End Times and Current Events

General Category => Wicca/witchraft/paganism => Topic started by: Mark on October 11, 2011, 05:32:16 am



Title: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on October 11, 2011, 05:32:16 am
Ghosts haunt all corners of television
Shows like 'American Horror Story' and 'Ghost Hunters' make it clear that spirits will live on.


There have been ghosts on television since there was television: "Ghost" was the word for the faintly doubled image that was common back when pictures were beamed straight to your set over the air. (Through walls — like a ghost!) And though modern technologies guarantee that current and future generations of viewers will live free from that small terror, spirits have continued to haunt the vast wasteland, both in fictional series such as "American Horror Story" and "nonfictional" series like "Ghost Hunters" and its abundant ilk, wherein variations on a team vet strange noises, weird lights and restless furniture for supernatural influence.

Some ghosts, as seen on TV, are indistinguishable from angels, specifically of the guardian variety; others are basically demons not yet living full time in hell (or, as in the late "Reaper," who have made their way back from it). They prompt the living to be good or tempt them to be bad. They are deadly threats or harmless busybodies, pests or pals, unhappy roommates who never asked you to move in in the first place or great roommates who will help you with your love life or problem at work.

Some will help you solve an unsolved murder — as in "Haunted" or "Raines" or "Medium" or "Tru Calling," with characters played by Matthew Fox, Jeff Goldblum, Patrica Arquette and Eliza Dushku, respectively, collaborating with the passed-on-but-not-over in the name of criminal justice — or ask for help accepting their own sudden death, if you are Jennifer Love Hewitt in "The Ghost Whisperer" or Ellen Muth in "Dead Like Me." But every cold case, even of the nonsupernatural sort, is a ghost story, and every police procedural is haunted by the souls of the prematurely departed.

In the early days of television, ghosts were most likely to be friendly spirits, like the madcap Kerbys (and their martini-drinking Saint Bernard) who cheerfully rattled the peace of the staid hero of the mid-'50s sitcom "Topper" — a forerunner of such 1960s series as "My Favorite Martian," "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie," in which uncanny beings kept house with ordinary mortals. In "The Smothers Brothers Show," from 1965, ghost brother Tommy (in "apprentice angel" mode) attached himself to living brother Dick; in "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1968-70), the shade of a 19th century sea captain shared his house with a 20th century mom.

My own first ghost, as he has been for so many, was "the friendliest ghost you know": Casper, whose afterlife was after-lived in theatrical shorts, comic books and on television. ("Casper the Friendly Ghost: The Complete Collection 1945-1963" was released on DVD this month by Shout Factory.) "Wherever he may go," ran his theme, "he's kind to every living creature." That Casper is, by the traditional terms of ghostliness, a dead child is never discussed, nor would you want it to be. He had trouble enough convincing potential playmates that he was good company.

This was not the case with the less friendly spirits who followed, dealing out incorporeal punishment in the 1980s and '90s in anthology series like "Tales from the Darkside" and "Tales from the Crypt," which reflected an explosion of horror on the big screen. (In the 1982 movie "Poltergeist," produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg, whose first directing job had been on Rod Serling's "Night Gallery," the spooks make themselves felt through a static-filled TV screen.) They have made their way into modern serial anthologies like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Supernatural"; there are ghost characters in "The Vampire Diaries" and "Being Human."

They also inhabit nonsupernatural dramas such as "Rescue Me" and "Six Feet Under," where their status as "real" or hallucinations is dramatically beside the point; they are there to turn monologues into conversation and to represent conscience. "Northern Exposure" was always a friendly place for ghosts, to similar though funnier purpose. And on this season's "A Gifted Man," in which the saintly, spectral ex-wife of a doctor moves his worldly mind to good deeds, the ghost (I think) is real, but her job remains the same.

But nowhere do the deceased live so successfully as on the ghost-hunting reality shows, too many to name here, that have colonized basic cable. Perhaps only the home makeover has proved as variable and tenacious a genre, and in a way the two are related, the undead being a well-known drag on property values. (Still, as on "American Horror Story," there is always some chump happy to take the discount.) These series take ghosts as a given and are no more "skeptical" than is necessary to look "scientific." The judgments of their investigators range from the hopefully noncommittal (Just because we haven't proved a ghost did this doesn't mean a ghost didn't) to the irrefutably personal (I definitely felt something there).

However you regard their substance, as metaphors they are always hanging about, right over your shoulder, the most ordinary sort of monsters. Ghosts were people too and in most respects remain so. We're all haunted, occasionally or chronically, by our own past — and by our own remembered dead — which we reciprocally haunt, as powerless as ghosts to change what happened there. And who hasn't heard something go bump in the night or seen someone who wasn't there, in the wee hours, out of the corner of an eye — however we like to explain it? Or not.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-critics-notebook-ghosts-20111030%2C0%2C6240895.story?


Title: Re: Halloween 2011 thread
Post by: Mark on October 11, 2011, 05:40:52 am
Monday, October 10, 2011
WITCHES ARE REAL

Host: Noah Hutchings
Guest: David Benoit

Christians sometimes don't take witchcraft and the occult seriously. But God did when He commanded Moses that the Jews should stay away from occult practices. David Benoit also takes this subject seriously and presents the dangers of the occult and witchcraft.

Bible in the News: Don't Ask, We Won't Tell by Jerry Guiltner
http://srcwm.webcastcenter.com/src/src_101011.wma


Tuesday, October 11, 2011
BIBLICAL RESPONSE TO HALLOWEEN

Host: Noah Hutchings
Guest: Larry Spargimino

When Americans think of holidays that have originated in the United States, many think of Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July as traditional American holidays. But Halloween has become more and more popular in recent years. Larry Spargimino explains some of the reasons why Christians might want to rethink their celebrations of Halloween.

Bible in the News: The Gentle President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran by Larry Spargimino
http://srcwm.webcastcenter.com/src/src_101111.wma


Wednesday, October 12, 2011
GOD'S GHOSTBUSTERS, Part 1

Host: Noah Hutchings
Guest: Tom Horn

Interest in the occult is exploding around the world. Recently some 300 exorcists flocked to Poland for a week-long congress to examine the current fashion for vampirism world-wide and its clear connection between this fascination and a surge in demonic possession. Church goers are enchanted by the darkness as well. Why is this happening now? Tom Horn provides some shocking answers.

Bible in the News: Vultures in Danger by Bob Glaze
http://srcwm.webcastcenter.com/src/src_101211.wma


Thursday, October 13, 2011
GOD'S GHOSTBUSTERS, Part 2

Host: Noah Hutchings
Guest: Tom Horn

Interest in the occult is exploding around the world. Recently some 300 exorcists flocked to Poland for a week-long congress to examine the current fashion for vampirism world-wide and its clear connection between this fascination and a surge in demonic possession. Church goers are enchanted by the darkness as well. Why is this happening now? Tom Horn provides some shocking answers.

Bible in the News: Texas School Punishes Christian Honors Student for Saying Homosexuality Is Wrong by Carol Rushton
http://srcwm.webcastcenter.com/src/src_101311.wma


Friday, October 14, 2011
GOD'S GHOSTBUSTERS, Part 3

Host: Noah Hutchings
Guest: Gary Stearman

Are dragons real? Were there dragons in the past? Are there dragons now? Gary Stearman explores what the Bible says about dragons, examines the proof for modern sea serpents, and how this may relate to the ultimate Dragon and his final demise at the end of this age.

Bible in the News: Muslim Student Reflects on September 2011 Attacks by Jerry Guiltner
http://srcwm.webcastcenter.com/src/src_101411.wma



Title: Re: Halloween 2011 thread
Post by: Mark on October 11, 2011, 05:48:46 am
Halloween-Tis the Season to Be Evil
http://www.withoneaccord.org/assets/images/freedownloads/Halloween-TistheSeason.pdf

Interview with an Ex-Vampire - tract
http://www.withoneaccord.org/assets/images/freedownloads/interview-ex-vampire-FINAL.pdf

Straight Talk 19 on Ghosts
http://www.withoneaccord.org/assets/images/freedownloads/ST19-Ghosts-Final.pdf



Title: Re: Halloween 2011 thread
Post by: Mark on October 11, 2011, 06:05:41 am
Witchcraft Practices Biblically Exposed & Defined (2 parts)
10/14/2007

In this teaching we will be looking at Deut. 18:9-14; Verse 9 reads: “When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.” We will be Biblically defining each term mentioned in this portion of Scripture including: Having your son or daughter pass through the fire, divination, an observer of times, an enchanter, a witch, charmer, a consulter with familiar spirits, a wizard, and a necromancer.Having your son or daughter pass through the fire is another way of saying child sacrifice. Then, it was typically done openly to the false god of Molech or Kronos to secure a financial blessing. Whereas now it is done in secret while the baby is still in the womb, to the equally false God of “Self”. It is now called abortion. Currently this horrific procedure is still preformed to secure a perceived (Proverbs 14:12) financial blessing of not having another mouth to feed or take care of. If you think about it practically every sin that any of us ever commits is rooted in self-centeredness. Now in the Bible it is apparent by examining scriptures, that child sacrifice is one of (if not the most) grievous sin in God’s eyes. And that it usually precedes severe judgment from God). This is not my opinion as the Word of God is full of stories relating to God’s severe wrath being brought on by this sin. In a world where this sin abounds it is only a matter of time before God’s judgment will fall.

http://www.contendingfortruth.com/?p=1148


Halloween, Human Sacrifice, Stonehenge and the Wicker Man
10/21/07

In this teaching we will be taking an extensive, shocking look at virtually all the Halloween traditions modern day humanity currently embraces. Halloween is not just innocent entertainment. Its symbols and practices breathe new life into the dark rituals and symbols of past civilizations. Satan’s main strategy has always been to tempt people to love what God hates, prompt them to pursue his enticing path, and deceive them into thinking that his ‘new’ way is as good. Since his strategies don’t change, God’s warning in Proverbs 14:12 is as relevant now as it was in King Solomon’s days: ‘ Most people follow the masses, and the masses follow the media, especially when it promotes thrills and adventures that feed the lust for forbidden thrills. The occult has always focused on gory images of violence, death and destruction. We see it in today’s media, music, and movies. As people become desensitized to occult violence and horror, the images in popular entertainment grow increasingly and indescribably evil. Yet, this is old news. Thousands of years ago, God warned us, ‘All those who hate Me love death.’ (Proverbs 8:36)

http://www.contendingfortruth.com/?p=925



Title: Re: Halloween 2011 thread
Post by: Mark on October 11, 2011, 06:39:10 am
H E L L o w e e n

But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress,
the seed of the adulterer and the wh0re.
Isaiah 57:3

 INTRODUCTION

This introduction is particularly for the professed Christian reader who "celebrates" Halloween / HELLoween. The one who dresses their ignorant child like a devil, or a werewolf or a fairy witch or a magic-working purple dinosaur named Barney. Do you think this is GOOD in the sight of God? Perhaps you've never stopped to think about God's reaction to horror houses and creep shows and tarot card readers and witches. Perhaps you think Cinderella's fairy godmother is a "good witch". Maybe the "Wizard" of Oz is your favorite movie. Maybe in the old days you watched, "The Ghost and Mrs. (Somebody)". That's necromancy--intercourse with the dead. Necromancer is a Bible word (e.g., Deut. 18:11). I used to be very ignorant of all righteousness. When I was of the world, I probably watched more occult than most people. May I counsel you to shake the fuzz out of your head? What we often call "nostalgia" are the remnants of sorceries that have been worked on us. If you claim to know Christ will you stop to consider WHAT GOD THINKS?

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/helloween.htm


Where Did Halloween Come From?

Do you know that Halloween was introduced into the professing Christian world centuries after the death of the Apostles, yet it was celebrated by the pagans centuries before the New Testament Church was founded!

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/halloween-origin.htm


An Invitation to the Occult? Halloween

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/halloween-occult.htm


Making Halloween Holy?

 "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them." -Ephesians 5:11

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Apostasy/making_halloween_holy.htm


What Witches Do After Halloween

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/what_witches_do_after_halloween.htm




Title: Re: Halloween 2011 thread
Post by: Mark on October 21, 2011, 11:53:18 am
Halloween’s Pagan Themes Fill West’s Faith Vacuum

Seems like Americans just want it to be Halloween all year. The holiday just keeps getting more popular. Seven in 10 expect to celebrate it in some way this Oct. 31, up from about six in 10 last year, according to a National Retail Federation report.

This is the most in the nine years the NRF has been tracking. In 2011, Americans are also planning to spend more than other years, an average of $72 each. Total outlays by consumers are expected to reach $6.86 billion this fall.

Why the surge in popularity for an ancient harvest ritual? Some of the factors that account for it are as harmless and loveable as a new 12-pound pumpkin from the farm. Others have the capacity to spook.

Start with the good that the holiday now demonstrates. Thirty or 40 years ago, Halloween seemed to offer only more evidence of the failures of our cities. There were plenty of neighborhoods -- Kenwood on Chicago’s South Side, Adams Morgan in Washington, and Midwood in New York spring to mind like ghouls -- where the night was best known for the opportunities it provided for muggers or for teen gangs to hurl those pumpkins against someone’s front door. “Newark Braces for Halloween,” read a 1967 New York Times headline over a nervous article describing riot-prevention measures, including street patrols by clergymen.

Go farther back, before the 1940s, and Halloween had lethal connotations. In the Old South, “Mischief Night,” on Oct. 30, offered the Ku Klux Klan cover to put on their own costumes and wreak some of their worst damage. A mild example shows up in the 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” when on Halloween night a local gets revenge for lawyer Atticus Finch’s representation of a black man in court by attacking his son Jem and breaking his arm.
Unifying Ghoulishness

Today the same sidewalks and roads where the eggs were once thrown are often packed with cheerful trick-or- treaters. No doubt about it, in many places Halloween reflects urban revival. It also reflects a cultural coming together; there’s something comforting in knowing that, no matter what their background, kids will be equally terrified by a deluxe “predator mask with helmet” or a “whispers hooded mask,” to name two items on sale at Halloween websites this year. A child once told me he and his friends didn’t look at the mask; they looked at the eyeholes and wondered what was in there. There’s something unifying in the ghoulishness of the spaces between the teeth in the carved pumpkin’s grin.

Unmask Halloween, however, and you’ll also find some disconcerting features. Christmas and Easter may be secularized these days, relative to their past, but they remain Christian holidays. People value Halloween, like Valentine’s Day, because they can tell themselves that it’s not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.
The Living Dead

But as much as we’d like it to be, Halloween isn’t secular. It is pagan. There’s nothing else to call a set of ceremonies in which people utter magical phrases, flirt with the night and evoke the dead. One of my family’s favorite Halloween props was a hand that moved, as though from the netherworld, when you reached to collect a few pieces of candy corn. Necromancy is a regular part of Halloween games. Zombie masks are one of this year’s top- sellers. As grouchy theologians used to point out, the origin of Halloween was most likely Samhain, an ancient Celtic holiday on which the dead, in some accounts, supposedly returned to visit.
Modern Myths

There’s a reason for the pull of the pagan. In the U.S., we’ve been vigorously scrubbing our schools and other public spaces of traces of monotheistic religion for many decades now. Such scrubbing leaves a vacuum. The great self-deception of modern life is that nothing will be pulled into that vacuum. Half a century ago, the psychologist Carl Jung noted the heightened interest in UFOs, and concluded that the paranormal was “modern myth,” a replacement for religion.

Children or adults who today relish every detail of zombie culture or know every bit of wizarding minutiae are seeking something to believe in. That church, mosque and synagogue are so controversial that everyone prefers the paranormal as neutral ground is disconcerting. There’s something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents’ faith, if he knows them.
The Spaces Between

Perhaps when walking down your street this Oct. 31, you’ll see a child in an Aslan costume, or one dressed as Caspian, C.S. Lewis’s prince. The “Narnia” series was Lewis’s premeditated effort to lure kids to Jesus Christ through myth. The manipulative Lewis was on to something: Parents can keep children away from religion, but they can’t stop children from believing in something.

Fans of the orange holiday may want to pause for a moment to look at the empty spaces between its rituals, as with the pumpkin’s smile. Some of us forgo it to dedicate ourselves to one faith or another. But you don’t have to reject Halloween to ask what it may be replacing.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-20/halloween-s-pagan-themes-fill-west-s-faith-vacuum-amity-shlaes.html


Title: Re: Halloween 2011 thread
Post by: Mark on October 24, 2011, 09:19:42 am
What Real Witches Practice After Halloween

All Hallow's Eve Is More Than Candy and Playtime For Some Members of Society.



Halloween comes and goes for most of us. But for members of Wicca--one of the fastest growing religions in the world--the season of Samhain is a magic time.

The Halloween Sabbat (celebration) concludes for Wiccans on November 1 with the final turn of the year-wheel. Mother Earth nods a sad farewell to the god who will be reborn at Yule (December 20), and the life cycle begins anew. This is a time to honor the Earth Mother, remember the Ancients, and revere the Horned god of the Hunt.

According to the Celtic Almanac, the Wiccan year begins following Halloween. The seasonal scenario that follows is reminiscent of the earth goddess and dying-god cults of ancient civilizations.

* Yule is on December 20 and celebrates the goddess giving birth to the Sun god.

* The next season is Imbolc and marks the recovery of the goddess after giving birth to the god.

* The Spring Equinox (Ostara) marks the first day of Spring. The goddess awakes as the days grow longer and the light overtakes the darkness. The goddess fills the earth with fertility.

* Beltane celebrates the transformation of the boy god into manhood. He is filled with lust for the goddess and lies with her in the grass. The earth becomes pregnant with her vitality. Crops begin to grow. Flowers bloom.

* Litha (midsummer) arrives as the powers of nature escalate. The Earth Mother is filled with fertility. Wiccans practice numerous kinds of magic during this season.

* The next season is Lughnasadh, the time of the first harvest. The Wiccan god begins to lose his strength as the Sun rises higher each day. The nights grow longer. The god begins to die.

* Mabon is the completion of the harvest. The Wiccan god suffers death, draws back into darkness, and waits to be reborn at Yule.

The Wicca year-cycle described above is similar to concepts held by early pagans who viewed the natural world with awe and superstition. Ancients watched the changing of the seasons and wondered about the life and death of crops. They perceived such natural processes as mystic, and developed fertility cults with gods and goddesses who died and were reborn. The worship of the earth's "spirit" as a mother, and the incarnation of the earth's fertility forces within dying gods and goddesses, developed into one of the most widespread forms of paganism in antiquity.

Whether it was Inanna of the Sumerians, Ishtar of the Babylonians, or Fortuna of the Romans, every civilization had a sect of religion based on the embodiment of the earth's spirit as a caring mother-goddess. The Egyptians worshipped Hathor in this way, as did the Chinese, Shingmoo. The Germans worshipped Hertha as the great Mother Earth, and the apostate Jews idolized "the queen of heaven." In Greece, the queen of the Olympian goddesses and Mother Earth was Hera. Before her was Gaia (Gaea), the creator-mother earth, and beneath her were many other earth goddesses including Demeter, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Hecate.

MOTHER EARTH TODAY . . . AND IN ANTIQUITY

The principal idea was, and evidently still is among Wiccans, that the Earth is a sentient being. The ancient and universally accepted idea that the "living Earth" was also a fertile mother was conceptualized in different ways and in various goddess myths and images throughout the ancient world. In The Golden Asse, by second century Roman philosopher Lucius Apuleius, the spirit of the earth was perceived as a feminine force that could express itself at various times and to different people within the goddess mothers. Note how Lucius prays to the earth spirit:

O blessed Queene of Heaven, whether thou be the Dame Ceres [Demeter] which art the original and motherly source of all fruitful things in earth, who after the finding of thy daughter Proserpina [Persephone], through thy great joy which thou diddest presently conceive, madest barraine and unfruitful ground to be plowed and sowne, and now thou inhabitest in the land of Eleusie [Eleusis]; or whether thou be the celestiall Venus [or] horrible Proserpina, thou hast the power to stoppe and put away the invasion of the hags and ghoasts which appeare unto men, and to keep them downe in the closures [womb] of the earth; thou which nourishest all the fruits of the world by thy vigor and force; with whatsoever name is or fashion it is lawful to call upon thee, I pray thee, to end my great travaile.

The earth spirit responds to Lucius:

Behold Lucius I am come, thy weeping and prayers hath mooved me to succour thee. I am she that is the natural mother of all things, mistresse and governesse of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chiefe of powers divine, Queene of heaven, the principall of the Gods celestiall, the light of the goddesses: at my will the planets of the ayre [air], the wholesome winds of the Seas, and the silence of hell be disposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout all the world in divers manners, in variable customes and in many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana: the Sicilians, Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate: and principally the aethiopians, Queene Isis.

One could assume, based on such texts, that a single spiritual source (or realm) energized the many goddess myths. Likewise, in the ancient Hymn, To Earth, The Mother Of All, Homer illustrates how the earth-spirit was universally involved in the affairs and lives of nations. Through Homer's dedication to the earth we discover how far-reaching and omnipresent the mother-earth spirit was thought to be:

I will sing of well founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly: all these are fed by her store. Through you, O queen, men are blessed in their children and blessed in their harvests, and to you it belongs to give means of life to mortal men and to take it away. Happy is the man whom you delight to honour! He hath all things abundantly: his fruitful land is laden with corn, his pastures are covered with cattle, and his house is filled with good things. Such men rule orderly in their cities of fair women: great riches and wealth follow them: their sons exult with ever-fresh delight, and their daughters in flower-laden bands play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field. Thus it is with those whom you honour O holy goddess, bountiful spirit. Hail, mother of the gods, wife of starry Heaven; freely bestow upon me for this my song substance that cheers the heart! And now I will remember you and another song also.

From these and other ancient records, it is obvious that the earth was more than an agricultural or herbaceous facility to the pagans. She was the personable and "eldest of all beings," the "holy goddess," the "bountiful spirit," the all-nourishing mother of men who manifested herself within the popular idols and mother goddesses.

Modern Wiccans and neo-pagans perceive the earth similarly, often referring to the earth as Gaia--a living, caring entity. We are told that people are just one of Mother Earth's species, not her dominators. She provides the living biosphere -- the region on, above, and below her surface where created things, both physical and spiritual, live. During the Samhain sabbot (Halloween), pagans celebrate the time when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, a period when those spirits beneath Gaia's surface can more easily communicate with the living.

SOMETHING WICCA THIS WAY COMES

Wiccans might find it interesting that many Christian theologians agree with the idea that the physical earth contains spiritual forces. For instance, in the Book of Revelation, chapter nine and verse fourteen, we read of "the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates." Likewise, in Job 26:5, we find "Dead things are formed from under the waters." The literal Hebrew translation says, "The Rafa (fallen angels) are made to writhe from beneath the waters."

Additional biblical references indicate that the earth is a kind of holding tank, or prison, where God has bound certain fallen entities. (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6) That such fallen spirits seek to communicate with, or participate in the affairs of humanity, is defined in Scripture. The Hebrew people were warned that earth spirits pretending to be gods might seek communion with men, and, when the witch of Endor communicated with the same, they ascended up from "out of the earth" (1 Sam. 28:13). It would seem therefore, based on such Scriptures, that the dynamic or energy behind the earth-goddess-spirits of Halloween is indeed real, and, according to Christian doctrine, identical with the legions of fallen spiritual forces bound within the earth.

As in antiquity, those who practice modern paganism are guilty of worshipping "devils" (Rev. 9:20). The dogma once embraced and that continues through such earth-centric paganism as Wicca is defined in scriptures as the "doctrines of devils." The Apostle Paul said, "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils" (1 Cor. 10:20).

In Acts 7:41-42 (Jerusalem Bible), it describes those who worship idols as joining themselves to the "army of heaven" [stratos, the "fallen angel army"], and Psalm 96:5 concludes, "all the gods of the nations are idols" (elilim, LXX daimonia [demons]). Thus, pagan images, such as those that represented the ancient gods and goddesses were "elilim" (empty, nothing, vanity), but behind the empty idols were the living dynamics of idolatry and spiritual objects of pagan adoration: demons.

Because the Bible clearly defines such goddess worship as the homage of demons, and since demons are eternal personalities that desire the worship of humans, it is fair to characterize Wiccan deities, including the god, goddess, and Horned god of the Hunt, as neo-pagan titles attributed to demon spirits.

WITCHES ARE PEOPLE FOR WHOM CHRIST DIED

The New Testament tells the story of presenting the Gospel to pagans. It records conversions to Christ and the abandonment of earth-centered goddess cults. So powerful was the spread of the early Christian faith that pagan religions that had dominated the Middle East for thousands of years, crumbled. The cold embrace of Mother Earth could not match the magnetic warmth of the love of God. In fact, the last recorded utterance of the oracle at Delphi seems to indicate the spirit of the Olympians understood he was no match for Jesus. From Man, Myth & Magic, we read:

"Apollo delivered his last oracle in the year 362 AD, to the physician of the Emperor Julian, the Byzantine ruler who tried to restore paganism after Christianity had become the official religion of the Byzantine Empire. 'Tell the King,' said the oracle, 'that the curiously built temple has fallen to the ground, that bright Apollo no longer has a roof over his head, or prophetic laurel, or babbling spring. Yes, even the murmuring water has dried up.'"

The worship of Diana in Ephesus was another stronghold of earth-centered goddess cults. Dianic witchcraft was the greatest unifying religion among all pagan people up to that time. It took 220 years to build the massive temple to Diana in Ephesus. Yet when Paul preached the Gospel of Jesus to the Ephesians, "Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed" (Acts 19:17-20).

May we with joy declare such a life-changing Gospel and not be ashamed "of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16).

http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/ghostbuster-wicca.htm


Title: Teachers of Witchcraft and Wicca Needed to Supply Global Shortage
Post by: Mark on October 24, 2011, 09:23:53 am
Teachers of Witchcraft and Wicca Needed to Supply Global Shortage

Have you ever considered learning Wicca and the Art of Witchcraft? Well stand in line, because there is a global shortage of teachers and the demand continues to grow. According to Witch School, within the next decade it is very likely that Wicca will be one of the largest religions in America, and there are simply not enough teachers to handle that demand.

Wicca is America's Fastest Growing religion, and it is anticipated by some Christian religious experts that it will become the third largest religion in the United States early in the 21st century, behind only Christianity and Islam. Just this week, a press release for the new book God's Ghostbusters, by Defender Publishing quoted editor Thomas Horn “In the United States alone, there are now more than two hundred thousand registered witches and as many as 8 million unregistered practitioners of ‘the craft’.”

Witch School Co-Founder Ed Hubbard recognizes that the statements and numbers put out by Horn are similar to his own viewpoint. Hubbard offers “There is such a rapid spiritual reorientation in America occurring, that the need for thousands of Wiccan teachers over the course of the next decade will be required to meet the demand for basic teachings. Because of Wicca’s liberating beliefs and useful skills, people want to understand and embrace it, and learn how to awaken their inner abilities.”

Witch School believes that America is on the brink of awakening and discovering its inner magic, and this is changing belief systems around the world as well. How this change occurs depends on what people believe, and more people than ever are looking at Paganism and Wicca. Pagans have a different vision of everyday life where magic can occur in the workplace, alongside science and technology, among friends and co-workers, filling all those different places with a sense of awe and wonder. If Pagans are correct in their thinking, then they have a conduit to a whole other dimension that is outside of, and yet part of their already rich existence. They have a deep awareness of how much freedom individuals can truly have.

People who practice Wicca now have the ability to learn and share their faith in ways that have never before been conceived. They want to build their community in a free and open manner, legally protected under Constitutional law. Yet, Wiccans and Pagans remain fearful of the danger of their beliefs, knowing how discriminatory American culture can be. The desire to be open about their beliefs and share their knowledge and skills with other like-minded individuals is what continues to drive them. They know that to gain the acceptance of more people, they need educators to help spread that knowledge throughout the world.

Witch School has been working for the past 10 years to train teachers and mentors for the task that lies ahead. The online education system has made it easy to discover what Wicca has to offer, and has helped over 200,000 students learn more about this fascinating subject. You can discover more about Witch School at their website, WitchSchool.com.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/10/prweb8879161.htm


Title: Re: Teachers of Witchcraft and Wicca Needed to Supply Global Shortage
Post by: Mark on October 24, 2011, 09:27:04 am
1Ti 4:1 ¶ Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; 

Gal 5:16 ¶ [This] I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. 
Gal 5:17   For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. 
Gal 5:18   But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. 
Gal 5:19   Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are [these]; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 
Gal 5:20   Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 
Gal 5:21   Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told [you] in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 


Title: Black magic widespread in Middle East
Post by: Mark on October 24, 2011, 09:38:02 am
Black magic widespread in Middle East

Belief in witchcraft, spells, the occult and protective charms runs deep, despite religious and governmental bans against using magic.

When Tara Umm Omar was a young bride in her first marriage, she and her Moroccan husband took the youngest sister of a family friend into their home. On the day the young Moroccan woman arrived, she gave Umm Omar a doll, which Umm Omar promptly placed in a dresser drawer.

When Umm Omar told a friend of the doll, the friend suspected it was an item for black magic and suggested the doll be destroyed. Instead, Umm Omar tossed it in the garbage. That’s when household items disappeared, the family dog barked incessantly, Umm Omar started fighting with her husband and she began seeing strange insects in the house. When the guest finally moved out, the couple found their bed sheets and an identical doll to Umm Omar’s among the woman’s discarded belongings.

The message to Umm Omar was clear: The woman she invited into her home sought to destroy her happiness through black magic.

Umm Omar is since remarried to a Saudi and now lives in Riyadh. She runs the popular blog, Future Husbands and Wives of Saudis, a help website for non-Saudis marrying Saudis. As a quasi-marriage counselor for brides and grooms nervously entering Saudi society, Umm Omar dispenses religious and practical advice to help ease the cultural shock. That includes providing insight to the real world concerns of black magic and the evil eye.

“The truth is that all magic is haram [prohibited] and only leads to bad ends,” Umm Omar told The Media Line.

Belief in black magic runs deep in Saudi society. The issue was raised last month when the quasi-legislative body Shoura Council granted permission for Moroccan women to work as maids in Saudi households. Hundreds of Saudi women complained to the Council that granting Moroccan maids permission to work was tantamount to allowing the use of black magic in their homes to steal their husbands. Saudi wives complained the issue was not lacking trust in their husbands, but their men were powerless to ward off spells.

While greeted with skepticism in western societies, Saudis would no more question the existence of black magic than they would Islam. Two surahs (chapters) in the Qur’an under Al Mi’wadhatyan address black magic and are often recited during or after prayer. Simply, part of being a Muslim is believing in the existence of magic.

In April of this year, members of the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice underwent special training in the Eastern Province to investigate black magic crimes.

Although also found in Christianity and Judaism, casting spells is particularly common in Oman, Sudan, Yemen, Morocco and Indonesia. Turkey is a secular Muslim country, but protection against evil eye is deeply rooted in virtually all aspects of daily life. Tools of witchcraft include using lizards, dead birds, photographs, hair, thread, dirt, blood and red ink. Hiding places to place “spells” may be in bedrooms and under beds. Written spells generally contain the intended victim’s name and one or two words to state the intention to do harm.

In 2007, the religious police in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, removed 23 black magic tokens, including knives and written spells on paper, from two graves in a cemetery. Black magic artists placed the tokens at the heads and feet of the corpses.

The Saudi press reported recently that evil eye was suspected in causing the death of Mastoora Al-Ahmadi, the Saudi poet who garnered international attention for her performance on “The Million’s Poet” on Abu Dhabi TV. She was the first woman to reach the semifinals in the Arabic poetry contest. Al-Ahmadi died unexpectedly on Oct. 2 in Madinah after falling into a coma.

Howaizan Muhammad, 26, of Madinah, told The Media Line that she had difficulty finding a job and failed in many interviews. And she hated the jobs she did find. She broke up with her fiancé and couldn’t find a husband. “My sister told me to read the surah Al-Baqarah to protect me against any spells,” she says. “After 14 days, my father found a spell written on paper and in blood with my name on it on the roof under our water tank.”

Muhammad says she had Indonesian maids at the time, but notes that anybody could have left the spell.

Sheikh Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, an Islamic scholar based in Qatar and the author of The Exorcist Tradition in Islam, told The Media Line that Muslims must not fight witchcraft with their own magic but refer to the Qur’an. “There are a number of Qur’anic texts that the Prophet said should be read with reflection as a means of removing or reducing the effects of black magic,” he says. “Eating adjuwah dates from Madinah is also a means of protection.”

He notes there is a tendency to fight magic with magic, but it’s prohibited. “People should avoid charms, amulets and other things that people have proffered, which has become something of a business in the Muslim world.”

Philips acknowledges that Moroccans have an “international reputation” among Muslims for practicing witchcraft, but cautions against overemphasizing Moroccans as master artists of voodoo. “Historically they [Moroccans] are most noted for it. But they are not much different than most in the Muslim world. Chechnya and Bosnia probably engage in it more.”

Although Saudis may claim that witchcraft is at the heart of their distrust of foreign maids, Umm Omar suggests that old-fashioned power struggles and jealously play vital roles in conflicts.

“There is a factor that Saudis are more well-to-do than Moroccans and magic can be used to remove those blessings [of wealth] if [maids] dislike them,” Umm Omar says. “Saudi women are used to feeling superior over maids, and in some cases look down on them. Moroccan women do not like to be pushed around and will defend themselves. My experience with Moroccan and Saudi women is they both like to be in charge of the household and are naturally bossy.”

Umm Omar adds that if a maid feels threatened, she could resort to black magic. “Of course that is not to say that a Saudi woman won’t seek out magic to harm a Moroccan maid.”
Left unsaid in this battle of wills between Saudi and Moroccan women is the consequences of practicing black magic in Saudi Arabia. Practicing witchcraft is an offense punishable by death.

Saudi religious police arrested popular Lebanese television personality and fortuneteller Ali Sabat in May 2008 on charges of witchcraft while he was on a pilgrimage. A Saudi court sentenced him to death. But an appellate court threw out the sentence in 2010, citing lack of evidence that Sabat harmed anybody. According to Amnesty International, the last documented execution for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia was in 2007. A Saudi court sentenced Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim to death for casting spells in order to separate a married couple.

“Fortune telling is not just sleight of hand tricks, but involves the spirit,” says Philips. “As evil, it’s the same thing as black magic. Sharia proscribes the same punishment for both.”

Umm Omar points to ignorance and the absence of a strong foundation in the teachings of Islam that lead some Muslims to practice magic and evil eye.

Although Philips says that ignorance is no excuse for breaking laws, forgiveness should be considered. “God does forgive ignorance,” he says. “We should be more tolerant in some cases because some people are not doing [harmful] things deliberately.”

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=242740


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on October 28, 2011, 09:25:21 am
My wife bought me this book, and i have to agree with this article. Im just about done with this, and it was filled with a lot of good information.

'God's Ghostbusters' are on the job!

Some books are just fun to review. "God's Ghostbusters" is one of those books, although I need to qualify the word "fun." The dark themes explored by this expert team assembled by Tom Horn signal us that in fact the implications of the book are not fun, but rather fascinating.

In the extreme.

I'm always thrilled when Christians in ministry explore themes that depart from the "self-help" claptrap being peddled today. We have more than enough Christian leaders who tickle the ears of congregants. Of lasting importance, by contrast, are ministry leaders like Tom and Nita Horn, who are warning us that whole generations in America are being led by spirits of darkness.

The writers who gift us with their expertise in "God's Ghostbusters" are among the most forward thinkers around today, in my view. From exploring the fascination with vampires, to the reality of "ghosts," this book will prove to be one of the most popular of 2011 (and beyond), I predict.

Chuck Missler sets the tone in the introduction and makes valuable use of his nimble mind when he addresses our culture's morbid curiosity with werewolves, aliens, ghosts and more.

Missler hits on the problem of moral drift: "The search for truth was regarded, at one time, the primary goal of mankind; however, having taught our children that they are simply the result of a series of cosmic accidents, we then wonder why they have lost any sense of destiny or accountability!"

In other words, because we have not taught our children a biblical worldview, they are falling prey for all manner of insane worldviews – from alien abductions to those who believe they are actually vampires.

Horn also displays a discernment that is sadly lacking even in our churches today: "Currently, America and much of the world is experiencing what would have seemed impossible just 50 years ago: an explosion of ancient occultism and wicked fascination with all things paranormal by today's spiritually abandoned public."

He also makes a point that I think is critical for our thinking, because Horn, a former church executive, doesn't blink from hard truths. In answer to those who believe the public fascination with the paranormal (expressly forbidden in Scripture) is a fad, Horn believes otherwise. He says that where we once laughed at the silliness of Abbott and Costello movies, in which the comic duo would encounter Dracula or some other bogeyman, today's film offerings are quite disturbing. The public's thirst for the paranormal is picking up speed. We would do well to heed the authors in "God's Ghostbusters."

In Chapter 15 ("What About Ghosts?"), one of my favorite writers today, Gary Bates, tackles the all-important issue of what people routinely refer to as "ghosts," or disembodied spirits. I live near a famous "haunted" hotel, and for decades, people have sworn they've seen strange nurses or hotel guests dressed in garb from another time.

Gary understands exactly where our culture is today: "Belief in ghosts, and a fascination with the supernatural and the occult in general, is mainstream in popular culture today."

Indeed, such belief is mainstream, and therein lies the problem.

As I write this, Turner Classic Movies is showing "The Uninvited" (1944), starring Ray Milland. Ruth Hussey's character is exhorting her brother to hold a séance because after all, "that's how people are supposed to communicate with the dead."

In those days, new media began to condition people to believe in ghosts, and so today, as Gary Bates points out, it is almost the power of suggestion that compels filmgoers to believe what they are seeing on the screen (also, don't dismiss the fact that very often, there is a perfectly natural explanation for such alleged phenomena).

A cleverly titled chapter, "Interview with a Modern Vampire," by Donna Howell and Nita Horn, is quite amazing. The ladies track the decline of American culture (with the coming of new technologies!), from 1900 until now.

For example, during the '20s: "As a result of the merry, lighthearted and carefree lifestyle that swept the nation during this 'showbiz' era, a certain liberal and lurid behavior began to emerge. Cartoon pornography books called 'Tijuana bibles' (drawings by mostly-unknown artists portraying popular cartoon characters, movie stars, and important political figures engaging in sexually explicit encounters) began their 'under the table' circulation."

As morals loosened, and sensuality burst forth across the country, people began to be more open to those influences the Bible warns about.

Terry James is one of my favorite living writers – and I say that with ironic affection – and his chapter on life after death is the crowning piece of this must-have book. Terry describes his own near-death experiences, but wraps it all in a very scriptural view.

Terry understands that the public's fascination with the paranormal is a stunning opportunity: "Pastors, teachers, who name the name of Jesus, listen up: Providing prophetic truth to the people you shepherd and teach in this closing time of the Church Age (Age of Grace) is all-important to Almighty God. We must tell them that Christ's coming is very near. To neglect doing this is to neglect what He has put you here to do."

There are several other terrific contributors to "God's Ghostbusters," so let me give you my personal guarantee: this book will be one of the most memorable you'll ever read. It's that good.



Read more: 'God's Ghostbusters' are on the job! http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=360093#ixzz1c5Qc9ng2


Title: Re: Teachers of Witchcraft and Wicca Needed to Supply Global Shortage
Post by: Mark on October 30, 2011, 06:19:04 am
Teachers of Witchcraft and Wicca Needed to Supply Global Shortage


Online Witch School Claims Wicca Fastest Growing Religion


An online witch school recently launched a public relations campaign declaring a shortage of teachers it claims comes as the result of Wicca becoming the fastest growing religion in America.

Witch School International, Inc. said in a press release that “America is on the brink of awakening and discovering its inner magic, and this is changing belief systems around the world as well. How this change occurs depends on what people believe, and more people than ever are looking at Paganism and Wicca.”

The schools co-founder, Ed Hubbard, is quoted as saying, “There is such a rapid spiritual reorientation in America occurring, that the need for thousands of Wiccan teachers over the course of the next decade will be required to meet the demand for basic teachings.”

While Witch School claims that religious experts say Wicca will become the third largest religion in the United States “early in the 21st century, behind only Christianity and Islam,” it is generally only agreed upon that the belief system is rapidly growing.

rest: http://www.christianpost.com/news/online-witch-school-wicca-fastest-growing-religion-59799/


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on November 10, 2011, 05:08:14 am
Young Women Nabbed In Bloody Satanic Sex Ritual

Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man--who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online--told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual.

A Milwaukee Police Department search warrant for the East Knapp Street apartment where the man was held details his ordeal. The warrant authorized cops to seize an assortment of items from the residence, including “knives or other cutting instruments,” blood and DNA evidence, duct tape, restraining devices, and “Books or literature relating to Satanism or the occult.”

The police investigation began Sunday night after cops responded to a report of a possible stabbing. Officers found the Arizona man “bleeding from the neck, arms and back.” He told cops that after arriving at the home of a woman he met online, he “was bound and was stabbed numerous times over a timeframe of what he described as ‘two days.’”

The man was transported to a local hospital, where medical personnel “estimated the number of wounds to be in excess of 300,” according to a search warrant affidavit sworn by Detective Michael Walisiciwicz. “He suffered multiple puncture wounds as well as lacerations and slash wounds to his back, face, arms, legs and neck,” noted Walisiciwicz.

Officers responding to the reported stabbing discovered “bloody duct tape, which was fashioned in a manner that appeared to be a restraint, as well as a bloody length of rope” in the area where the victim was found.

A blood trail led police to Apartment 9 on the third floor of 918 East Knapp Street. Inside, cops spotted a “large amount of blood on the floor and on bedding in a bedroom.” They also saw “duct tape, which was fashioned in a manner that appeared to be a restraint.”

While at the apartment building, police were approached by Rebecca Chandler, 22, who stated, “I think you are here looking for me.” Chandler told cops that she had engaged in sexual relations with the Arizona man “and that the cutting was consensual but that it got quickly out of hand.”

Chandler claimed that her roommate--whom she identified only as “Scarlett”--was “the one who did the majority of the cutting” during the incident. Chandler, police reported, “also made reference to ‘Scarlett’ possibly being involved in satanic or occult activities.”

Chandler was placed in custody at the scene. During a subsequent search of the apartment, investigators seized copies of "The Necromantic Ritual Book” and "The Werewolf’s Guide to Life.” The former book promises to enable a reader to “share consiousness with the Angel of Death.” Paperwork seized from the home was described by police as the “7 Pentacles” of planets. Additionally, a black folder was described as an “Intro to Sigilborne Spirtits,” an apparent reference to “The Sigil-Born,” metaphysical entities that are “occultic practitioners” of necromancy, the purported ability to contact the dead.

Cops subsequently identified “Scarlett” as Raven Larrabee, 20. She was arrested and booked yesterday into the Milwaukee County jail, where she is being held in lieu of $100,000 bond. Chandler is also in the county lockup, where her bond was set at $150,000. The women, who have not yet been charged by prosecutors, are being held for suspicion of reckless injury, a felony.

Chandler (left) and Larrabee are pictured in the above mug shots (click to enlarge).

Search warrant records do not indicate why the Arizona man traveled to Milwaukee (or what he expected to happen upon arrival). In a post earlier today on his Facebook wall, the man offered a one-word update: “stitches.”

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/milwaukee-satanic-ritual-657329


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Kilika on November 10, 2011, 12:19:43 pm
If you walk in the Spirit, you won't fulfill the lusts of the flesh! This shows just how bad it can get when chasing the flesh, and what it can lead to.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Christian40 on November 22, 2011, 03:00:55 am
The Power of Devils over the Human Body

They can cause Dumbness (Matt 9:32-33), and Blindness (Matt 12:22), and Insanity (Luke 8:26-35), and Suicidal Mania (Mark 9:22), and Personal Injuries (Mark 9:18), and impart Supernatural Strength (Luke 8:29), and inflict Physical Defects and Deformities (Luke 13:11-17). Once they have got control over a human body they can come and go at will (Luke 11:24-26). The Demonic character of “Devils” is seen in the use they make of their victims. They use them as “instruments of unrighteousness” (Rom 6:13), for the proclamation of the “Doctrines of Devils” (1 Tim 4:1), and the teaching of “Damnable Heresies” (2 Pet 2:1). The effect of such use of the victim is not only unmoral, it is immoral. It leads to vicious and inhuman conduct. The conduct of “demonized” men and women seems to indicate that the Devil takes possession of them for the purpose of physical sensual gratification. This accounts for the desire of the victim to live in a state of nudity and to have lustful and licentious thoughts. The purpose of the “devil” is often to alienate husband and wife, and break up homes by preaching the doctrine of “free love” The devil has the power, once he is in control of his victim, to derange both mind and body, and wreck the victim's heath, and if deliverance is not obtained by turning to the Lord Jesus, who alone has power to cast out the devil, the victim will be lost in soul and body.

But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, (Communion Cup) and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils. (1 Cor 10:20-21)

This passage proves that behind all heathen worship there is the “spirit of demonism” or “devil worship” and accounts for the “wild orgies” and voluptuous and licentious mode of worship of the heathen.

Those who dabble in Spiritism are in great danger of having their “understanding darkened” (Eph 4:17-19) and come under the power and control of devils.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on December 20, 2011, 09:54:13 am
New Young-Adult Novel 'Clockwork Prince' Builds On Twilight Deception, Will Help Continue Demonizing Kids With 'Angelic' Nephilim Occultism

Prince picks up where Angel left off (albeit a bit roughly for those who didn't read the first book), with Tessa being protected at the London Institute by a pair of demon-hunting Shadowhunters, the angel-like Nephilim Jem and Will, who are as close as brothers. Jem is dying but is taking it well, focusing his energies on the task at hand: finding the evil Mortmain, who is building an army of robotic automatons to battle the Shadowhunters and enact vengeance for a personal tragedy. Much like Edward of Twilight fame, Will is the broody dude who in secret has the biggest heart — and is the most interesting character in the series. There's a very good reason why he's cold to those who he cares for the most, and readers begin to learn more secrets about him as the story shifts from a late-19th-century mansion in York to the London slums to a magical ballroom where the gang has to face off with a clockwork demon.

http://books.usatoday.com/book/cassandra-clare-clockwork-prince/l32291

Twilight Saga: 'Breaking Dawn' To Help Break Down Morals

The film’s trailer shows bedroom scenes and a water scene that shows Bella and new husband, Edward (Robert Pattinson), locked in a half-naked embrace. “Psychologists have long understood how women in general desire strength in men, but few could have imagined how this natural and overriding need by young ladies would be used in modern times to seduce them of their innocence using mysteriously strong yet everlastingly damned creatures depicted in popular books and films like Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse,” Thomas Horn said in a statement in an Oct. 11 article in The Christian Post. Horn is the publisher behind the book Gods Ghostbusters.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/twilight-saga-breaking-dawn-to-break-down-morals-website-warns-59624/


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on December 22, 2011, 06:30:10 pm
Bryan Denlinger is giving out "Inside Rock Music"(book) for free - it is FASCINATING, to say the least, over how the occult's ties to rock music, and how this has been used and abused to bewitch the generations since the 50's.

Folks, times are REALLY drawing near...just hang tight...when you think about it, the fact that today's church is embracing Christian Rock is REALLY saying alot over how the end is potentially drawing near now. Christian Rock would have been kicked out the door immediately in the 70's.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on January 12, 2012, 09:17:35 am
Eric The Horse Mutilated On ‘Satan Sacrifice Day’

Fears that devil worshippers mutilated Eric the horse grew last night as it emerged his death coincided with a day of satanic animal sacrifice. The Sun told yesterday how the two-year-old stallion was found dead in his field with his right eye gouged out, his teeth removed and his genitalia hacked off. The horrific attack happened last weekend — and Saturday was St Winebald Day, a date in the satanic calendar traditionally celebrated with bloody rituals. There was also a full moon. And there is evidence that Eric was subdued with a Taser stun gun. Rumours are rife among locals that the butchery in Stithians, near Falmouth, Cornwall, was part of an evil occult ceremony. As police hunted the sadists responsible, Inspector Chris Strickland said there was "a strong possibility" that Eric was the victim of a satanic ritual.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4054742/Eric-the-horse-was-mutilated-on-Satan-sacrifice-day.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=News

Quote
Satanic Calendar

http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/satanic_calendar.htm

JANUARY

7  -  St Winebald day:  Blood rituals, dismemberment.  Animal/human sacrifice.




Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on July 05, 2012, 01:36:20 pm
Vampire Attack in Corpus Christi?
teen bitten on neck as he walked down the street


Is a vampire on the loose in Corpus Christi?

 

  Police say a 16 year old boy was walking down Shoreline Boulevard near Corpus Christi Bay Wednesday night, when he accidentally bumped into a man, who turned around and bit him in the neck.

 

  "Apparently he left a bite mark and broke the skin and took some skin off," Senior Police Officer Julia Hernandez-Garcia told 1200 WOAI'S Michael Board.

 

  The teenager was taken to the hospital by his mother and was not seriously hurt.  The suspect, described as a Latino male in his early twenties, ran away after biting the boy's neck.

 

  "This is a very unusual case," she said.  "I've been here for 27 years and I've never heard of anything like this."



Read more: http://radio.woai.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=119078&article=10248491#ixzz1zm5qRs26


Title: Re: Black magic widespread in Middle East
Post by: Mark on July 08, 2012, 11:27:35 am
Black magic widespread in Middle East

Belief in witchcraft, spells, the occult and protective charms runs deep, despite religious and governmental bans against using magic.


Muslim Witch Hunts

In response to Congressman Peter King’s hearings on Islamic radicalization, Muslim Brotherhood stooge Suhail Khan authored an article denouncing the hearings as a “witch hunt.” He was echoed by Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR who also branded the hearings a “witch hunt.”

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson caught on to this original idea, declaring the hearings, “Peter King’s Modern Day Witch Hunt.” Bob Herbert at the New York Times joined him in branding the hearings a “witch hunt.” At USA Today, an op-ed weighed in on “The Danger of a Muslim Witch Hunt.”

Democratic pols also got in on the act. Congressman Keith Ellison declared the hearings a “witch hunt” and Congresswoman Judy Chu complained that a “witch hunt for Muslim radicals will do little to make our nation safer.”

Wherever you turned, from CNN to Jon Stewart, the consensus of Muslim terrorists and their media collaborators was that investigating Islamism was just like hunting for witches. Except that terrorists exist and witches don’t—a minor fact that was lost on the progressive camp which often mistakes its own talking points for magic spells that alter the nature of reality.

The United States doesn’t hunt witches. It’s the Muslim world that has an unfortunate propensity for engaging in witch hunts.

While the progressive media complex was whipping itself into a frenzy denouncing any investigation of Saudi mosques and organizations as a witch hunt—the Saudis were conducting actual witch hunts. While Congressman King was trying to fight the War on Terror— they were declaring a War on Sorcery.

In Washington D.C. witch hunts might be a metaphor, but in Riyadh, they’re a top priority. While the Saudis operate a revolving door for Islamic terrorists, including the ones we send over to them for rehabilitation, they take important things like witchcraft seriously. A Saudi Al-Qaeda terrorist can expect to spend a little time at a plush rehabilitation facility before being set free to head off to the next conflict zone. But Saudi witches and sorcerers mercilessly have their heads chopped off in car parks.

A Saudi witch hunt is not a committee hearing; it is an actual unit of the Islamic religious police which is tasked with fighting witches and sorcerers, who according to the authorities, in the absence of the Jews, are responsible for most of the problems in the land. While American liberals insist that Islam is as modern as microprocessors and as moderate as vanilla ice cream, in the holy land of Islam, Sharia thugs are storming the dens of palm-readers, faith-healers and old women with too many cats around the premises in a 7th century witch hunt conducted with 21st century technology.

Muslim witch hunts aren’t only limited to Saudi Arabia. In Iran, Ahmadinejad’s allies have been accused of being sorcerers. In Pakistan, witch hunts end the old fashioned away, with a bonfire. One woman, accused of burning the Koran in a magical ritual, had her fingers cut off, her eyes poked out and gasoline poured all over her body. “She burnt the Koran, so we burnt her,” was the explanation.

In the Maldives, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohamed called for the passage of an Anti-Sorcery Act. The Maldives already has its own witch hunts and in 1993 arrested a witch for giving magic scrolls to a presidential candidate to help him win an election—a novel form of electoral fraud. It doesn’t however mandate the death penalty for witches, which is what the Sheikh is calling for, in line with Sharia law.  “Sorcery has become a social plague in the Maldives which needs to be cured,” he said. And Islam has a reliable way of curing things by chopping their heads off.

Black magic is also a serious problem in the United Arab Emirates. In non-Muslim countries airport security personnel screen for Muslim terrorists carrying explosives and weapons; but in Muslim countries, the local equivalent of the TSA searches for magic wands and potions. Vigilant security personnel at Abu Dhabi International Airport caught one such would-be Harry Potter trying to enter the UAE.

“The airport staff suspected the passenger, so they inspected his luggage and found books that contained spells, mostly in unknown languages, and some suspicious tools which seem to be used for black magic,” said Colonel Rashid Bursheed, the head of the organized crime section at the Criminal Investigations Department.

It might be nice to live in a country where the chief threat in airports comes from the Wizard of Oz, rather than a fellow named Mohammed with incendiary underwear, but unfortunately that would require the United States to switch to operating under Islamic law. But in the meantime, Colonel Rashid Bursheed has asked all citizens to report anyone casting spells to the authorities.

In Qatar, home of Al-Jazeera, the police are also on the lookout for rogue magicians. The same goes for Oman, where dedicated enforcers keep watch for magic amulets, bones or love potions. While the police forces of the Muslim world are not terribly good at combating terrorism, they spring into action when someone claims that a witch cast a spell on his goats. Most of those arrested are usually foreigners; many of them are Africans, which is not surprising in the racist tribal heartland of Islam.

What happens to Harry Potter when he’s caught depends on how Islamic the country is. The more committed a country is to Sharia law, the more likely it is that poor Harry will spend years in prison or even lose his head.  A magic potion that might only be punishable by seven years in a dungeon in a liberal place like Dubai might make a man lose his head in properly Islamic Saudi Arabia.

In Washington D.C., witch hunts end with a banging gavel marking the end of a committee meeting. In Saudi Arabia, they end at the point of a sword. Just ask Ali Hussain Sibat, a Lebanese TV psychic, who predicted the future and offered magic potions on the side, who was charged with witchcraft when he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and is awaiting his own turn for the mercy of the executioner’s sword.

In response to the Sibat case, the Boston Globe called it a “A 21st-century witch trial” and “a reminder of why this nation’s Founders sought to separate religious and secular laws.” And yet despite that, the Globe and other liberal newspapers ridicule any attempt at restricting the spread of Islamic Sharia law and investigating Islam as a “witch hunt.” Yet in a terrible irony, investigating Islam may be the only way to prevent actual witch hunts from one day taking place in this country.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-greenfield/muslim-witch-hunts/


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Christian40 on June 06, 2013, 12:49:24 am
(http://s12.postimg.org/q4y810gjh/601275_652892488073609_2122404072_n.jpg)


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on July 19, 2013, 03:18:17 pm
Zombies, Vampires: Dark Themes Invade Christian Homes

A zombie invasion and a vampire love triangle. These are the themes of two hit television dramas, AMC's The Walking Dead and CW's The Vampire Diaries.

In today's entertainment industry, tales of blood-sucking lovers and brain-eating corpses are big business. From Twilight, a best-selling series of books and movies focusing on vampires, to Warm Bodies, a recent film about a teen zombie in love, it seems many consumers can't get enough of the creepy and macabre.

The undead genre, as it is sometimes called, is wildly popular among adolescents and young adults. Some national bookstore chains have entire sections devoted to "teen paranormal romance," featuring such titles as Boys That Bite and I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It.

Similar motifs are showing up in literature aimed at the youngest readers. Book series such as Vampirates and Diary of a Zombie Kid are recommended for elementary-aged children.

"It's a very lucrative market," says Candy Tolbert, director of National Girls Ministries for the Assemblies of God. "Girls as young as 11 are being sucked into this fantasy world where death and spiritual perversion are glamorized."

Heath Adamson, Assemblies of God National Youth Ministries director and a father of two preteens, says these are old themes repackaged for a new generation. He believes ancient pagan practices of worshipping the dead and early horror films depicting Dracula and decomposing monsters have elements in common with today's morbid entertainment.

"We are spiritual beings in mortal bodies," Adamson says. "There is a longing for eternity deep inside every person. Romans 8:19 tells us creation waits for the children of God to be revealed. The enemy is very good at perverting the things God has placed in the hearts of people."

Adamson says Christians should be wary of entertainment that romanticizes spiritual darkness. He should know. Before he became a Christian, Adamson says he was involved in occult practices.

"I've seen people who were demonized, and as a Christian I've exercised authority in Jesus' name," Adamson says. "There's nothing fun or entertaining about the demonic world. Once we encounter the truth of Christ, counterfeit spirituality is no longer attractive."

Adamson does see a bright side to this dark trend, however.

"I'm more encouraged than discouraged," he says. "There has never been a generation more ripe for a Pentecostal expression of the gospel. Our culture is fixated on the supernatural. The Holy Spirit is the true form of what Satan is trying to counterfeit with this undead trend. Rather than talking about what we're against, we need to talk about who Jesus is and what we stand for."

Arnold T. Blumberg, an author and professor who taught a course on zombies at the University of Baltimore, says scary stories provide insight into a culture's unspoken fears, struggles and insecurities.

"The zombie functions as an allegory for all sorts of things that play out in our country, whether it's the threat of communism during the Cold War or our fears about bioterrorism," Blumberg says. "It's relatively easy to connect the zombie to what is happening in culture."

Glen Ryswyk, an AG chaplain and clinical director of the Christian Family Counseling Center in Lawton, Okla., says people who are hurting may unconsciously identify with the terror and turmoil depicted in horror plots.

"The darkness they are finding in this fantasy world is consistent with the way they feel about themselves on the inside," Ryswyk says. "These horrible images of zombies with decaying flesh may be an accurate reflection of the brokenness of their souls."

Ryswyk says condemnation does little to change hearts. Instead, he says, the church needs to reach out with genuine demonstrations of Christ's love.

"People often retreat into dark fantasies because they don't know how to be whole," Ryswyk says. "But when they are received with grace and acceptance, that is incredibly powerful."

Brenda Spina, a family therapist and licensed AG minister, warns that parents should prayerfully monitor what their kids watch and read.

"The brain must work overtime in younger people to manage the fright responses they may experience because of the sights and sounds exposed to them," says Spina, owner and director of the Center for Family Healing in Appleton, Wis. "Multiple studies indicate the effects last long into adulthood due to the trauma response of the brain."

A study by the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that college students who watched horror movies, such as Poltergeist and It, before age 14 were more likely to suffer from sleep problems and irrational fears.

"These findings certainly argue for parental and caregiver caution when choosing appropriate media fare for young people," wrote Joanne Cantor, the study's author. "Making the wrong choice of a movie or a TV show can alter a person's life in very intense, distressful and irrational ways. Understanding the long-term consequences of media exposure is critical to ensuring the long-term emotional health of young people."

Adamson says it isn't enough for parents to forbid certain forms of entertainment. He says parents need to be aware of cultural trends and the choices their children face so parents can explain their beliefs and the Bible's teachings on these topics.

"Scripture is clear there is an afterlife and a supernatural realm," Adamson says. "Heaven is real, and hell is real. There are angels and evil spirits, but there's no such thing as ghosts, vampires or zombies. All of these monsters are fabrications of the imagination. We need to go to Scripture first so we can know the truth and learn to honor the Lord with our lives."

http://www.charismanews.com/culture/40304-zombies-vampires-dark-themes-invade-christian-homes?utm


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on July 19, 2013, 03:52:45 pm
Quote
"The brain must work overtime in younger people to manage the fright responses they may experience because of the sights and sounds exposed to them," says Spina, owner and director of the Center for Family Healing in Appleton, Wis. "Multiple studies indicate the effects last long into adulthood due to the trauma response of the brain."

When I was growing up as a boy in the 80's, they had vampire et al entertainment, but they were largely marketed at adults. Don't remember much of this marketed at the younger crowd. Yeah, now it seems like it has reversed quite a bit in our present day.

Also - this could be used as conditioning on the lost world so that the rapture of the "dead in Christ..." can be explained away. I think the whole UFO deception will explain away the "alive and remain...".


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on July 20, 2013, 12:05:33 pm
Also, especially after the turn of this century, occult books like "Harry Potter" that have an outwardly entertainment look on it have been saturated in the market toward the younger crowd. And now you have wicked, twisted stuff like vampires and zombies being saturated in the market as well.

Ultimately, it's as if they are indoctrinating the youth in esoteric occult teachings via this "entertainment" stuff.

And speaking of indoctrinating respective flocks in this esoteric occult teachings in a crafty manner, the "alternative" media is doing the same with people like Alex Jones, David Icke, Michael Pfisario(sp), Jordan Maxwell, Alan Watt, etc pushing these teachings, but having an outward appearance that they're anti-NWO patriots.

What once was refused vehemently in society(ie-Blavatsky's Luciferian teachings) once upon a time ago now seems to be accepted by this same society without any shots be fired. No surprise, as prophecy is coming to pass.

1Tim 4:1  Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
1Ti 4:2  Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;



Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on September 24, 2013, 04:03:21 am
The Rise of the Paranormal
Monday, September 23, 2013

A new study has been released in the U.K. on the growing belief in ghosts.  More than half of those taking part (52%) said they believed in the supernatural, up markedly from similar studies in 2005 and 2009 (both hovered around 40%).

Even more revealing?  One in five claimed to have had some kind of paranormal experience.

The supernatural has become big business in the U.K. in recent years, with the popularity of television shows like Most Haunted, and the spread of so-called “ghost walks” around supposedly haunted parts of city centers.  English Heritage and the National Trust have both started to identify which of their properties are said to be occupied by ghosts in order to attract more visitors.

It’s a similar story in the United States.

Beyond the rage of the Twilight series of books and movies, NBC is getting ready to unveil a $2 million per episode Downtown Abbey-ish series on Dracula.  Fox’s main show for the fall is an updated take on Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horsemen.  And in case you weren’t paying attention, the second installment of the Insidious series claimed the top spot last weekend at the box office.

It seems our interest in the paranormal knows few bounds.

Dave Wood, chairman of the group conducting the recent study, offers a telling explanation:  “It could be that in a society which has seen economic uncertainty and is dominated by information and technology, more people are seeking refuge in the paranormal, whereas in the past they might have sought that in religion.”

I hope every pastor and church leader who is reading this will re-read that last paragraph.

The word “occult” just means that which is hidden, or secret, beyond the range of ordinary human knowledge or below the surface of normal life.  Used in that sense, it’s almost a neutral term.  But it has come to be used as a reference to those practices which link up, intentionally or not, with the hidden, or secret, world of Satan and his demons.

And that is not neutral.

Then it involves engaging the forces of darkness, connecting with Satan and his fellow demons.  When someone does that, they willfully open the door of their life to their presence and activity.

And nothing could be more dangerous.

So what are the marks of something “occultic” in this way?  There are three primary characteristics:

The first characteristic is the disclosure or communication of information unavailable to humans through normal means.  This would involve things like horoscopes, fortune-telling, psychic hotlines, and tarot cards.

The second mark of things “occultic” has to do with the placing of persons in contact with supernatural powers, paranormal energies, or demonic forces.  This would entail the attempt to summon up a spirit, or a deceased relative through a séance, or channeling a spirit, or procuring the services of someone claiming to be a medium.

The third mark of the world of the occult is any attempt to gain and master power in order to manipulate or influence other people into certain actions.  This would include all forms of witchcraft and the casting of spells.

The irony of the rise in the belief in ghosts is that there is no such thing as ghosts.  Biblically, whatever manifestations one might encounter are not the dead, but the demonic.

But the demons are only too happy for the ruse.

So while our culture embraces the Ghostbusters, our job is to give them a different answer to the question, “Who you gonna call?”

http://www.christianity.com/blogs/dr-james-emery-white/the-rise-of-the-paranormal.html?utm


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on September 24, 2013, 11:07:42 am
Quote
The first characteristic is the disclosure or communication of information unavailable to humans through normal means.  This would involve things like horoscopes, fortune-telling, psychic hotlines, and tarot cards.

The second mark of things “occultic” has to do with the placing of persons in contact with supernatural powers, paranormal energies, or demonic forces.  This would entail the attempt to summon up a spirit, or a deceased relative through a séance, or channeling a spirit, or procuring the services of someone claiming to be a medium.

The third mark of the world of the occult is any attempt to gain and master power in order to manipulate or influence other people into certain actions.  This would include all forms of witchcraft and the casting of spells.

The irony of the rise in the belief in ghosts is that there is no such thing as ghosts.  Biblically, whatever manifestations one might encounter are not the dead, but the demonic.

I agree - if anything, it's part of the "strong delusion" that's heating up now, and as we're getting closer to the end times.

And a couple of comments here...

1) Not that I endorse Bill Cooper(while his research was with the Illuminati was thorough, he had some big doctrinal issues) - he showed some good insight when he said how the Illuminati minions don't exactly conjure up demonic spirits onto themselves, but they would use these esoteric writings to create a puppet show on the world. For example - despite the fact that every Presidential/Congressional election(and throw in state elections for good measure too) are rigged, the MSM and other news sources do one heck of a job making it look REAL(hence deceiving the masses into thinking they have to get out and vote). He also gave a number of other examples(ie-the UFO deception, and the Babylonian religions infiltrating churches).

2) Don't want to bring up my experiences with that Asian missionary "prophet" I had 2 years ago(you guys remember the whole ordeal), but pretty much he did the same thing - he tried to place me in contact with demonic forces(while making me believe he was casting out devils from me). Like I said, I could even FEEL my brain struggling against it as I was calling out the name of Jesus. When all was said and done, he ended up expressing his frustration to my mom saying, "There's nothing more I can do about it". Anyhow - this is a recent example in my lifetime.

3) Let's not forget about all of the subtle witchcraft being done in the modern-day organized church system - for example, the "tithing" issue. Pastors by large are manipulating their pews by not only twisting scripture, but getting women to manipulate their husbands into thinking they're living in sin if they don't "tithe". Or how about the whole "alter calls" nonsense where people come up after the pastor's sermon, and all they do is pray the "sinner's prayer" thinking it'll save them.

No, it's not like "ghosts" or "demonic spirits" like you see in the movies, per se, will enter these church buildings, but ultimately look at all of the wolves and false teachings that have subsequently infiltrated them - Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Emergent theology, Beth Moore, Phillip Yancey, the New Age Message bible, Homeland Security, Freemasons, etc - THESE are the kind of abominable false spirits that have infiltrated it b/c the Lord has given them over to their enemies for rejecting his word.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on October 13, 2013, 08:23:54 pm
the 2013 fall season of occult shows

Sleepy Hollow FOX
Almost Human FOX
Marvels Agents of SHIELD ABC
The Tomorrow People the CW
The Originals the CW
The Vampire Diaries the CW
Beauty and the Beast the CW
Supernatural the CW
ONCE upon a time ABC
Resurrection ABC 2014
Grimm NBC
Dracula NBC

this is just the prime time stuff ive noticed. Im sure im missing a lot of cable programing.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 13, 2013, 11:19:47 pm
the 2013 fall season of occult shows

Sleepy Hollow FOX
Almost Human FOX
Marvels Agents of SHIELD ABC
The Tomorrow People the CW
The Originals the CW
The Vampire Diaries the CW
Beauty and the Beast the CW
Supernatural the CW
ONCE upon a time ABC
Resurrection ABC 2014
Grimm NBC
Dracula NBC

this is just the prime time stuff ive noticed. Im sure im missing a lot of cable programing.

Yeah, I've noticed that too - pretty much on almost all of the entertainment channels they are playing some form of occultic programming, packaged in fiction entertainment.

I know this is how the lost world operates, but nonetheless I don't recall THIS much of an onslaught in the entertainment media like this.


Title: Re: Halloween 2011 thread
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 23, 2013, 10:28:18 pm
Here's a clip from a 1982 movie telegraphing their punches about their true draconian agendas concerning Halloween. The guy in the clip talks about its roots going all the way back to the festival of Samhain(which involved "sacrifices"), and also a way how TPTB controls the masses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDrG9HAZBLk


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on October 28, 2013, 01:22:53 pm
CBS Minnesota is pushing real witches and new-age nuts on their news sites.


(http://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/logourl.png)(http://cbsminnesota.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/wcco-eye4-logo.png?w=36)(http://cbsminnesota.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/wcco-am-sm.png?w=59)
(http://cbsminnesota.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/minnesota.png)

Arts & Culture

Best Fortune Tellers In Minnesota

October 28, 2013 7:00 AM


Fortune telling as entertainment is a widely accepted practice in our popular culture. No longer is it seen as sorcery, soothsaying or divination such as described in the Bible. Instead, fortune telling has become fun and informal. We are beguiled by the teller’s predictions, advice, suggestions and affirmations. What follows are five metro-area people who have served many clients with their craft.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/top-lists/best-fortune-tellers-in-minnesota/


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 28, 2013, 02:15:49 pm
Yeah, it's come to a point where the masses pretty much think it's not much of a deal.

Back in the 90's, while it was tolerated, it was pretty much scoffed by the masses.

As for witches - I think people have a misperception that they're unattractive looking people who wear black robes, a pointed hat, and ride on broomsticks. NOT even close!

2Cor 11:12  But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we.
2Co 11:13  For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
2Co 11:14  And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.



Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Kilika on October 29, 2013, 07:23:25 am
Quote
NOT even close!

Exactly. I know that to be true from personal knowledge. In fact, if one didn't know better, they would think that a witch is some New Age flower child looking for peace and harmony with nature. They are more aligned with nature and naturalist/tree hugger attitudes.

The wicked world has done an extensive job of promoting witches (via Halloween) as some ugly creature that lives in caves or something as a means of misdirection. The truth is a person wouldn't know somebody is a witch unless the person really pressed them about how they believe because witches do not just tell anybody who they are.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on October 30, 2013, 12:16:08 pm
Spellbound: why witchcraft is enchanting a new generation of teenage girls

It's like the Charmed years of the 1990s, as TV shows, books and films focus on magic, the supernatural and all things wiccan


When Ryan Murphy, the creator of American Horror Story, announced that the third season of the American TV series would focus on witches, he was riding the crest of a wave. Not since the 1990s – the era of Buffy's geek goddess, Willow Rosenberg, and a scowling Fairuza Balk in The Craft – have witches been so much in demand.

In the young-adult section of bookshops, shelves that recently groaned under the weight of tales of tormented vampires and lovelorn werewolves, are now stuffed with stories of witchcraft and magic, from Ruth Warburton's much-praised Winter Trilogy to Jessica Spotswood's Cahill Witch Chronicles. Lower down the age range, last month the most recent in Jill Murphy's long-running Worst Witch series was published, while among the predictions for this Christmas's bestselling toys are the Bratz spinoff, House of Witchez. For adults, next year will mark the climax of Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy, centring on the relationship between a vampire and a feisty American witch.

In film, highlights of the BFI's gothic season include Burn Baby Burn! a festival of witchcraft on film, which comes to Belfast's Queens Film Theatre in early November, and the once-banned 1922 Danish witch movie Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages, showing this week at Filmhouse Edinburgh and the following week at the Glasgow Film Theatre and Dundee Contemporary Arts. Even Meryl Streep is getting in on the act – recent stills from the forthcoming film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods show her transformed into a hag complete with wild grey hair and long nails.

However, it is on television that the season of the witch has truly taken hold. In addition to American Horror Story, with its tale of voodoo queens and teenage witches, there's Lifetime's The Witches of East End, adapted from a novel by Melissa de la Cruz and featuring a family of spellcasters led by Julia Ormond. Vampire Diaries spinoff The Originals (on the Syfy channel) has a central storyline about witchcraft and in Universal's Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane deals with duelling covens in present-day America.

So why witches – and why now? "The idea of being able to manipulate supernatural forces still resonates," says Owen Davies, professor of social history at the University of Hertfordshire and author of America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft after Salem. "Witches and ghosts speak to something fundamental and innate in our psyche. It's an emotional connection."

The last time witches were so in fashion, in the 1990s, the response from young girls was intense. "When Buffy and Charmed were at their peak, I would get letters from teenage girls, mainly from America, asking for help about where to look for spells," says Davies. "Those shows gave teenage girls a feeling of empowerment; there's something very appealing about magic and witchcraft. There have also been studies of girls who were interested in witch shows in the 1990s, following how many went on to become practising wiccans.It's not a huge number, but it's interesting that some of them watched the shows and thought, 'I want to know more'."

Ruth Warburton, whose latest young-adult novel, Witch Finder, will be out in January, feels the growing interest is partially driven by a teenage desire to see girls in less passive roles. The most striking thing about the recent movie Beautiful Creatures (adapted from a bestselling teen novel) was that the hero worshipped from the sidelines as his witch girlfriend came into her powers.

"Often the traditional way of looking at relationships in young-adult fiction is that the guy has all the power and the interesting life and the girl goes along for the ride, but that's not the whole story," says Warburton. "Increasingly, we're trying to bring our daughters up to believe they can be the leader; they can have the adventure; they can do the cool stuff and one thing about witches is that they allow you to explore that moment when girls become teenagers and realise the power they have as women and how exhilarating that can be."

It is also arguable that these new shows reflect a changing attitude in television. The era of the anti-hero is coming to a close with the end of Breaking Bad and the final seasons of Mad Men. In their place have come female-centric shows, from Orange is the New Black to Masters of Sex, and Scandal. Thus Witches of East End is as interested in the bonds between mothers and daughters as in potions and curses, while American Horror Story: Coven conducts a serious examination of outsiderdom, exclusion and the nature of power. "The witches are a great allegory for any minority group that's been persecuted and had to go underground and finally is like: 'You know what? Dammit no, we're fighting back,'" the show's creator Murphy said.

It helps that both shows are happy to play with stereotypes. We tend to see witches as withered crone or seductive enchantress, Baba Yaga or Morgan Le Fay, yet for Witches of East End the key is that these women are a normal family with a family's ups and downs.

Yet Davies argues that the key to witch-related success remains image. "The image of the witch has transformed from someone extremely dangerous, through the sexy domesticated witches of Bewitched to the new wave of young, sexy witches in Charmed and Buffy to now," he says. "We're not interested in the mundane reality – we don't want to watch a drama about someone falsely accused of bewitching a pig." In other words, just as our vampires are now soulful lost boys, so our witches must be appealing in looks, if not always in deed.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/26/witches-cast-spell-on-culture


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 30, 2013, 02:13:11 pm
Quote
The last time witches were so in fashion, in the 1990s, the response from young girls was intense. "When Buffy and Charmed were at their peak, I would get letters from teenage girls, mainly from America, asking for help about where to look for spells," says Davies. "Those shows gave teenage girls a feeling of empowerment; there's something very appealing about magic and witchcraft. There have also been studies of girls who were interested in witch shows in the 1990s, following how many went on to become practising wiccans.It's not a huge number, but it's interesting that some of them watched the shows and thought, 'I want to know more'."

The old lie of Satan's carrot - which will continue leading them down the rabbit hole...


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Kilika on October 31, 2013, 04:08:59 am
Quote
Ruth Warburton, whose latest young-adult novel, Witch Finder, will be out in January, feels the growing interest is partially driven by a teenage desire to see girls in less passive roles.

Now that's a lie. It's not driven by teenage girl's desires for less passive roles. It's driven by the desire of the world for teenage girls, and boys. Ultimately, it's the Jezebel spirit that wants to dominate man that is moving women into these wicked things.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on October 31, 2013, 04:56:51 am
Mike Hoggard does a pretty good presentation on the present occult activities in the media

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=1029131448518


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 31, 2013, 10:50:06 am
Now that's a lie. It's not driven by teenage girl's desires for less passive roles. It's driven by the desire of the world for teenage girls, and boys. Ultimately, it's the Jezebel spirit that wants to dominate man that is moving women into these wicked things.

Rev 2:18  And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass;
Rev 2:19  I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last to be more than the first.
Rev 2:20  Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
Rev 2:21  And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.
Rev 2:22  Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.



Title: Re: Halloween 2011 thread
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on November 05, 2013, 03:34:25 pm
Discussed this case of Ryan Ferguson, who was wrongly convicted of a murder he didn't commit in another thread here. For the most part, at least from what I've observed, the whole court process just seemed rigged and compromised from both sides for a good while. His conviction was overturned today, but again, the whole thing just seemed rigged from the beginning - and to boot the murder happened on a Halloween night.
http://endtimesandcurrentevents.freesmfhosting.com/index.php/topic,8229.msg42124.html#msg42124


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Kilika on November 05, 2013, 04:11:51 pm
Quote
For the most part, at least from what I've observed, the whole court process just seemed rigged and compromised from both sides for a good while

Basically, it IS rigged, right down to the state giving you a lawyer who works for the state. ::)

Society has been brainwashed into the lie that the prosecution never lies or cheats to win a case, regardless of guilt, but the fact is, men have egos and pride in the world, and some go to great lengths to make themselves be somebody, even if it means outright lying. It's not about guilt or innocence, it's about who can win their case in court.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on January 28, 2014, 04:00:11 am
Haunting in Indiana leads to family’s exorcism, child’s levitation: Reports

Chilling reports taken from the residents of a Gary, Ind., home recount a haunting that involved a 12-year-old girl levitating over her bed and a 9-year-old boy walking on a hospital ceiling. Astonishingly, the family's recollections are backed by not only a local police official but also by medical personnel.

 A Gary, Ind., mother of three claims demons caused her 12-year-old daughter to levitate and her 9-year-old son to walk on a hospital ceiling — accounts supported by medical personnel and police officials, according to a shocking report.

For Latoya Ammons, the late night footsteps, the creaking of a door and wet footprints left by a shadowy male figure through her living room were merely child's play when that was all her family had to endure.

But then things turned violent.

It was March 10, 2012 — four months after her family moved into a three-bedroom rental — that Ammons’ saw her daughter floating above her bed, the Indy Star reports.

It was first a scream that alerted her grandmother, Rosa Campbell, to the girl's bedroom at about 2 a.m. that night.

"I thought, 'What's going on?'" Campbell recalled to the Star. "'Why is this happening?'"

When the girl fell back onto the bed, she gained consciousness but said she had no memory of what had happened.

Two clairvoyants told them the house was filled with more than 200 demons. The family's church recommended pouring olive oil on Ammons' children's hands and feet, with smeared crosses along their foreheads, as a form of protection.

At one clairvoyant's recommendation, the frightened mother created an altar in her basement with a white candle and a statue of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. It was down there, beneath the staircase leading up to her kitchen, where the family believed the terrifying events began.

She and a friend prayed over the altar while filling the area with smoke in an attempt to spiritually purify the home, she told The Star.

For three days, nothing happened. And then Ammons and her children began acting out.

 The mother found her youngest, a 7-year-old boy, inside a closet while allegedly talking to another boy only Ammons' son could see.

When asked what they were talking about, her son allegedly told her that the other child was describing what it was like to be killed.

Not long after that, the woman claims her 7-year-old flew out of a bathroom and that her 12-year-old daughter required stitches after being hit in the head.

The girl told health care professionals that she sometimes felt like she was being choked. A voice would tell her that she'd never see her family again.

On April 19, 2012, the family went to see Dr. Geoffrey Onyeukwu, whose encounter with the children was one he said he'd never forget.

"Twenty years, and I've never heard anything like that in my life," the physician told the Star about their first meeting since the frightening events began. "I was scared myself when I walked into the room."

According to a report by the Department of Children Services obtained by The Star, one of the boys began cursing at Onyeukwu in a demonic voice. He and his brother then abruptly passed out and wouldn't come to.

The police were called. When both children woke up in a hospital, the youngest began screaming and violently thrashing about.

It took five men to hold the 7-year-old boy down, Campbell told The Star.

The children's behavior was so unusual and unexplainable that doctors feared their mother was suffering a mental illness and possibly encouraging the kids to act that way.

Ammons was reported to DCS for possible child abuse, but when she was evaluated by a hospital psychiatrist she was found to be of "sound mind."

 DCS family case manager Valerie Washington was then called in to evaluate the children. When she met them, the youngest, she reported, started to growl and flash his teeth at her. His eyes then rolled back into his head.

Then the 7-year-old lunged for his older brother and put his hands around his throat while saying in a voice that wasn't his own: "It's time to die. I will kill you," according to Washington's report.

Once released from his brother's grasp, the 9-year-old allegedly started head-butting his grandmother.

Campbell took his hand and started to pray when the boy walked backward up a wall and onto the ceiling. Once there he flipped and landed perfectly on his feet.

Washington's DCS report is corroborated by Willie Lee Walker, a registered nurse, who was in the room with them.

"He walked up the wall, flipped over her [the grandmother] and stood there," Walker told The Star. "There's no way he could've done that."

Washington, in her report to police, described the boy as "gliding."

The 7-year-old boy stayed overnight in the hospital with Ammons while Campbell took the other two children to a relative's for the night.

They returned the next day, which was the youngest boy's 8th birthday, but were greeted by DCS workers, who took all three children into custody.

The following day, the hospital chaplain called Rev. Michael Maginot, asking him to perform an exorcism on the 9-year-old boy.

The reverend agreed to interview the mother and grandmother at the home. During their meeting, a bathroom light bulb flickered, blinds in the kitchen swung, and footprints appeared in the living room, he told the Star.

 After that, Ammons and Campbell moved out to temporarily live with a relative, but less than a week later were called back for an afternoon inspection by the DCS.

Gary police Capt. Charles Austin accompanied the two women with Washington and another officer.

Austin tells the Star that after that visit, he believes in both ghosts and demons. He also vowed to never go inside the house again.

While at the home, the police audio recorder malfunctioned and brand-new batteries died. While listening to the recording later, an officer heard a voice whispering, "Hey," according to the police reports obtained by the Star.

Photos taken in the home's basement appeared to show a cloudy image near the stairs. When enlarged, the image reportedly resembled a human face.

A second, green image allegedly resembled a female figure.

Before the end of the month, a petition by the DCS for temporary wardship of the three children was granted by Lake Juvenile Court. The department argued that the children missed too much school for what the mother argued were illnesses because of their home's demons.

During their wardship, the children were given evaluations by separate psychologists. Each evaluation's report concluded that the children's behavior was reinforced by their mother or relatives.

In the meantime, several exorcisms were performed on Ammons by Rev. Maginot.

By June, Ammons and her mother had moved back to Indianapolis and by November, the children were returned to their mother.

The DCS met with the family and in their assessment found "no demonic presences or spirits in the home."

Charles Reed, the owner of the Indiana home, told the Star that he had never heard of such problems before the family moved in.

Another renter has since moved in and purportedly hasn't made any complaints, either.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/haunting-indiana-home-leads-exorcism-levitation-report-article-1.1593169?utm_content=bufferce2a7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Kilika on January 28, 2014, 05:06:27 am
"How can Satan cast out Satan?"


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on January 28, 2014, 05:09:55 am
"How can Satan cast out Satan?"

Yet he sure can deceive and lie, and what better than that?


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on January 29, 2014, 08:21:22 am
Mother In Indiana Says Her Demon-Possessed Children Were Levitating And “Walking On The Walls”

What would you do if your children were picked up and flung around your house by an invisible force?  What would you do if your children started convulsing while “chanting Satanic verses”?  The things that a mother in Indiana says happened to her children sound absolutely crazy.  For example, she claims that her 9-year-old son walked up a wall and ceiling backwards while under the power of a demon.  Normally people would just call her a lunatic and dismiss her wild allegations, but an official from child services and a nurse were there and saw it for themselves.  So how are we supposed to dismiss the testimony of those eyewitnesses?  And as you will read about below, that was not the only instance where public officials were able to see for themselves that these children truly were demon-possessed.

The head of the Gary, Indiana police department, Captain Charles Austin, is a believer.  According to the Indianapolis Star, he was skeptical at first but now his skepticism is totally gone…

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/mother-in-indiana-says-her-demon-possessed-children-were-levitating-and-walking-on-the-walls


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on February 10, 2014, 09:39:46 pm
http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletters/2014/newsletter20140204.htm#11
NEW BOOKLET TRACT: The “Spiritual” Truth Behind Alcoholics Anonymous—And Why Christians Should Think Twice About Joining A.A.

The “Spiritual” Truth Behind Alcoholics Anonymous written by John Lanagan is our newest Lighthouse Trails Print Booklet Tract. The Booklet Tract is 18 pages long and sells for $1.95 for single copies. Quantity discounts are as much as 50% off retail.  Below is the content of the booklet. To order copies of The “Spiritual” Truth Behind Alcoholics Anonymous, click here.

** Note: See what Dr. Harry Ironside and The Berean Call have to say below.

By John Lanagan

Can two walk together, except they be agreed? (Amos 3:3)

I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another. (Isaiah 42:8)

Christians in Alcoholics Anonymous may not see it this way, but in their participation of A.A., they are standing in agreement with a belief system that lifts up strange gods. In Alcoholics Anonymous, all gods are considered equal and are called “the higher power,” thus relegating Christ our King to commonality as if He were simply one nameless deity among many. Yet Scripture tells us:

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

In 1941, Jack Alexander of the Saturday Evening Post wrote the article that provided A.A. its first national publicity. Describing A.A.’s “higher power,” Alexander noted the following:

[The alcoholic] “may choose to think of his Inner Self, the miracle of growth, a tree, man’s wonderment at the physical universe, the structure of the atom, or mere mathematical infinity. Whatever form is visualized, the neophyte is taught that he must rely on it and, in his own way, to pray to the Power for strength
.”1

Please note that Alexander’s article, with this A.A. definition of “god,” is distributed as official Alcoholics Anonymous literature.

“God” Without the Doctrine

Nearly eighty years later this salad-bar approach—design your own god—has seemingly become a cultural norm. “Spiritual” is in. “Religion” is out. Many Americans now refer to their god as a “higher power.” A.A.’s twelve-step program (along with cultural acceptance of anti-biblical meditative practices) has literally changed the spiritual direction of the country.

In The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, author Christine Wicker credits Alcoholics Anonymous with “hastening the fall of the evangelical church.”2 Wicker notes how A.A. “slowly exposed people to the notion they could get [a god] without the dogma, the doctrine, and the outdated rules. Without the church, in fact.”3

Since the twelve steps have nothing to do with Christ, neither sin nor biblical repentance is addressed. This, of course, is very appealing to the flesh. The Steps address “wrongs,” “making amends,” and “moral inventory,” but one inserts one’s own moral code within the context of these Steps. Because of these Steps, millions believe they are right with “god” and man.

Everything, it seems, has been turned upside down: Alcoholics Anonymous can supposedly help everyone, but experiencing Christ without the twelve steps can supposedly help no one. (Sobriety without A.A. will be addressed at the end of this booklet.)

When all is said and done, A.A. attendance serves to subtly condition Christians to worship with non-believers; perhaps this has been the point all along.

It is written:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? . . . Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. (2 Corinthians 6:14-15, 17)

Obviously, we are not separating. Christians participate in A.A.’s Christ-less corporate prayers every day.

 A Spiritual Program

For decades, A.A. has been referred to as a “spiritual program,” a harmless adjunct to one’s own religious belief system. Because of this misrepresentation, most Christians are sincerely unaware that A.A. is a subtrend of the New Age.

Richard Rohr, a Catholic priest and renowned advocate for New Age type meditation practices says this of A.A.:

The spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous will go down in history as the significant and authentic contribution to the history of spirituality. It is genuinely a spirituality
.4

In A.A.’s twelve step program, anything and everything—from spirits to inner divinity—can be worshiped as “god.” One of A.A.’s Big Book teachings is that God can only be found within ourselves.5 A.A.’s belief system by no means requires dealing with sin—or the Savior.

In order to comprehend the hold A.A. exerts upon people, it must be understood that two key passages in the A.A. Big Book (essentially the A.A. “bible”) are interpreted from a literal, fundamentalist perspective. Here is what is read to alcoholics at the beginning of every single meeting:

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way.”6

The Big Book goes on to note, “We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not.”7

Despite the elasticity of the higher power, these two fundamentalist passages lock many into the A.A. system while also teaching contempt or distrust for alternative ways of gaining sobriety. Particularly opposed is the idea of getting help in “church.”

Irving Peter Gellman observes:

A member who suggests that A.A. is not as effective as maintained, and who implies that some improvement might be made, will be censured when broaching these ideas. The A.A. program is deemed infallible, whereas other methods are considered less than perfect.8

Christians in the program often adjust their theology. In a pastor’s office, an A.A. Christian told me straight faced that alcoholics were too angry and didn’t want to hear about Christ, so the “higher power” concept was necessary. This is simply one more repetition of what I have heard at many, many A.A. meetings.

A.A. has given us the confusion of recovery passing for sanctification, and twelve-step theology has some Christians in A.A. believing it is perfectly fine to encourage alcoholics to go ahead and make up a “god.” To help justify attendance in this non-biblical spirituality, the myth has been promulgated that most alcoholics with custom-designed higher powers will eventually come to Christ. This is simply not so. It is relatively rare but is presented as a common occurrence. This claim is one of the primary ways Christians justify A.A.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, most Christians experience a transference of faith. The twelve-step experience often becomes an idol. It is not uncommon to speak with Christians who are more concerned with “recovery” than sanctification and who demonstrate a preference for A.A. rather than the fellowship with the saints.

[A]nd them that worship and that swear by the Lord, and that swear by Malcham. (Zephaniah 1:5)

On November 15, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that A.A. is indeed religious in nature. An A.A. meeting is essentially a devotional service. The “higher power” receives praise and worship; confession is heard; testimony is given; the group invokes the Serenity Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer. The 12th Step instructs A.A. members to go forth and Spread the Word.

Whether one calls it religious or spiritual, the bottom line is that millions have been taught to reach outside (or inside) of themselves and draw on a higher power to give them strength.

Lost in all this is the holiness of the God of the Bible—the God who absolutely does not want His people placing Him amongst false idols. Lost—ignored, really—is the Lord’s abhorrence of worship of false gods. Was Jeremiah mistaken? King Josiah? Do biblical passages such as 2 Corinthians 6:14-17 and Galatians 1:8-9 fail to address Alcoholics Anonymous?

 A.A.’s “All-Inclusive” God

Alcoholics Anonymous is spiritual in origin; it was created to point unbelievers away from Christ and to dilute the theology of the Christians who do attend the meetings.

A simple perusal of the A.A. Big Book demonstrates how A.A. teaching opposes Christ. The A.A. Big Book states:

We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the Realm of the Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men. When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God.”9 (emphasis added)

And yet, the Lord specifically warns against the broad way:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. (Matthew 7:13)

If the Lord warns against the broad way of spirituality, why do we think we know better? Why would we even want to participate in such a thing or give it credibility by approving of it?

Hurting alcoholics who do not know the Lord also learn, through meetings and the A.A. Big Book, that they do not need Christ in order to have a relationship with God. According to the Big Book:

[A]ll of us, whatever our race, creed, or color are children of a living Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest enough to try.10

Speaking from personal experience, this is how it is presented to alcoholics in the meetings—that one can simply reach out to “god,” and there he/she/it will be. Thus have many been pointed away from the biblical God because of A.A. Without Christ, we can never have a relationship or spend eternity with God the Father.

Some Disturbing History of A.A.

How did this happen? How did Christians get so involved with Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs? Unfortunately, writers such as pro-A.A. author Dick B. have been churning out books and articles about the alleged Christian roots of A.A. and the twelve steps for years. This has influenced many.

According to the Alcoholics Anonymous website, “the origins of Alcoholics Anonymous can be traced to the Oxford Group,”11 an ecumenical movement of the 1930s. Oxford’s founder, Frank Buchman, said “he never touched any doctrine in any of his meetings, as he did not want to upset or offend anyone.”12

The great preacher Dr. H.A. Ironside warned that the Oxford Group:

. . . appeals to people who reject the inspiration of [the Bible] as well to those who profess to believe it; it appeals to people who deny the Deity of Christ as well as to those who acknowledge it; to those who deny the eternal punishment of sin as well as those who believe in it. Here in our city it is openly endorsed by the Swedenborgians and by leaders of the Unitarians, as well as by a number who belong to orthodox churches. But it is silent about the blood of Christ
.13

Dr. Ironside also warned about the Oxford Group’s unholy meditation (emptying the mind) which often culminated in the practice of automatic writing:

Each one is urged in the morning to sit down quietly with the mind emptied of every thought, generally with a pencil in hand, waiting for God to say something to them. They wait and wait and wait. Sometimes they tell me nothing happens, at other times the most amazing things come. Tested by the Word of God many of these things are unscriptural. They lay themselves open for demons to communicate their blasphemous thoughts to them.14 (emphasis added)

This appears to have been the method A.A. co-founder (and former Oxford Group member) Bill Wilson used to receive the twelve steps. T.A. McMahon, chief editor at The Berean Call ministry, writes, “A.A.’s official biography indicates Bill Wilson received the details of the 12 Steps through spirit dictation.”15

While some insist A.A. has a Christian or biblical origin, Alcoholics Anonymous is like a pie. One can claim it is made with lemon meringue ingredients, but if tar, rat poison, and glass shards are also in the mix, is it ever really a lemon meringue pie? “[A] little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (1 Corinthians 5:6).

The Spiritual Proclivities of A.A.’s Founders

Factors affecting A.A.’s formation must include: A.A. co-founders Bill Wilson’s and Dr. Bob Smith’s biblically forbidden spiritualism, Dr. Bob’s freemasonry, the meditative silence/spirit communication learned from the Oxford Group, and the anti-biblical teachings of William James and New Thought heretic Emmet Fox.

The A.A. co-founders attended the Oxford Group separately before they met and together during 1935, which is the official starting date of Alcoholics Anonymous. During this time, Smith and Wilson were delving deeply into biblically forbidden spiritualism, which Wilson continued to practice for decades.

Early A.A. member Tom Powers saw the A.A. co-founders firsthand as they engaged in spiritualistic practices the Lord detests. “Now, these people, Bill and Bob, believed vigorously and aggressively. They were working away at the spiritualism; it was not just a hobby.”16

There are a number of Bill Wilson’s spiritualistic experiences documented in his official A.A. biography. Wilson wrote:

The ouija board got moving in earnest
. What followed was the fairly usual experience—it was a strange mélange of Aristotle, St. Francis, diverse archangels with odd names, deceased friends—some in purgatory and others doing nicely, thank you! There were malign and mischievous ones of all descriptions, telling of vices quite beyond my ken, even as former alcoholics. Then, the seemingly virtuous entities would elbow them out with messages of comfort, information, advice—and sometimes just sheer nonsense.17

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord (Deuteronomy 18:10-12)

A.A. and New Thought Emmet Fox

The co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous were also admirers of Emmet Fox and his heretical New Thought/New Age book, The Sermon on the Mount. This book was used in early A.A. before A.A.’s own Big Book was published. As pro-AA author Dick B. acknowledges, “[Fox’s] writings were favored by [A.A. co-founders] Bill W. and Dr. Bob.”18

Why is this significant that A.A. founders resonated with Emmet Fox? In The Sermon on the Mount, Fox teaches:

The “Plan of Salvation” which figured so prominently in the evangelical sermons and divinity books of a past generation is as completely unknown to the Bible as the Koran. There never was any such an arrangement in the universe, and the Bible does not teach it at all
.19

Fox’s book bristles with teachings that sincere Christians would not be able to embrace at all.

According to Fox’s The Sermon on the Mount:

[In] the Bible the term “Christ” is not identical with Jesus, the individual. It is a technical term which may be briefly defined as the Absolute Spiritual Truth about anything.
[/color]20

The plain fact is that Jesus taught no theology whatever.21

With regard to the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, Fox says it “was never intended by its author to be taken as history, but literal-minded people did so take it, with all sorts of absurd consequences.”22

Bob Smith has been portrayed for years as a biblical Christian. Yet, according to a woman quoted in A.A.’s official biography of Dr. Bob, “The first thing [Dr. Bob] did was get me Emmet Fox’s The Sermon on the Mount.”23 A Bible-believing Christian would never place such heresy in a hurting alcoholic’s hands.

Like the Gnostics, Emmet Fox was a purveyor of special secret knowledge. He writes:

Wonderful as the “outer” Bible is, it is far less than one percent of the “inner” Bible—the Bible that is hidden behind the symbols. If you have been reading the Bible without the spiritual interpretation, you have not found the real message of the Bible, for that lies below the surface.24

Fox’s influence should always be considered when one hears of references to the Bible in early AA. People assume, logically enough, that if the co-founders were mentioning the Word of God, this must mean they were Christians. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith probably viewed the Bible along the lines of Fox’s esoteric spiritual wisdom rather than believing it to be the literal Word of God. One cannot, after all, promote anti-biblical heresy and simultaneously believe and obey the Word of God.

As you can see, Alcoholics Anonymous has anything but a fundamental biblical or Christian origin. Spiritualism, New Thought, and contemplative prayer (meditation) are three factors that must be acknowledged.

Spiritually Deceptive Meditation Practices

As previously noted, A.A.’s twelve-step program (along with anti-biblical meditative practices) has literally changed the spiritual direction of the country.

What is meant by the term anti-biblical meditative practices? This refers to Eastern and New Age meditation but also to contemplative prayer, which is New Age meditation disguised with “Christianese” terminology.

In true biblical meditation, the mind remains active. We ponder, we consider, and think about the Scripture we have read. This can be a wonderful and profound time with the holy God.

This is not so with Eastern/New Age/contemplative. Here the object is to stop active thought, often by repeating a word or phrase over and over. When thought is stilled, the person enters what is known as the silence, and it is here that incredible spiritual deception can occur. This can affect and even determine one’s theology, a frightening thing considering all the “Christian contemplative” activity in churches these days.

These practices are rampant throughout our culture. The potential—and actuality—toward such spiritually deceptive meditation exists within A.A.’s Step 11:

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out
.

“Meditation is something that can always be further developed. It has no boundaries, either of width or height,” wrote A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson.25

Wilson believed:

The actual experience of meditation and prayer across the centuries is, of course, immense. The world’s libraries and places of worship are a treasure trove for all seekers.26

In other words, Wilson was open to meditative knowledge wherever it could be found—whether in Hinduism, Buddhism, distant libraries, the local Catholic church, or anywhere else.

This is an overall belief in twelve-step theology—there are absolutely no boundaries when it comes to defining the “higher power.”

This undefined “God” is meant, of course, to help. Tormented people, in the grasp of some overwhelming bondage, enter a twelve-step group and are told they must turn to a higher power. It doesn’t matter what you believe in, they are told, but it is crucial you believe in something.

So they do. They choose a spirit, perhaps, or a self-designed deity, or decide to worship the universe, or St. Jerome, or virtually anything else. But they surely reach out to something.

Then, when they reach Step 11, they seek through prayer and meditation even deeper communion with whatever idol–or entity–they have invited into their lives. As instructed, they ask for knowledge—what does the deity want them to do? They ask for power—and some enter the silence.

The revered Bill Wilson encouraged people to meditate. He stated, “Meditation is our step out into the sun.”27

Historically, around the world, much has been experienced in the meditative silence: bliss, spirit-guides, a higher self, oneness. And there have been false christs, wrapped in shining deception, communicating instructions and “wisdom” to some.

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14)

One God Among Many “Higher Powers”?

When it comes to A.A.’s “Christian” roots, God’s people have been—to use a technical term—snookered.

Scripture is clear. We were never meant to be part of an all-gods religion. It is not “legalism” to point out that the Lord will absolutely not be seen as one higher power among many. It is not “legalistic” to state that His people are absolutely to remain separate from non-Christian spirituality. (2 Corinthians 6:14-17, Galatians 1:8-9, Isaiah 42:8, 1 John 4:1-3, 2 John 9-11, Matthew 10:32-36, 1 John 2:23, John 14:6)

We should no more participate in A.A. because of alcohol addiction than we should attend the Mormon church to get help with family issues.

Bluntly stated, many Christians have ended up with more faith in the power of the twelve-step program than in Jesus Christ. We have disobeyed the Scriptures, and we are bearing the consequences.

If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15)

What, then, is a Christian to do? Bondage to alcohol is no light thing. It is important to understand that drunkards were set free in the early days of the church (1 Corinthians 6: 9-11). The power of Christ is just as available to us today.

A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson came to understand that many alcoholics—those who truly wanted to quit drinking—could not be helped by Alcoholics Anonymous. Wilson spent many years looking for effective alternatives,28 but alcoholics in A.A. meetings are never informed about this.

An article in Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education notes the following:

Cochrane Database conducted a systematic review of randomized controlled trials evaluating the effectiveness of AA and other Twelve-Step programs (labeled Twelve Step Facilitation or TSF). Eight studies were included in the review, and, of these, three evaluated AA programs. The conclusions of this review were that “no experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or TSF approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problem.” (Ferri, Amato, & Davoli, 2006)”29 (emphasis added)

People have the right to know A.A.’s success rate is limited. The body of Christ has the right to know that sending people into A.A. violates Scripture, points unbelievers away from Christ, and waters down essential theology of the Christian faith.

There are powerful Christian options such as Teen Challenge and the online ministry, Setting Captives Free. There is another totally biblical approach called The Most Excellent Way founded by a husband and wife who were alcoholics. They left A.A. and sought the Lord over how to help others.

Churches that allow the Holy Spirit to work in people’s lives will see people freed from addiction (bondage to sin). My church has fellowship once a week for those who are struggling. We already have the weapons to fight: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when we are born again into Jesus Christ, prayer, and His Word. In fact, the Bible tells us we have armor that we can wear when battling against the flesh, sin, and the works of darkness.

Therefore . . . let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. (1 Thessalonians 5:6-8, emphasis added)

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil . . . Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. (Ephesians 6:11, 16)

We look to the Bible to understand the sheer power of God: His holiness, His love, and His grace and mercy.

We do not downplay His hatred of sin. We rejoice in His faithfulness.
 Nor do we overlook simple common sense—but we start first with His Word and go from there.

The Word of God will pierce even the hardest heart. It is time to stop relying on Alcoholics Anonymous and obscure “higher powers,” and on mystical meditative practices, and start depending—truly depending—on the supremacy of Jesus Christ.

. . . That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. (Ephesians 3:16-17)


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Kilika on February 11, 2014, 03:02:32 am
Quote
When all is said and done, A.A. attendance serves to subtly condition Christians to worship with non-believers; perhaps this has been the point all along.

That's a REALLY long winded way of saying what is already known about AA.

They are indeed a "spiritual" styled program that accepts all people's gods. It's the world, right? So, no surprise.

The world hates Jesus, so of course they would relegate Him to just another god, because in the end they don't believe in spirituality, but rather in man's ability through scientific methods. The allowing of many gods and religions is a government thing and non-profit status requirement.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on September 23, 2014, 11:23:20 pm
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/567088/20140922/annabelle-forest-devil-doorstep-escape-satanic-sex.htm#.VCJh1xbt929
9/22/14
Satanic Sex Cult Has 1800 Men Having Sex With A Teen

"I was a schoolgirl by day and a sex slave at night" - this is how Annabelle Forest describes her situation back when she was forced by her own mother, Jacqueline Marling, to participate in a satanic sex cult led by Colin Batley. The two were already sentenced in 2011 for their abuse of Forest. However, their sentencing was not enough to bring Forest at peace. She wrote her memoir titled, 'The Devil on the Doorstep: My Escape From a Satanic Sex Cult' published August 14.

Forest revealed that she was introduced to the Satanic sex cult when she was just 7 years old. Her initiation involved watching her own mother having sexual intercourse with Batley. By the time that she was 11 years old, Batley raped her twice; by the time she was 14 she was already partaking in group sex being held at their own home. Within their community, there were at least two other families engaging in group sex under the command of the cult.

"He ruled our little community with an iron will and we were made to do what he ordered for fear of angering the Gods," Forest recalled. The cult's dogma was fashioned after the Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley. Its teachings include brainwashing the children to believe that having sex with other cult members is a way of proving themselves with god.

Forest thought she had encountered the worst, but it turned out the worst has just come when at one point, she was raped by her own mother. After the sickening ordeal, Batley asked her if she found it enjoyable. "I had to say yes. But inside I felt like dying," she remembered. She tried to take her own life after the incident but to no avail. 

Her nightmare continues as she was forced into prostitution to raise funding for the cult. She became pregnant at the age of 17 and finally was able to escape their house at the age of 18. She did not see both her mother and Batley until 2011 when she went to see them in court during their sentencing. During the trial, the court heard that Batley usually dress in hooded robes, performs chanting before instructing all members - women and children - to partake in group sex.

"I went to the sentencing in court because I wanted to see her one last time, I wanted her to reach out to me, to say it was all his fault and she was under his spell," Forest said. However, her mother "just made a face" and asked what she was doing there.

Forest is now living in peace with her own family in northern England. Being a mother to her children, Forest said she cannot fathom how her own mother was able to do all the evil things she did to her. She came to realise that she was also pure evil as opposed to what she thinks in the past that her mother was just being manipulated by Batley.

"If there's one thing I would like to achieve with my book, it would be for others to start really paying attention to the community they live in. There are abused children everywhere - it just takes one person to see it and that life could be saved," Forest stated.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on September 24, 2014, 08:31:47 pm
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/976816-christian-harry-potter-evangelical-mom-rewrite-removes-witchcraft-devil-worship-could-be-satire/
Christian Harry Potter? Evangelical Mom Rewrite Removes Witchcraft / ‘Devil Worship’; Could be Satire
By Jack Phillips, Epoch Times | September 23, 2014

A housewife allegedly rewrote the Harry Potter series to remove all instances of witchcraft and spellcasting, and replaced them with “prayer and miracles.”

The story was posted on FanFiction.net before it went viral a few days ago.

Part of it reads: “Hagrid beamed widely. He had been praying so hard to save a soul today; and he was so happy to have saved the soul of such a sweet, earnest little one. The poor boy, being raised by two parents who were not Christian; and who both went to work and left him with a babysitter all day long. It was a good thing Hagrid had got here in time. Five years down the road, Harry might have been a fornicating, drug-addicted Evolutionist!”

Here’s another excerpt: “With the simple faith so often seen in little ones, Harry got down on his knees; and lifted his hands skyward; and shouted prayerfully, “Dear Lord, please open these doors; and allow me to enter my new home!”

“With a loud, thunderous boom that echoed throughout the expansive, beautiful campus, the doors crashed open. Harry stood up piously as Hermione’s jaw dropped. Now, she knew for certain that this was truly a man of the Lord!”

However, while the entry has horrified some fans of the series, it might be satirical.

“While there is indeed a Christian Harry Potter fanfiction story circulating the internet, it isn’t entirely clear whether the writer’s intent was satirical or straightforward. Contrary to some rumors, there are no plans to create a published set of Harry Potter books without the troublesome witchcraft and wizardry,” as hoax-debunking website Snopes points out.

------------------------------------------------------------

Satire? Scripture says otherwise about this mom...

Luke 6:45  A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.



Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on September 26, 2014, 01:01:53 am
 ??? ??? ???

http://allafrica.com/stories/201409240829.html
9/24/14
Liberia: Dead Ebola Patients Resurrect?

By Franklin Doloquee

Two Ebola patients, who died of the virus in separate communities in Nimba County have reportedly resurrected in the county. The victims, both females, believed to be in their 60s and 40s respectively, died of the Ebola virus recently in Hope Village Community and the Catholic Community in Ganta, Nimba.

But to the amazement of residents and onlookers on Monday, the deceased reportedly regained life in total disbelief. The New Dawn Nimba County correspondent said the late Dorris Quoi of Hope Village Community and the second victim only identified as Ma Kebeh, said to be in her late 60s, were about to be taken for burial when they resurrected.

Ma Kebeh had reportedly been in door for two nights without food and medication before her alleged death. Nimba County has had bizarre news of Ebola cases with a native doctor from the county, who claimed that he could cure infected victims, dying of the virus himself last week.

News of the resurrection of the two victims has reportedly created panic in residents of Hope Village Community and Ganta at large, with some citizens describing Dorris Quoi as a ghost, who shouldn't live among them. Since the Ebola outbreak in Nimba County, this is the first incident of dead victims resurrecting.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on November 01, 2014, 05:57:35 am
Question: "What does the Bible say about ghosts / hauntings?"

Answer: Is there such a thing as ghosts? The answer to this question depends on what precisely is meant by the term “ghosts.” If the term means “spirit beings,” the answer is a qualified “yes.” If the term means “spirits of people who have died,” the answer is “no.” The Bible makes it abundantly clear that there are spirit beings, both good and evil. But the Bible negates the idea that the spirits of deceased human beings can remain on earth and “haunt” the living.

Hebrews 9:27 declares, “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” That is what happens to a person’s soul-spirit after death—judgment. The result of this judgment is heaven for the believer (2 Corinthians 5:6-8; Philippians 1:23) and hell for the unbeliever (Matthew 25:46; Luke 16:22-24). There is no in-between. There is no possibility of remaining on earth in spirit form as a “ghost.” If there are such things as ghosts, according to the Bible, they absolutely cannot be the disembodied spirits of deceased human beings.

The Bible teaches very clearly that there are indeed spirit beings who can connect with and appear in our physical world. The Bible identifies these beings as angels and demons. Angels are spirit beings who are faithful in serving God. Angels are righteous, good, and holy. Demons are fallen angels, angels who rebelled against God. Demons are evil, deceptive, and destructive. According to 2 Corinthians 11:14-15, demons masquerade as “angels of light” and as “servants of righteousness.” Appearing as a “ghost” and impersonating a deceased human being definitely seem to be within the power and abilities that demons possess.

The closest biblical example of a “haunting” is found in Mark 5:1-20. A legion of demons possessed a man and used the man to haunt a graveyard. There were no ghosts involved. It was a case of a normal person being controlled by demons to terrorize the people of that area. Demons only seek to “kill, steal, and destroy” (John 10:10). They will do anything within their power to deceive people, to lead people away from God. This is very likely the explanation of “ghostly” activity today. Whether it is called a ghost, a ghoul, or a poltergeist, if there is genuine evil spiritual activity occurring, it is the work of demons.

What about instances in which “ghosts” act in “positive” ways? What about psychics who claim to summon the deceased and gain true and useful information from them? Again, it is crucial to remember that the goal of demons is to deceive. If the result is that people trust in a psychic instead of God, a demon will be more than willing to reveal true information. Even good and true information, if from a source with evil motives, can be used to mislead, corrupt, and destroy.

Interest in the paranormal is becoming increasingly common. There are individuals and businesses that claim to be “ghost-hunters,” who for a price will rid your home of ghosts. Psychics, séances, tarot cards, and mediums are increasingly considered normal. Human beings are innately aware of the spiritual world. Sadly, instead of seeking the truth about the spirit world by communing with God and studying His Word, many people allow themselves to be led astray by the spirit world. The demons surely laugh at the spiritual mass-deception that exists in the world today.

http://www.gotquestions.org/QOTW.htm


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on November 28, 2014, 02:22:22 pm
Animals sacrificed in Nepal to bring good luck...
http://news.yahoo.com/nepals-mass-animal-slaughter-underway-despite-protests-092450244.html

Devotees slaughter tens of thousands...
http://news.yahoo.com/nepals-mass-animal-slaughter-underway-despite-protests-092450244.html


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on April 23, 2015, 09:21:24 am
Citing popular demand, Roman course seeks to boost exorcists


Matthew 12:26 And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?


 Citing what organizers describe as a culture saturated with “sexy young vampires” that trivialize evil, New Age spirituality, and a burgeoning interest in the occult and Tarot cards, a fabled Roman course held in mid-April aimed to boost the number of Catholic priests trained every year to perform exorcisms.

The annual week-long course on “Exorcism and Prayers of Liberation,” offered by an institute for priests linked to the Legionaries of Christ religious order and sponsored by Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, concluded on Saturday.

More than 170 priests from more than 30 countries traveled to Rome to learn about this centuries-old rite, often “misrepresented” in Hollywood movies: Making evil sexy for teenagers, course organizers say, films about exorcism usually go too far.

“Exorcism movies have some foundation in real life experiences,” said the Rev. Pedro Barrajón, a Spanish priest. “But there’s too much sparkle added.”

The formation program, held April 13-18, was also open to a handful of lay people. It’s billed as an aid to deepen the ministry of exorcism, as well as a way to assist bishops in the preparation of priests licensed.

While any priest can perform exorcism, they need special permission from a bishop to do so. In recent years, more bishops have been designating priests for the role, citing popular demand

rest: http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/04/21/citing-popular-demand-roman-course-seeks-to-boost-exorcists/


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on May 23, 2016, 05:36:47 pm
Ex-Witch Reveals How the Occult Is Affecting Your Life Every Day

Hidden magic, astrology, supernatural powers or agencies, also known as the occult, has slithered its way into society with little fanfare. 

Just as terrifying is how many in today's culture consider the elements of witchcraft practically mundane. 

In a recent video blog, ex-witch Beth gave a rundown of some of these items, including horoscopes, fortune telling, contacting the dead, speaking to the dead, Ouija boards, chakras, channeling energy, yoga and incantations, among others. 

"When each time they do witchcraft they are inviting in demon spirits. Each spirit brings something in with it to connect them within your person. This could be false beliefs or sickness or addiction, etc. More importantly, it causes you to feel that you have tapped in to a power, which you have. The power of the demonic (aka the occult or witchcraft). You feel the power in some way or another. It may be a high, a surge, a force and "awakening" or something similar. This feeling is incredibly satisfying to our senses and fleshly ways and it creates a desire within us to continue to do it. So the person wants to delve deeper into the witchcraft practice, to reach higher levels of this power they have experienced," Beth writes in her blog.

"What is actually happening is they are granting more and more access to the depths of their soul to the demonic, giving them more and more rights into them. Rights are permissions to use our bodies for their works and feed our soul with their beliefs and demonic spirits. Satan wants us to become portals for his evil work. Once we (give) him access, we are connected to his power, and he sets up things inside of us that can work without our conscious knowledge. So basically, we are actually doing witchcraft and we are not even aware of it. The connection has been made and we have done it on our own free will."

So how can Christians break free? Watch the video to see.

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/57150-ex-witch-reveals-how-the-occult-is-affecting-your-life-every-day


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on May 23, 2016, 05:38:02 pm
Ex-New Age Blogger Exposes Occultic Lies Behind Religion

x New-Age blogger Steven Bancarz wants to expose the religion that held him captive for so many years. Though the YouTube star gave his life to Christ, his goal in exposing the New Age isn't necessarily to turn people to God; rather, he wants his viewers to understand the truth.

"People deserve to hear the truth, and they are currently being lied to," Bancarz says. 

To begin, much of the New Age philosophy is built around Atlantis. Yes, that Atlantis. 

You may say what's the harm in believing in an underwater legend? 

"This Atlantis myth is almost always pushed alongside a Luciferian philosophy," Bancarz says. 

But that's not all. 

"So one of the reasons I'm exposing the New Age is just because there is some stuff that is just false," Bancarz says. "And I don't think anybody wants to actively believe in something that is obviously false. So some New Age ideas I'm going to be exposing just for the sake of truth and just so people can have something to dig their teeth into."

Watch the video to see more.

http://www.charismanews.com/culture/57355-ex-new-age-blogger-exposes-occultic-lies-behind-religion


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on June 18, 2016, 07:07:07 pm
This week's One Minute Feature: Paranormal
Published on 06 June 2016
Download MP3
http://acbee66e2a535ed5eef6-a57713667b73bca827b7322695933868.r20.cf2.rackcdn.com/UTTR%2060%20Paranomral.mp3

This week Jan Markell’s 60 second commentary describes the  “paranormal."  Understanding the Times media has designed these short features to help you communicate these timely messages to your family and friends. They can be uploaded to any Facebook page, or downloaded to your computer to be emailed.  Remember to listen to the latest Understanding the Times radio program available here in our archives.


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on July 21, 2016, 01:52:02 pm
(https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p480x480/13718769_1250112411667936_598381926502592796_n.jpg?oh=9966b2278ae445eb69dc62aa07347743&oe=582F150F)


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on March 17, 2017, 07:40:11 pm
Pope tells priests to call in exorcists when needed

Pope Francis on Friday advised priests who hear troubled confessions from parishioners to not hesitate to call on the services of an exorcist.

A good confessor has to be very discerning, particularly when he has to deal with "real spiritual disorders," the 80-year-old pontiff told priests at a Vatican training seminar on the art of hearing believers recount their sins.

Disorders could have their roots in all manner of circumstances, including supernatural ones, he suggested.

In such circumstances the confessor "must not hesitate to refer to exorcists... chosen with great care and prudence."

It is not the first time the pope has talked about exorcising demons from a believer's person, and he generally refers more frequently than his predecessors to the devil, characterising him as a physical presence in this world.

Francis has described jihadists who stabbed a French priest to death as satanic and the acts of priests who sexually abuse children as akin to participating in a satanic mass.

Vatican universities also regularly hold training courses for would-be exorcists despite the practice being frowned upon by some Church intellectuals.

Francis also presided on Friday over a celebration of penitence in St Peter's cathedral, during which he confessed himself before hearing confessions of several of the faithful.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-tells-priests-call-exorcists-needed-183541401.html


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on July 12, 2017, 01:37:23 pm
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/parental-warning-demonic-online-game-blue-whale-challenge-urges-young-people-kill/
PARENTAL WARNING: Demonic Online Game ‘Blue Whale Challenge’ Urges Young People To Kill Themselves
A Georgia woman spoke Monday to CNN about her 16-year-old daughter killing herself as part of the Blue Whale Challenge but asked that their names not be used. Educators, law enforcement officers and parents across the country have reported rumors about the challenge for months. But until this week, there had been no allegations in the United States about a death directly linked to the game. Suicides in Russia, Brazil and a half dozen other countries were reportedly linked to the challenge in cases that usually involved teenagers or young adults.

7/12/17

The family of a Texas teen who hanged himself says their son was involved in a ghoulish online game that calls on participants to complete a series of tasks before taking their own lives, and some schools are warning parents about the so-called Blue Whale Challenge.

“Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.” Colossians 3:20 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: The very first “challenge” I became aware of was the incredibly stupid Cinnamon Challenge where people swallowed whole spoonfuls of cinnamon to see how much of a throat burning they could take. Then there was the Eraser Challenge, the Ice Bucket Challenge and various others. So while it’s incredibly sad, the Blue Whale Challenge, which has claimed the lives of over 130 teens around the world, seems to me like the natural and logical progression in the ‘challenge’ world. The Devil doesn’t get you in one, big bite, he gets you in a bunch of little steps. Parents, if your child participates in any ‘challenge’, take their phones away and suspend their social media accounts. Take the ‘I Love My Child’ challenge.

Jorge Gonzalez told San Antonio television station WOAI that he wanted to caution others after his son, Isaiah, was found hanging in his bedroom closet Saturday in the family’s home with his cellphone propped up on a shoe to record his death.

A report on the boy’s death from the San Antonio Police Department does not mention the challenge. But Gonzalez’ family said in the days after the teen died, they pieced together from his social media and communication with friends that he had participated in the game.

His sister, Alexis, told the TV station that a person behind the challenge had gathered personal information from Isaiah and had threatened to harm the family.

The police department did not return a message left by The Associated Press asking whether authorities were investigating the game as a factor in the case. Many parents and other authorities are skeptical that the game actually exists, citing a lack of suicides directly attributed to it.

Agent Michelle Lee of the FBI’s San Antonio office said the agency is not assisting in the investigation, but urged parents to monitor their children’s online activities.

“It’s a reminder of one of the many dangers and vulnerabilities that children face using various social media and apps online every day,” Lee said. “Parents must remain vigilant and monitor their child’s usage of the internet.”

Gonzalez is the second parent this week to tell news outlets about a child who died by suicide allegedly as a result of the game.

A Georgia woman spoke Monday to CNN about her 16-year-old daughter killing herself as part of the challenge but asked that their names not be used.

Educators, law enforcement officers and parents across the country have reported rumors about the challenge for months. But until this week, there had been no allegations in the United States about a death directly linked to the game. Suicides in Russia, Brazil and a half dozen other countries were reportedly linked to the challenge in cases that usually involved teenagers or young adults.
Mississippi teen with ties to Florida says she took part in Blue Whale Challenge:

Notes have been posted on school district social media pages and sent home to parents in school districts across the country, including Vacaville, California; Baldwin County, Alabama; Warwick, Rhode Island; and Denver.

In Connecticut, Danbury Public Schools Superintendent Sal Pascarella sent a short note to parents around May after administrators from the district’s 19 schools started hearing about the challenge from kids as young as elementary schoolers.

“The elementary school principals started hearing their kids talk about this thing. Then the secondary principals started mentioning the same thing,” he said. “We discovered on our school network content about the challenge had been looked at on YouTube. … I decided I would rather err on the side of information with parents.”

Parents allege that teens reach out to game administrators called curators through various social media platforms. Those curators lead the players through 50 days of challenges including watching scary movie clips, cutting symbols into their arms and legs and taking pictures of themselves in dangerous positions such as on the edge of a roof or on train tracks.

The participants are allegedly required to take pictures of their challenges being completed and share them before being directed to end their lives on the 50th day. A search of related hashtags on Instagram shows users posting pictures of scars and cuts or memes that depict suicide, and a similar Twitter search shows users reaching out for curators to lead them through the game.

Instagram warns that some images tagged under some of the related phrases could be harmful and directs users to mental health resources. Twitter assesses reports of self-harm or suicide and also directs users to mental health or suicide-prevention resources.

The Center for Missing and Exploited Children is aware of the challenge and encourages parents to report it and similar activity to the center’s cyber tip line even if they feel like they do not have enough information to go to police, said Eliza Harrell, the group’s director of education and outreach.

Harrell said she had not heard about the use of threats and intimidation, but said it was particularly concerning.

“That really adds another level to this,” she said. “We do not tend to address specific apps or games when we give advice to parents.”

When parents talk to their children, “the underlying conversation needs to be about dealing with strangers online and putting themselves in a position of trust,” she added. “It’s an issue that a child is listening to someone anonymously and doing what they are told by a stranger to do.” source


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on July 12, 2017, 01:41:14 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO-MiUxKxqQ


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on July 21, 2017, 11:02:58 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qErbf7eq6zQ&t=0s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijwRxWvp3vQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UICrQUjjwr4


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on January 17, 2018, 06:13:55 pm
Black Lives Matter Organizer Summons Spirits of Deceased African American Leaders in Methodist Church

One of the organizers of the group Black Lives Matter summoned the spirits of a number of deceased African American leaders—a practice of necromancy that is prohibited by Scripture—on Thursday during an event held by Justice LA at Hollywood United Methodist Church.

The event, which according to the group’s Facebook page, was meant to discuss opposition to the $3.5 million the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors wants to use for new jails. It featured representatives from White People for Black Lives, the ACLU of Southern California, and Dr. Melina Abdullah, a professor at California State University who was also one of the organizers of the national Black Lives Matter movement.

“This is not just a social justice, a racial justice, an economic justice struggle,” Abdullah stated. “This is also a spiritual struggle, so it’s appropriate that we’re here in this setting (a church). And it’s also important that we summon the right energy into this space no matter what faith you are. We have to understand what the struggle is about.”

During the event, Abdullah told those gathered that she was going to “pour libation” in the name of her African American ancestors, an act that is defined as “a ritual pouring of a liquid as an offering to a god or spirit, or in memory of those who have ‘passed on.'”

“We’re going to summon their energy into this space,” she stated, “and I’m going to ask you all to join me.”

Adbullah said that she wanted to first summon those who had been killed by law enforcement and then other deceased leaders who fought for the rights of African Americans. She instructed the crowd that as she named a person, and then poured the libation—using a bottle of water to pour into a plant—those gathered were to then declare “ashe.”

According to the website yagbeonilu.com, “ashe” or “ase” means “so be it,” and is an “African philosophical concept through which the Yoruba of Nigeria conceive the power to make things happen and produce change.”

“Ashe among the Yoruba is associated with the very force which is life and brings them into being in the universe. … t is also associated with the power of speech as can be seen in its meaning of command, ordain and law,” the site explains, stating that the Yoruba believe that men possess the power to “speak things into existence.”

During the event, Abdullah proceeded to summon spirits—claiming that their bodies may be dead, but their souls are still on the earth—pouring into the plant with each name, while the crowd declared “ashe” each time.

“We summon those spirits that are still with us. We summon those people whose bodies have been stolen, but whose souls are still here,” she said. “We call on Wakiesha Wilson. We call on George Jackson … Eric Garner …”

“And all of those whose bodies have been stolen: We ask that you be with us. We ask that you work through us. We ask that we do righteous work on your behalf,” Abdullah continued in speaking to the the dead.

She then began to summon deceased men and women who she called “warriors” in the struggle.

“We call on Martin Luther King into this space,” Abdullah said. “Brother Malcom [X], we call you into this space. Ashe. … Nat Turner, into this space. Ashe. Mother Harriet Tubman. Ashe.”

“We call you all into this space. We ask that you work through us. That you give us power; that the Creator give us power when we come together. This victory is assured. Ashe. Ashe. Ashe,” she concluded, pouring the rest of the water into the plant, and being joined with applause.

Scripture states speaking to the dead or summoning spirits is a violation of the law of God.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12 reads, “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you.”

http://christiannews.net/2018/01/16/black-lives-matter-organizer-summons-spirits-of-deceased-african-american-leaders-in-methodist-church/


Title: Re: Rise of the Occultic World
Post by: Mark on April 30, 2018, 06:01:05 pm
Satanic Temple Plans to Sue Arkansas over Ten Commandments Monument

 The Satanic Temple responded swiftly to the installation of a new Ten Commandments monument on the Arkansas Capitol grounds in Little Rock.

No sooner had the monument been lowered onto the grounds by a crane on Thursday (April 26), than Lucien Greaves, the co-founder of the Satanic Temple, said his group will join a lawsuit soon to be filed by the American Civil Liberties Union alleging an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

The Satanic Temple, which claims 100,000 members around the world, has become a vocal advocate on the issue of religious freedom. It has attempted in various provocative ways to highlight the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

After Oklahoma installed a Ten Commandments monument on its Capitol grounds in 2012, the group tried to install its own statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed, angel-winged creature accompanied by two children smiling at it.

It never got that far after the state’s Supreme Court ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments monument in 2015, on the grounds that it violated a provision in the state constitution prohibiting use of state property to further religions.

Greaves, who flew from his home in Salem, Mass., to Little Rock to be on hand for the installation of the monument, predicted an Arkansas court would do the same.

“It may be compelled to make a summary judgment,” he said.

Members of the Satanic Temple don’t believe in a literal Satan but see the biblical Satan as a metaphor for rebellion against tyranny. The group’s stated mission is “to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice.”

The group believes the state is discriminating in favor of Christians.

“No religion gets preference over the other,” Greaves said. “They should all have access to whatever forums are available.”

The Arkansas monument replaces one that was destroyed less than a year ago when a man crashed his car into the original display less than 24 hours after it was installed.

Michael T. Reed was charged with criminal mischief but found to be mentally unfit to stand trial. He had also destroyed a Ten Commandments statue in Oklahoma in 2015.

The installation of the new tablet-shaped monument was livestreamed online by state Sen. Jason Rapert, a Republican who sponsored the 2015 act that approved the monument’s placement on the Capitol building grounds.

The act states the “placing of a monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol would help the people of the United States and of the State of Arkansas to know the Ten Commandments as the moral foundation of the law.”

It was funded by private donations.

Backers of the monument say it’s meant to copy a Ten Commandments monument in Texas that stands on the grounds of the state Capitol. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed that monument to stand since it had been there for many years and because there were other monuments on the grounds of the Austin Capitol.

https://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/satanic-temple-plans-to-sue-arkansas-over-ten-commandments-monument.html