--- metaphysical nihilism, the consequence of the complete negation of God and reduction of man to matter.

Jonas writes that while ancient Gnostic man is thrown,

"...into an antagonistic, anti-divine, and therefore anti-human nature, modern (Gnostic) man (is thrown) into an indifferent one." (p. 338, emphasis added)

Whereas the ancient gnostic conception is still anthropomorphic despite the nihilism, hostility and demonic, its modern counterpart with its' indifferent nature, its' completely godless, soulless, spiritless nature, represents the "absolute vacuum, the really bottomless pit."

At least the ancient Gnostic dualism, as fantastic as it was, was at least self-consistent, as there was a source for 'self' (being).   Not so for its' modern counterpart:

"So radically has anthropomorphism been banned from....nature that even man must cease to be conceived anthropomorphically if he is just an accident of nature.  As the product of the indifferent, his being, too, must be indifferent.  Then the facing of his mortality would simply warrant the reaction, 'Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." (p. 339)

Peering into the void, the Inquisitor (Nietzsche)  saw only darkness---no entry from the outside into this hermetically sealed world, a world devoid of God, higher truth, moral law, eternity, soul, meaning, and purpose.  The paralyzing darkness that took possession of him was an inner blinding that spreading outward, briefly lifted up its horn to trumpet the death of God before falling into madness.

Hans Jonas comments:

"...modern nihilism (is) infinitely more radical and more desperate than gnostic nihilism ever could be for all its panic terror of the world and its defiant contempt of its laws.  That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss.  That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with....the objective meaninglessness of his projected meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation." (Jonas, p. 339)

This was precisely the Inquisitor's point.  With the death of God objective meaninglessness and universal madness would eventually penetrate every avenue of thought and life, making life itself unbearable.  

"...they seek my soul to destroy it..." Psalm 63:9

 The Inquisitor's great swindle has succeeded beyond all expectation.  The triumph of naturalism, Darwinism and other naturalistic evolutionary conceptions in the nineteenth century has meant the negation of the Divinely inspired Genesis account of creation ex nihilo delivered to Moses who was in the wilderness with the angel.  

The “angel” who spoke with Moses at Sinai, delivering unto him the “living oracles” (Scriptures) was the Word begotten of God before all creation (John 1:1-5), the Lord Jesus Christ Himself in a pre-incarnate theophany:

"... which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us." (Acts 7:38)

Jesus Christ, the “angel” who spoke with Moses at Sinai, is the Creator.  Foremost of His miracles is creation out of nothing—six acts or days of creation rather than the billions of years of evolutionary process out of lifeless matter in conjunction with transmigration and reincarnation as modern wisdom holds:

“The first moment of time is the moment of God’s creative act and of creation’s simultaneous coming to be.” (Philosopher and New Testament scholar William Lane Craig quoted in “If God created the universe, then who created God?’ by Jonathan Sarfati, Creation Ministries International)

On the miraculous creation of the first man Church Father John Chrysostom writes:

“And God formed man of dust from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul….the inbreathing communicated to the one created out of earth the power of life, and thus the nature of the soul was formed.  What does a living soul mean?  An active soul, which has the members of the body as the implements of its activities, submissive to its will.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Seraphim Rose, p.215)

The negation of our Lord's Divine revelation results in the following consequences:

First, whether wittingly or unwittingly, Jesus Christ has been made into a liar.

Second, there is no logical source for either life or soul/spirit:

"Instead of Adam, our ancestry is traced to the most grotesque of creatures; thought is phosphorous; the soul complex nerves, and our moral sense a secretion of sugar."  (Disraeli, quoted by John Passmore "A Hundred Years of Philosophy," p. 36)

Third, the Abomination of Desolation now stands in the Holy place materializing the souls and blinding the eyes of men that they not see Jesus Christ, the Physician of our souls who came to heal the spiritually sick that they may live:

"..... I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life..." Deuteronomy 30:19-20

But sinful men really prefer the bread (stones) of the world to Jesus Christ's heavenly bread, intoned the Inquisitor (Teilhard).   Like me they detest,

 "...all those goody-goody romances about the saints and the martyrs! Whatever normal child would want to spend eternity in such boring company?" (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 584)

Being of one mind with the devil, the Inquisitor knows the secret of human nature.  It was made known during the time that God spent on earth as the Christ and was tempted in the wilderness.   The secret was made known there but was ignored, said the Inquisitor, because God would not deprive men of the freedom of good and evil and of either heavenly bread and paradise or earthly bread and outer darkness. 

The secret and fundamental axiom of the devil is that "mankind worships its belly," which means that the,

"...promised bread of heaven can never compare with 'earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man." (Sandoz, p. 117)

The devil adds that among sinful rebellious men at every level of society there is a universal craving to find "community of worship" where there will be no dispute about whatever earthly stones are to be worshipped.   It must be established so that all can agree and be united in satisfying their pungent cravings.    Whether inside or outside of the apostate and accommodating church,

"....earthly bread fills these qualifications better than anything else" since  man's "greatest anxiety is to be rid of his freedom."   From President to Congressman, Hollywood actor, scientist, lawmaker and priest, man can readily dupe himself into surrendering his moral freedom,

"...to those who are skillful enough to appease his conscience." (Sandoz, pp. 117-118)

The triumph of the devil and his Inquisitors is seen by the masses of dehumanized Westerners and Americans, both secular and worldly Christian, who being thoroughly preoccupied with the bread and circuses of this world, cannot apprehend the lie of naturalism and evolution or perceive the Abomination of Desolation standing in the Holy Place. 

@Linda Kimball

"We won't grow up!" America's New Class of Peter Pans

The Evil One is the satanic revolt against divine authority....Socialists recognize each other by the words, "In the name of the one to whom a great wrong has been done....Satan (is) the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds."  (Mikhail Bakunin, comrade of Karl Marx from Marx & Satan, Richard Wurmbrand, p. 27)

But I f you will not have God (and he is a jealous God), wrote T.S. Eliot,

"...you should pay your respects to Hitler and Stalin." (T.S. Eliot and the "Idea of a Christian Society," Stephen Beale, from "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" Patrick J. Buchanan, p. 78)

Whittaker Chambers, the American Communist who spied for the Soviet Union and then recanted and converted to Christianity explained in his 1952 book "Witness," that Marxist Communism's appeal is the appeal of man's great alternative faith,  its promise,

".... whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as god.' Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision...The Communist Vision is the vision of Man without God." (ibid, p. 79)

Chambers captured the spiritual roots of what was made manifest in one form as communism, in others as modernism, secular liberalism, progressivism, the counter-tradition and anti-establishment revolution and today as post-modernism. 

If Communism is one expression of  the war between Christianity and atheism, between the true God of Revelation and sovereign man, then another form of the enemy is secular liberalism, affirmed Eric Voegelin in 1952:

“…if liberalism is understood as the immanent salvation of man and society, communism is certainly its most radical expression.”  (The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash, p. 93)

The sentiment of the war is Satanic pride:

" .....which spurns subjection to any master whatever, whether of divine or human origin."  (Bakunin, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 63)

Satanic pride came first to capture the souls in which the God of Revelation had died.  As Western Europe lost its faith, new atheist faiths arose: nationalism (the secular religion of patriotism in Britain and America), Communism and Nazism.   Buchanan observes that these are the false Gods that failed,

"...an apostate Europe when she lost the faith that had given her birth, and it was when we learned the truth of Psalm 96: 'All the gods of the Gentiles were devils."

In 1965 Lionel Trilling coined the phrase "adversary culture" to describe the existence of a hostile counter-establishment, counter-tradition, counterculture  avant-garde, an  American elite class born of modernism.   Primarily through higher education, media, and seminaries they were demoralizing and initiating other Americans into the 'alternative faith,' thereby creating a "mass elite," something new under the sun. (The Death of the Grown-Up, Diana West, p. 8) 

In 1997, American Demographics noted that there has been,

"...a comprehensive shift in values, including 'environmentalism, feminism, global issues, and spiritual searching."  (How Now Shall We Live? Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy, p. 25)

This New Class, or what the article called the 'Cultural Creatives' embrace a new  morally relative "trans-modernist" set of values in place of the traditional moral absolutes and unchanging truth they no longer accept.  The 'new values' include "change," social justice, evolutionary thinking, tolerance, accommodation, inclusion, feminism, pop and hard rock music, and New Age spirituality. 

Thoroughly postmodern, the New Class is skeptical, if not outright resentful of America's traditional Judeo-Christian culture.     They tend to be anti-establishment, anti-adult, anti-rules, anti-authority, and anti-tradition, both inside  and outside of the Church.   This "new" attitude finds expression in irreverence, disrespect, rudeness, aggression, unconventional edgy clothing, a 'new' way of doing church, and the requisite  attitude of the revolutionary: hip not square and always unconventional.

Diana West writes that America's cultural dive became most vividly noticeable about the same time that television settled into its rut of portraying America's traditional adults as "square," and youth and teenagers as "hip:"

"For something like fifty years, media culture, from Hollywood to journalism to music to Madison Avenue, has increasingly idealized youth even as it has increasingly lampooned adulthood, particularly fatherhood." (The Death of the Grown-Up, p. 6)

Prior to 1941, when the avant garde introduced the concept of 'teenager,' Westerners and Americans thought in terms of children and adults.   Children aspired to adulthood not to adolescence, and mature adults did not aspire to remain teenagers.    But this has changed, said West.  Today more adolescents in adult bodies watch the Cartoon Network than watch the news and,

"Readers as old as twenty-five are buying 'young adult' fiction written expressly for teens.  The average video gamester was eighteen in 1990: now he's going on thirty.." (p. 1)

Today the Peter Pan mindset of the perpetual adolescent is the norm:

"...there is something jarring in the everyday, ordinary sight of adults, full-grown men and women both, outfitted in crop tops and flip-flops, spandex and fanny packs, T-shirts, hip-huggers, sweatpants...running shoes...baseball caps (even worn) backwards (and) artless five or six-year olds taught to orgasm-writhe (a la poppette du jour), belly bare and buttocks wrapped like sausages.  At one time, so sexually charged a display by a child would have appalled the adults around her; now, Baby Britneys...delight their elders, winning from them praise, Halloween candy, even Girl Scout music badges." " (pp. 2-3)

These days, the baggy pants, jeans, hoodies, hanging shirttails, baseball caps, and emblazoned trappings are worn by both sons and fathers, pastors, congressmen, and presidential candidates, and reveal,

"..a state of mind, a reflection of a personality that hasn't fully developed, and doesn't want to---or worse, doesn't know how..." (p.3)

To the perpetual adolescent, it is the mature look and bearing of mature male adults that is off-putting for it smacks of 'tradition' 'rules' and 'authority.'  Dodging maturity is the 'virtue' of today's perpetual adolescents, and this attests to our upside-down civilization's worship of eternal youth tied to the sneering contempt it pours out on traditional adults, whether in church or out.  

With barely concealed contempt, a Scottish pastor lampoons middle class traditionalists in a so-called satire entitled,  ‘A Working Class Manual On How To Reach The Middle Classes With The Gospel Of Jesus:’

 "Ministering to the middle class is fraught with many pitfalls and dangers and is something not to be entered into lightly....As a people group they are difficult to penetrate without a prior appointment...In formal settings, particularly Sunday Services, try to keep the conversation on superficial things for as long as possible....The work in this area can be difficult and depressing but it can also be immensely rewarding. Be assured that nothing is impossible with God. God has a plan for the middle classes and you can be a part of it as you serve him in these difficult strongholds." (20Schemes: Gospel Churches for Scotland's Poorest)

The pastor's contempt for the traditional middle class has its spiritual taproot in envy and Modernism with its earthly goal of a utopian classless society (communism). 

To be a pillar of tradition in most churches today, especially where the pastor has been imbibing the cup of emergent and/or seeker friendly  theology is to be something on the order of a leper.   Paul Smith, author of "New Evangelicalism: The New World Order" notes that behind the anti-adult mindset and anti-traditionalism of modern pastors are humanist seminaries that train men and women to take a traditional church, 

"...and mold it into a postmodern accommodating mindset that will reach a postmodern culture."  (p. 128)

As postmodernism is a continuation of the war against the God of Revelation, it not only rejects heaven, hell, truth, moral absolutes and tradition but insists that everything about our culture and church must be shaped around and controlled by consensus of  felt-needs, appetites and emotions unfettered by morality. 

Dr. Carl Trueman, a Reformed minister and professor at Philadelphia’s Westminster Theological Seminary, shares his thoughts about postmodern church services:

"I heard recently of a church service involving dressing up in costume and music taken from a Tom Cruise movie.  Now, if I go for my annual prostate examination, and the doctor comes into the consulting room dressed as Coco the Clown, with `Take my breath away’ from Top Gun playing in the background, guess what?  I’m going to take the doctor out with a left hook, flee the surgery, and probably file a complaint with the appropriate professional body.   This is serious business; and if he looks like a twit and acts like a twit, then I can only conclude that he is a twit."

"You can tell a lot about someone’s theology from what they do in church.  Involve [pop] music in your worship service, and I can tell not only that you have no taste in music but also that you have nothing to offer theologically to those who come through the church doors; indeed, what you do have can probably be found better elsewhere … More seriously, however, why certain orthodox churches strive to look like them, worries me intensely. Look, it’s rubbish.  So let’s just call it rubbish, shall we?" ("Once More with Feeling---are Church Services too Feminine?" Churchmouse Campanologist, April 21, 2013)

On the decline in church attendance, particularly where more mature males are concerned,  Dr. R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary California, said of the youth-worshiping, anti-tradition pop-culture modern church:

"…Ironically... in its quest to become acceptable to modernity (it) becomes more like the surrounding culture (hence) becomes more irrelevant. The mainline has been bleeding itself to death for decades.  The evangelicals are following suit. The consequences may not be entirely evident yet but the signs are there …"

"I think there is a connection between the drop in attendance to Sunday morning worship and rise in female pastors. The latter is a symbol of the capitulation of the church to cultural pressure and the former is one of its consequences." (ibid, Churchmouse Campanologist)

In the profoundly insightful article, "Oh God, Poor God---The State of Contemporary Theology," William J. Abraham argues that the contemporary or modern theology issuing within the whole body of the church from Roman and Eastern Orthodox to Protestant/Evangelical,

"...begins with the rejection of the classical Christian tradition as this is generally known in Western culture." A modern theologian is "one informed by the canons of rationality developed in the European Enlightenment." (from Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, Christopher A. Hall, p. 19)

Enlightenment rationality is the elevation of man's mind over the mind of God, it is the promise  whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as god.' It is the vision of man without God.  The result is that the contemporary theologian is no longer shaped,

"...in any profound way by the institutions of Christianity but...cut loose and alone in a sea of individualism and autonomy."   (ibid, p. 20)

In effect, contemporary theologians have endorsed atheist values,

"...as more Christian than those of the traditional believer and...seek to join the secular person in his or her quest for authenticity, community, peace, and justice."   (ibid)

Eric Hoffer warned that if a society is to preserve its stability and a degree of continuity,

"...it must know how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, attitudes, values, and fantasies on everyday life."   (Reflections on the Human Condition, 1973, p. 29 from Death of the Grown-Up) 

Though a sizable remnant of traditionalists still resist the pressures exerted by the New Class of Peter Pans, in the main America's burgeoning adolescents of every age are winning, within the Church and without.  The anti-adult, anti-tradition adversary culture has become our 'new' norm.   In a Church and nation where mature adults are resented, marginalized and becoming extinct, narcissistic eternal adolescents who can't say no to themselves,  don't know right from wrong, and resent those who do, are fostering a paralyzing, deeply destructive cultural relativism that undermines everything from the Church to traditional marriage and the War on Terror.   The result is the end of Western civilization as we have known it.

@Linda Kimball

Statists and liberals: where they are located on the Founders' political spectrum

Much confusion reigns today because we think in terms of a left-right dichotomy. Communism is on the left we are told to believe and Fascism comes from the right, while people and parties are called either "leftist" or "rightist." Adding to the confusion, Liberals believe absolutely that even though moral absolutes do not exist, evil nevertheless absolutely comes from the Right, for the evil Right is the party of evil white people. Furthermore, Progressive Liberal educrats condition the minds of America's gullible youth with this insanity writes Dennis Prager in his article, "Black Murders Eight Whites; Media Blames Whites,"

"After 50 years of being inundated with stories of white racism, and being taught in college that in this white-dominated society, only a white can be a racist, the American public has been properly brainwashed into accepting the otherwise incredible: A black man murdered eight white people at his place of work because they were white, and the media story is about the murderer's alleged experiences of racism."(Townhall.com, Aug. 2010) 

America is dying, and due in large part to the fallacious left-right dichotomy, the underlying infection and its' carriers cannot be clearly identified. Consequently, we fight against symptoms rather than the cause of infection, which is an exercise in futility. To clear the air, we ought to think in terms of the Founder's rather ingenious political spectrum, a yardstick for measuring political power in any system of government. In other words, the yardstick is not about political parties or grassroots movements such as today's Tea Party but about political power and the psychology of those who lust after power to control and dominate.

Government is a system of ruling or controlling. In the American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, Noah Webster defines government as:

"The exercise of authority; direction and restraint exercised over the actions of men in communities, societies or states; the administration of public affairs, according to established constitution, laws and usages, or by arbitrary edicts."

On the Founder's yardstick, the two extreme forms of governance are Anarchy and Tyranny, or in today's vernacular, Utopian Statism and its' co-dependent, the Liberalized masses. These two extremes are placed at either end of the spectrum. Statists, whether described as oligarchs, totalitarians, or despots for example, are on the far left while the cult of the unrestrained libido (Liberals) are on the far right.

Included within the definition of Liberal are all who demand an end to moral restraints, which means for instance that certain Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, militant atheists, Liberal Christians, and Democrats are anarchists as measured by the Founders yardstick.

At the one extreme there is neither moral law nor cultural restraint. At the other extreme there is oppressive control and too much government — Big Brother, in other words. Both extremes are united by moral relativism, unrestrained passions, will to power, and arbitrary edicts, which are merely politicized caprice, whim, envy, vengeance-seeking, lust, resentment, and covetousness.

Occupying the middle area of the spectrum are the heirs of yesterday's Founding generation, Constitutional Conservatives of every skin color, of both sexes and from every walk of life. Like the Founders, they believe the rights of all people are unalienable (from the supernatural Creator) and cannot be violated without risking the wrath of Divine Justice. And whether believers or not, they hold that Christianity is one of the West's central foundational pillars:

"The Christian religion is the religion of our country. From it are derived our prevalent notions of the character of God, the great moral governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions." (William McGuffey, d. May 4, 1873, professor at the University of Virginia, president of Ohio University, and author of McGuffey's Readers; http://www.earstohear.net/Separation/warnings.html)

Constitutionalists also believe that individual liberty lives or dies according to whether the people are self-controlled and virtuous or lacking self-control and thereby depraved:

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." (Samuel Adams, Founding Father; http://www.earstohear.net/Separation/warnings.html)

Why are only virtuous people capable of individual freedom? In simple terms, all men are compound mixtures of strengths and weaknesses and good and evil. In short, all men are both kindly Dr. Jekyll and evil Mr. Hyde. Virtuous people are those who, over time and with great self-sacrifice, personal suffering, and perseverance, have learned — however imperfectly — to restrain their Mr. Hyde appetites. In attainment of self-control, virtuous people are by consequence capable of self-governance. This means that they are able to live and work within an atmosphere of limited government, or just enough government to protect liberty, rights, and property but not too little that anarchy ensues. Without virtue, liberty degenerates into the madness that now characterizes America and the West:

"What is liberty without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils...madness without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites." (Edmund Burke, 1791 at the National Assembly, http://www.earstohear.net/Separation/warnings.html)

Statists and Liberals

"What distinguishes Communism from the fanatical authoritarian religions with which it has so many points in common is... its rigid, dogmatic and uncompromising exclusion of any element in life lying outside the confines of the present material world....Truth and objectivity are of minor importance. The main purpose is to defame and denounce in every way." Communism is "the faith without God." (William Henry Chamberlin, Russia's Iron Age, p. 311)

On the Founder's spectrum, Communism, Fascism, radical Islamism, and Socialism would be on the left since they are totalitarian faiths and/or belief systems. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Fidel, George Soros, "elite" green environmentalists, Obama's Czars and Obama for example, would likewise be located on the far left as they are adherents of totalitarian systems.

On the right are the Liberalized masses, the product of fifty years of systematic demoralization, a diabolical agenda stealthily carried out by the Progressive mind-conditioners of cognitive dissonance and moral depravity.    Today's Liberalized majority are self-centered adolescents in adult size bodies. They are whining, nasty narcissists full of the pride and unrestrained appetites that brazenly define obscenity, pornography, blasphemy, covetousness, hedonism, sodomy, sadomasochism, laziness, and envy as "Constitutional rights." These are the depraved individuals who not only believe that anyone who hurts their feelings should be charged with a hate crime but that money and rights grow on trees.

Liberalism is the default position of self-centered children, notes Reb Bradley, author of "Born Liberal Raised Right." Bradley notes:

Sexually, today's America is "a nation ruled by its passions." "Heinous acts of casual disregard for life, unheard of fifty years ago, have become a familiar item on the evening news; students killing classmates, children murdering their playmates....these gruesome crimes are merely symptomatic of a breakdown of moral fiber..." (ibid, pp. 2-3)

That far right and far left factions are united in a twisted co-dependent relationship makes sense really, for as virtuous people are those who are most capable of self-governance, they represent true adulthood, strength, authority, truth, reality, courage, and order, which things the other two factions deeply resent and are in rebellion against.

Peter Hitchens, author of "The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith," says of this sick relationship:

There is an "...alliance between political utopianism (totalitarianism) and the new cult of the unrestrained self, unleashed into the Western world by Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich, by Alfred Kinsey and Herbert Marcuse, promoted by the self-pitying anthems of rock music, and encouraged by the enormous power of "progressive" education in which so many cultural revolutionaries work." (p. 135)

America's Spirit of Madness

Sanity is the ability to recognize right from wrong independently of personal feelings, fears, impulses, desires, and compulsions. Rational thinking then, is reasoning disciplined to resist the corrupting influence of personal feelings, thus allowing for the acceptance of truths that contradict feelings, desires, and fancies. In short, rational thinking is morally-informed reasoning. It is dispassionate, rightly-ordered and logical, and is the fruit of impulse-control and unswerving commitment to enduring truths, moral law, and principle. Irrational reasoning is the opposite. Irrationality is the inability to recognize right from wrong independent of personal feelings, impulses, and compulsions. By the degree to which the moral sense is corrupt, so too is reason. The greater the degree of corruption, the more depraved is reason.

This being the case, the most frightening aspect of statist depravity is that through the White House, legislatures and courts they have the power to lead our country farther down the path to moral decline and from there into the abyss. Enabling them in all of this is America's cult of unrestrained libido, the millions of dumbed-down, mind-conditioned, demoralized Americans, of whom some are said to be "leftists" and others "rightists."

An astute commentator to the Prager Zeitung incisively cut through the confusion caused by the left-right dichotomy to reveal the dreadful reality:

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president." "The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince...The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool" "It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president." (Prager Zeitung, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2559666/posts )

@Linda Kimball

Dante's Inferno: Circle 6 for the Heresy of Materialism

Dante's Inferno categorically presents the different strata of sin. The concept of sin revolves around the rejection of God's Revelation and Christian virtues. 

 Circle 6  (Canto 10) is the place of torment for all who commit the sin of heresy in deference to "profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called" (1 Timothy 6:20).   Among the heretics are both the materialists of his own time as well as the Greek nature philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E).   While the common definition of materialism is love of pleasure, wealth, and things for example, the presence of Epicurus points to something far worse, something altogether sinister.

Epicurus was one of the important theorists in ancient Greek natural philosophy who taught that the universe is composed of physical atoms. Indian Buddhists such as Dharmakirti and others, also contributed to well-developed theories of atomism,  the idea that everything ultimately consists of aggregates of matter.  Reality, soul, and mind are nothing but matter in motion.

Atomism is metaphysical nihilism, 

"... the theory that there are no objects (objects do not exist). This position has been held by philosophers such as Parmenides, Buddha, Advaita Vedantins, and perhaps Kant (according to some interpretations of his transcendental idealism). Blob theory can also be considered very closely aligned with mereological nihilism (there are no parts and wholes). Obviously if metaphysical nihilism is correct, empirical reality is an illusion." (What is Metaphysical Nihilism? OpenTopia.com)

What this means is that so radically has atomism banished God from nature that not only is there no ultimate source for life but none for man's 'self'---- his soul/spirit, the seat of his personhood:

Jesus to Buddha,   "You seek to solve the problem of suffering, and in order to solve it, you say that the self doesn't exist.....you took God away from them (and) your espousal of an absence of self is the most unique and fearsome claim you made...First, you told them there is no God. Then you told them there is no self.  You also told them there is no one to pray to.  You told them there is no evil one to fear. You told them everything is only within themselves, even though those selves do not exist."  (The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha, Ravi Zacharias, pp.59, 60, 67, 70)  

Atomism set all things in unceasing, purposeless motion by reducing everything---including man, his soul, and even his thoughts---to mindless atoms perpetually colliding with each other in a void.  Man was reduced to a biological machine, mind (spirit) to brain, and thought to movement of chemicals and firing of neurons.  This view has changed very little:

"We are descended from robots, and composed of robots..."   --Daniel C. Dennett, Kinds of Minds

Plato was one of the most forceful and compelling critics of Atomism.  In Book X of Laws, he indicts  Atomists for reversing the natural order, which they did by placing non-life bearing matter before Nous (mind/soul), and for the reductionism that sets everything in motion and reduces man to a machine. 

Plato foresees only misery, social disintegration and ultimately,

"...the ruin of both states and families" should Atomism become the accepted view."  (Darwin Day in America, John G. West, p. 6)

Though Christianity reared a mighty barrier against Atomism, it would be resurrected along with ancient esoteric doctrines during the Renaissance by among others, pantheist Giordano Bruno, Thomas Hobbs, Descartes, and Paracelsus.

With the source of man's humanity (mind/soul) expropriated by materialists and conferred upon "lifeless chemicals" "electricity" "phosphorous" and "blood," for example, a rush to discover the key that unlocks the mystery to life and mind was ignited which has been unleashing unspeakable evils ever since. 

Believing that some type of electricity was the animating principle of machine-man, Giovanni Aldini performed macabre experiments on the decapitated heads of animals and once he had overcome his repugnance, on humans.  For his experiments, he procured the freshest specimens possible by placing himself,

"....under the scaffold, near the axe of justice..."   Rationalizing his horrible experiments by saying that only the, "unenlightened part of mankind (will be) apt to entertain a prejudice..."  Aldini applied electricity to various parts of decapitated human heads which produced "the most horrid grimaces (but the) action of the eyelids was exceedingly striking.."  (Darwin Day in America, p. 15)

Julien de la Mettrie (1709-51), Paul Henri Thiery, and Baron D'Holbach (1723-89) all agreed that the mind is the property of dead matter and man nothing but a machine.  La Mettrie speculated that machine-man's rational life is entirely determined by physical causes  running the gamut from raw meat, to climate, blood circulation, and gender.  Genetic inheritance, posits la Mettrie, causes machine-man to commit crime.  This view casts parents, and especially all traditionalists such as faithful Christians and Jews into the role of "first cause" and would later manifest itself in the belief that State ‘experts,'  or Hillary's "village" experts should have control of children.   (ibid, pp. 16-18)

Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827) viewed scientific materialism as not only the pursuit of God-like omniscience but of the Holy Grail itself---power to create a New Man.   If an intelligence could grasp "at a given instant...all the forces by which nature is animated" proclaimed Laplace, it could devise a mathematical formula that would predict everything that would ever happen, and "nothing would be uncertain, and the future, like the past, would be open to its eyes."  Scientists should reduce everything in the universe to mechanical laws that could be expressed in terms of mathematics, advised Laplace, for the promise of such knowledge was incredible power...even over life and mind itself.  (ibid, p. 20)

Herbert Spencer, Fechner, Lotze, Wundt, and the pantheist monist Ernst Haeckel, inventor of the scientism dictum---ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny---all agreed that life and mind are properties of dead matter.  Haeckel moreover imagined ether to be the primitive life-making substance which, as was the case with the primitive fire of the Stoics, changed one part of itself into inert mass while the other part became the active principle, spirit.  Today, many scientists routinely resort to Haeckel's postulate without ever inquiring into its pantheist implications.

Haeckel would later write,

"Pantheism teaches that God and the world are one...pantheism is...an advanced conception of nature (and) a polite form of atheism."  The truth of pantheism, confessed Haeckel, "lies in its destruction of the dualist antithesis of God..."  The godless world system being constructed, said Haeckel, "substantially agrees with the monism or pantheism of the modern scientist."  (Monism, Ernst Haeckel, www.pantheist.net/)

During the century to follow, Charles Darwin (1809-82)  helped spread materialism to the masses.   As Stephen Jay Gould argues,

"Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature, "and "the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God (are reduced to) neural complexity." (ibid, p. 41)

According to Darwin, natural selection and the laws of heredity acting on matter produced mind, morality, and civilization.  By describing how lifeless natural mechanisms caused the complexity of life to alchemically emerge from lifeless matter, Darwin helped transform materialism from a fantastically bizarre tale told by power-mad Prometheans on the fringe of society to a hallowed scientism principle enshrined and worshipped by modern scientism and ‘enlightened' Westerners and inadvertently by intellectually proud and weak priests who have supplanted the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo with Darwin's materialist theory.

It was during this time that Social Darwinism, Progressive Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Nazism, Secular Humanism and Transhumanism were developed out of metaphysical materialism.  Classical Liberalism on the other hand, was subverted and corrupted by the materialist faith into what is now known as modern Liberalism. 

Of these, Communism (Marx and Engel's dialectical materialism), is considered to be the most highly developed philosophy of materialism.  It rests on three fundamental metaphysical presuppositions:

1. Deified Matter: The Ultimate Substance which, though non-living, non-intelligent, and non-conscious, nevertheless somehow possesses the emergent properties of life, mind, consciousness, and soul.

2. Evolution: Since Marxist dialectic requires a theory with clashes (thesis and antithesis) and leaps (synthesis), Marxists have all but abandoned Darwinism and have instead embraced punctuated equilibrium:

"Many people confound dialectic with the theory of evolution," noted G. Plekhanov. "Dialectic is, in fact, a theory of evolution. But it differs profoundly from the vulgar (Darwinian) theory of evolution." (Fundamental Problems of Marxism, 1929, p. 145)

3. Spontaneous Generation: An offshoot of specifically Darwinian thought accepted unreservedly by Marxists as their dialectic requires a strictly materialist explanation for the origin of life from dead matter. In the words of M.A. Leonov:

"Marxist philosophical materialism remains beyond all doubt that at some time or other in the remote past, life must have arisen from non-living matter." (Outline of Dialectical Materialism, 1948, p. 494)

In a modified version of the Stoic conception of the earth as a living organism possessed of its own soul,  dialectical materialism declares that earth is "one entire organism...its organs the various races and nations of men."  Not only is the earth alive and evolving upward on evolution's magical escalator, but so too are history and society, for they also are living entities in a continuous state of motion.  And man?  In a modified conception of Atomism's dehumanizing view of man, dialectical materialism states that man is nothing but,

"...a colonial aggregation of cells," and to "consider him an individual would be an error."  Man---the aggregate of cells--- is nothing but an extension of society, history, and earth.  (Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics, Chapter II: The Constitution of Man as a Political Organism)

It was Marxist materialists who made the first attempt to scientifically re-engineer human beings after the fashion of Buddha's metaphysical nihilism said Vishal Mangalwadi, India's foremost Christian intellectual.  After seizing control of Russia, they utilized terroristic mind-conditioning techniques and re-education with emphasis on Darwinism as well as brain-altering drugs, electro-shock therapy, torture, and other brutal measures to,

"...liquidate all expressions of individual identity in favor of an impersonal collective, communal consciousness." (The Book that Made Your World, Mangalwadi,  p. 74)

Modern materialist states began by rejecting the living God of Revelation and man's soul/spirit, and then moved to deny immutable truth and objective standards of right and wrong.  They threw out sanctity of life and demonically reduced man to matter in motion.   The end case, in every instance, was to place absolute power over  "atomized masses" into the hands of psychopaths and autocratic states to be wielded without restraint or mercy.  

Of all belief systems, the materialist faith has been by far the bloodiest.  In his book, Death by Government, R.J. Rummel comprehensively details the roughly 170 million people murdered by materialist governments during the 20th century. 

From 1917 to its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union liquidated about 62 million.  During Mao Tse-tung's reign, 35,236,000 were murdered.  Hitler's Nazi's killed 21 million.   

 Even at its mildest, as is thus far the case here in America, there is a steady level of confiscation, corruption, fraud, lying, propaganda, and stifling of freedoms and free speech.  For the first time ever, Americans are afraid of saying certain words.  Parents fear disciplining their own children.  To dissent against evolution is to become a social leper.   More ominously, America's Ruling Class materialists have banished the living God of Revelation, thrown out both sanctity of life and objective standards and are in process of undermining and destroying traditional marriage.   In their eyes,  "We the people" are atomized beings.   Totalitarianism and genocide loom just over our horizon.

As early as 1926, President Calvin Coolidge was aware of and deeply concerned by the insidious spread of scientific materialism in America.  As he knew, Americans are free only because of the Judeo-Christian foundation laid by the country's founders.  In a speech he delivered in Philadelphia, July 5, 1926 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Coolidge tried to call Americans back to their Judeo-Christian heritage.   He told them the Declaration's principles of liberty arise from man's God-given inalienable rights.  And these are found said Coolidge,

"...in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy..."  The clergy preached equality "because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man."  Sanctity of life, the right to self-defense, and all the rest of our individual liberties were justified "by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit."  God's children therefore, have no "superiors;" there are no modern-day "divine rights kings" who possess "any right to rule...over them."    (Back Fired, William Federer, pp. 269-271)

The Declaration said Coolidge,

"....is a great spiritual document."  Its principles are not material but spiritual.  "Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man---these are not elements we can see and touch.  They are ideals (whose) source and roots (are) in religious convictions.  They belong to the unseen world."

President Coolidge cautioned Americans that,

".....unless the faith of the Americans in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish.  We can not continue to enjoy the result if we abandon the cause."

Coolidge ended his speech with a stark warning,

"We must not sink into a pagan materialism..."   (Back Fired, William Federer, pp. 269-271)

Heedless to Coolidge's warning, "we the people," whether outside the church or within it, have embraced the sin of materialism in the form of endless pleasure, wealth, status symbols, and so forth.   Stupefied by "pagan materialism" we have in effect ceded control of our children and our country to today's other heretics, America's materialist Ruling Class who, believing they are "enlightened" and "scientific,"  have unleashed misery, social disintegration and ultimately, as Plato foresaw, are bringing about "the ruin of both states and families."  

Today's Atomists are leading America over the Gadarene Cliff.

In this light, we are able to understand why Dante placed both the materialists of his own time as well as the Greek nature philosopher Epicurus in the 6th circle of the inferno.

@Linda Kimball