Just by proclaiming “Christ died for our sins,” Believers
identify a moral reality that says there is something and someone to be measured
by, and that we have sinned and “come short of the glory of God.”
“It’s what (long-renowned evangelical theologian) Francis
Schaeffer called ‘The Christian Consensus,’ ” says Jordan. “Our nation was not
founded as a Christian nation in the sense that all of its founders were
Christians, but our nation came into existence 200-plus years ago during a time
when there was a Christian consensus among the culture even where the people
weren’t Christians.
“Benjamin
Franklin was not a Christian. He was a Deist, but that tells you something. A
Deist believes there’s a God. They may not believe they know Him—they may not
believe they’re going to follow Him—but they know there is an absolute
standard.
“When
they said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created
equal and endowed by their Creator,’ they were not making a Genesis 1:1
statement, they were just saying there’s some culturally acceptable standards;
there’s a consensus among us that some things are absolute and so obvious they
can’t be ignored.”
*****
Addressing Christendom’s envelopment by
postmodernist thinking (i.e., the rehashing of the ancient lie dating from the
Garden of Eden that ‘truth is relative’), Jordan laments, “You were not trained
in your education in the world to get what’s true out of facts and objective
things. The whole mindset is to look at facts and objective things subjectively:
‘How do they come across to me?’
“You’re to think, ‘It’s in my
inter-relationships--in my experience with them—that I then decide how I’m
going to feel. Am I going to believe it’s right or am I going to believe it’s
wrong? Am I going to believe it’s good for me or am I going to believe it’s bad
for me.’
*****
“People, the only absolute moral authority in all
the universe is that Book right there. That’s the absolute moral authority of
heaven and earth. ‘Thy word is truth.’ And the way a face is put on that is in
the face of Jesus Christ.
“You know where your faith gets its identity? It’s
in the persona of Jesus Christ. Your faith doesn’t need to rest in what you’re
doing; it needs to rest in what He’s doing. Not in your strength and your
abilities, but in His identity, His strength and His capacity.”
*****
The most destructive area where post-modernism
reigns in the lives of most Christians and they’re most often not even aware of
it is in the bible versions issue.
The vast majority of Christendom has no idea that
the King James Bible is the only accurate English translation and that all the
other bible versions come from satanically corrupted manuscripts or, in the
case of the New King James Version, was inaccurately rendered.
Jordan says, “For the last 30 years I’ve fought the
battle about the bible versions and the battle was lost 20 years ago. In fact,
in just one of those funny ways that truth works, evangelicalism out there
thought they had put that issue to rest and then, in the early ’90s, along came
this little lady from Ohio, Gail Riplinger.
“Just a little, petite, quiet, sickly little lady
with some real physical problems. She was a college professor and her illness
put her in the bed for 6-7 years where she couldn’t work but she had the
college professor rights to the library and she did all this research.
“And because she’s a researcher in her professional
life, she understood how to do first-hand primary research and she wrote that
book, New Age Bible Versions, and
when that thing came out (in 1993) it blew the socks off all these scholars.
“You had guys like Norman Geisler, who’s supposed to
be this great Christian apologist, running around like a chicken with his head
cut off. And you got some dried-up prune out there in Arizona, Jim White—he
couldn’t have gotten an audience on State Street with a bunch of mission bums
on his own, but when took up the cause and wrote a bunch of stuff, and tried to
be a champion about it, people tried to promote him and gave him a ministry
just to try to sink Ms. Riplinger.
“It was fascinating to watch how that stuff worked
and see it all just blow up in their faces. They went around and said, ‘Well,
she’s just a Home Economics teacher.’ Home Ec?! I mean, give me a break! If
they knew anything about what they’re talking about!
“It’s that silly kind of stuff that grown men, with
more degrees than they’ve have temperature, and with reputations as being
Christian celebrities, stoop to when they got no idea . . . They go around and
dumb, old, stupid Believers out there just think, ‘Oooh, he said it, it’s got
to be true!’ They’re worshipping their little god, their little hero, and it’s
nonsense.
“I’ve watched these men and I’ve read the books they
write, and I’ve listened to Riplinger and them debate in person and I know
enough about the subject material to know if somebody’s telling the truth or
not or whether they’ve got their facts in a row, and she just quietly blows
them out of the water. Some times they don’t even know they got blown out of
the water it’s so easy!
“You look at all that and you say, ‘Wow, amazing!’
and it just is! It just came at them out of nowhere. They thought they had the
battle won and then, ‘Boom!’ here all this stuff comes out.
“To this day, you still just mention her name and
people go absolutely bonkers. You go home tonight and watch John Ankerberg on
the TV and little John’s credited by grace people as being a great champion for
the faith. Call him up on the phone and ask him about Gail Riplinger and watch
the steam come out of his ears.
“Watch him lose his grace and his white hair turn
red. And his sweet Christian manners turn into attack-dog tactics. And you say,
‘Well, why is that?’ Well, good men are always reasonable and when they’re not,
there’s something stickin’ ’em and she stuck ’em out of the blue.
“You know what the real problem with that was and
is? These guys said, ‘She’s not qualified to do what she did,’ and she said,
‘Excuse me?!’ They say, ‘Well, you don’t have degrees in the field.’ Excuse
me?! Did you understand what a Master’s degree and a PhD degree is? Those are
what are called ‘research degrees.’ You get a Bachelor’s degree, an
undergraduate degree, and now you’re supposed to know how to think. Heh, heh.
“The universities say, ‘Now that we’ve taught you
how to think we want you to go think about this,’ and you get a Master’s degree
by doing two years of semi-original thinking on a topic. Research. And then you
do two more years and they give you the post-hole digger’s degree for original thinking into this area that
nobody has researched or written about.
“Have you ever read a doctrinal dissertation? That’s
where a guy writes a paper to present a view, and in order for it to pass
muster—for you to get the degree—you have to demonstrate in that doctrinal
dissertation that you’ve read what everybody else has said about this subject.
“Supposedly you’ve considered all the wisdom out
there on this subject and come to a conclusion about it. Well, you know what
happened to Ms. Riplinger? She actually did the original research that these
(other bible scholars) thought they did.
“You see, if you go and read what Joes says that Bob
says, and what Bill says Bob says, and then what Mike says that Bob says . . .
If you read what they say Bob says that’s not first-hand. That’s what they say
Bob says.
“But if you just read what Bob says, that’s
first-hand. That’s what Riplinger did. And you know what she found out? She
found out that Joe didn’t always tell the truth about what Bob said.
“Joe would say what she thought Bob said. Then Bill
would say what he thought Bob said and tell you why he thought Joe was wrong.
And Mike would tell you what she thought Bill meant about what Bob said and
what Joe meant about what Bob said and nobody would read what Bob said. Does
that sound confusing? It’s supposed to. That’s academia.
“And then you get this little lady that came around
and just read what Bob said—went out and told everybody what Bob said—and you
know what happens to these other guys? They’re relegated to irrelevance. But
they’re the heroes. They’re the celebrities. The Bible Answer Man (who has a
nationally-syndicated daily Christian radio program) builds everything he does
on what these guys say.
“Well, who cares what Bob said, or some little lady
telling you what Bob said who doesn’t have anybody backing her and she’s a woman
to boot. You know, it’s, ‘Surely God can’t tell us anything through a woman,’
and she blows the socks off these people and sucker-punches them from left
field.
“They weren’t prepared for it and so they go to
reeling. And all that stuff has to do with the fact that when you don’t have
objective truth to rest in, then all you have is things based on your
experiences.
“And if you’re going to get truth out of your
experiences and go by, ‘I’ve got a relationship with these Christian
celebrities over here and I trust them because of their celebrityship,’ then
your evaluation of what truth is is going to be based on who tells you what and
who you think they are, rather than what you read in a Book and do on your
own.”
(Editor’s note: In talking to some Christian friends
the other day about Harry Potter’s influence on younger generations, Christian
and non-Christian alike, I was reminded of an article I wrote on my website
LisaLeland.com in 2008 about President Obama’s declared love for Harry. Below
is the article:
How enlightening it
was to watch Obama’s half-hour infomercial last week and see him proudly reveal
his love for Harry Potter, bragging with a big grin how he’d read aloud all of
the J.K. Rowling books with his 9-year-old daughter.
Even my young
nephews, ages 5 and 7, know to steer clear of the world’s most popular-ever boy
wizard. It’s pure evil and will only negatively influence their sponge-like
minds with its Antichrist propaganda aimed at discipling children into the
darkest aspects of black magick (Daniel 8:23-25).
Through Harry Potter
books, printed globally in 40 different languages, kids as young as
kindergarten age are being introduced to human sacrifice, the sucking of blood
from dead animals, possession by spirit beings, on and on.
*****
Just look at this
cutesy outtake from a July wire article by The Associated Press:
Michelle Obama said her husband has read the
books aloud with 9-year-old Malia and saw the latest movie, ‘Harry Potter and
the Order of the Phoenix,’ with her last Sunday.
Both are awaiting the release of J.K. Rowling's
seventh and final book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows," this weekend, but finding time to read won't be easy, she said.
"The challenge will be scheduling Harry
Potter reading time in between Iowa and New Hampshire and fundraising, but I
guarantee you they will figure out a way to do it," Michelle Obama told
the AP. "Harry Potter is huge in
our house."
She wasn't sure how the family would get their
copy of the book.
"He handles all of that. That's one of
those things, I'm like 'You are the Harry Potter parent,'" she
said.
*****
In an immensely
informative hour-long documentary on Google videos, called Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged, world-renowned cult and occult
researcher Carol Marischiana, author of Gods
of the New Age, thoroughly authenticates Harry Potter’s true representation
of witchcraft and the black arts and black magick.
Marischiana says,
““Many argue that Harry Potter is merely children’s fantasy and therefore it’s
harmless. The lie about this is that witchcraft is reality . . .
“The powers that
Harry is tapping into are the powers children think they can have and people
say, ‘Well, my child doesn’t practice those things,’ but there is also a
morality that is being taught. Harry
cheats, Harry lies, Harry steals. His teachers steal. When Harry breaks the
rules, the teachers don’t punish him. In fact, teachers say that ‘rules are
there to be broken,’ so children are learning a moral worldview that is not
based on biblical principles. . .
“Witchcraft is a
religion. The U.S. Supreme Court has given witchcraft religious status. It gets
tax-exempt status, it has a military chaplain. It’s recognized as a practicing
religion. It’s the fastest growing religion in America incidentally. . .
“J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter
series, has gone through an awful lot of research. She’s very accurate;
otherwise we would have witches all over the country and world saying this is
not a true representation of our religion . . .
“ . . . Warner Brothers says that it’s an
accurate portrayal of witchcraft. So, here we have witches across the nation
endorsing Harry Potter, saying that more than at any other time, Harry has
initiated such a response to witchcraft that witches now have scores of
witchcraft on the internet where children can come, get certificates of
graduation to become witches.
“. . . Of course, the
books have been promoted by Scholastic Inc., who has been the providers of
curriculum for 80 years in public schools. So, here where Christianity has been
taken out of the schools, we have a wizard, Harry Potter the witch, who goes to
school with 350 other students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which
has been repackaged as a reading-incentive program promoted by Scholastic Inc.,
the publishers in our schools. Thirty-two million children a year are being
reached by witchcraft repackaged.
“The harm, first of all, is that witchcraft is
being normalized to our children. For the first time in the history of the
world, witchcraft is being given to children in a children’s format and
children are seeing other children practicing it and say it’s all right.
“And, especially if
the parents say, ‘Well, it’s okay to read about other children being involved
in this religion,’ then children say, ‘Well, if they can be involved in it then
so can I.’
“. . . The IRS has
given it tax exemption, so this religion is being promoted through the public
schools on our tax dollar and teaching children by occultists how to mix
potions, how to put emphasis on certain spells, how to twist your arm and your
wrist, how to concentrate when you want things. . . ”
*****
Rowling, who majored
in mythology at Exeter University in England, readily acknowledges borrowing
from pagan religions—Celtic religions, religions of the Druids, witchcraft,
Satanism—and that lot of the spells, the incantations, the philosophy behind
the mythology and the religions can be readily found in Harry Potter books.
As Marischiana
explains, “The actual name ‘Potter,’ if you ask a witch, a pagan, any
knowledgeable expert in the occult or hidden arts, the Potter is the female
goddess; the Goddess of Babylon who is considered the potter who created human
beings from clay and they believe that the patriarchal God of Christianity, the
God of Israel, copied that in a very poor imitation because He cannot give
birth.
“Now, listen to how
important that is to understand. The feminine-oriented cult of witchcraft sees
the woman and her process of birth as fundamental in the new life; the
transformation, the alchemy, the changing of the inner man to higher
consciousness, which is what Harry Potter is all about. In fact, that’s what
the first book is called: The Sorcerer’s
Stone.
“The alchemy to be
transformed and changed through the inner man to become a new creature, which
is again an upside down reversal of what a Christian believes that, when they
come into understanding a relationship—a personal relationship with Christ—they
are transformed and take on the mind of Christ.
“The concept of
fertility-based cults, feminine-oriented cults such as witchcraft, is the
concept that the new birth can take place inside. Through meditation, you have
inner transformation, inner wisdom, inner knowledge and all this is done
through concentration, visualization.
“All through Harry’s books, Hermione and others
say, ‘Concentrate, Harry, if you concentrate hard enough you can have what you
want.’
“ . . . One of the
arguments is that Harry Potter series does not actually teach witchcraft; that
it is not teaching the concepts of ‘mother goddess’ and her consort the horned
god, which is essential to the fertility cults, or the fertility-oriented
witchcraft religion.
“And, yes, there are
the concepts of mother goddess being taught because Harry’s mother gave her
life for Harry. The sacrificial death that she gave through love is a symbolism
of goddess worship; it’s an inversion, if you will, of God the Father whose son
gave His life, in love, for His people.
“Now, the concept of
teaching ‘mother goddess’ is very, very important. Harry’s mother gave her life
for Harry so that he should be saved, and through this love sacrifice Harry was
protected from death. Now this concept is brought up several times; in fact, it
is so important in witchcraft and pagan thinking that Voldemort, Harry’s
arch-enemy, takes a vial of blood from Harry in book No. 4 in order to have the
blood run through his own veins (so) that he can be resurrected and have a
body. That is how powerful the blood sacrifice is.”