Friday, March 20, 2015

Reality vs. postmodernist celebrityship (e.g., Obama's beloved Harry Potter)

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.”

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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.’

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“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.”

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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.

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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.

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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. . . ”

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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.”

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