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Supernatural

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by Jamie Seidel

Exorcism is going multi-denominational. Where once those competing for the souls of followers would burn each other as heretics and engage in bloody wars, the world’s mainstream Christian denominations are now rallying together to battle a resurrected threat.

And that’s no less than Satan himself.

The Roman Catholic Church has for the first time opened up its annual exorcism class in Rome to representatives of all major Christian faiths. The Pontifical University of Regina Apostolorum is a Vatican-affiliated university in Rome that has been conducting the increasingly popular annual exorcism conventions for Catholic priests for the past 14 years.

But now the doors of the 14th Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation Course have been thrown open to groups once considered heretical and demon-infested only a few short centuries ago.

Now some 250 Catholics, Lutherans, Greek Orthodox and Protestant priests have assembled to arm themselves with the sword of the holy word to battle Satan amid the souls of their parishoners.

It is itself a dark art, born of a dark age.

The Catholic Church, however, insists demonic possession is on the rise.

In 2014, it formally recognised the ancient ritual of exorcism under Canon Law and gave official approval to the formal creation of the International Association of Exorcists.

It blames the secularisation of society (separation of religion and state) along with the increasing popularity of competing religions, tarot readings, astrology, the internet and atheism for opening the demonic floodgates.

And the best way to fix this, it believes, is to tackle the ‘possessed’ head-on.

SWORD OF THE SPIRIT

“We are called to fight against the Devil with all our might and determination,” keynote speaker and Catholic priest Jose Enrique Oyarzun addressed the assembled exorcists in Rome.

In this enlightened age, the practice sounds odd to many.

And that’s the problem, exorcists insist.

Speaking in lost tongues. Vomiting weird objects. Unexplained wounds. Writhing. Shaking. Shrieking abuse. Supernatural strength.

While there is rarely evidence beyond the anecdotal, exorcism practitioners insist their behind-closed doors experiences are very real.

And it’s a threat Pope Francis himself has been keen to highlight, making regular references to the power of the Devil in his sermons.

“He is evil, he’s not like mist. He’s not a diffuse thing, he is a person. I’m convinced that one must never converse with Satan — if you do that, you’ll be lost,” the Pope recently told a Catholic news service.

Now, the Pope has a spiritual army of his own at his command.

The International Association of Exorcists counts some 400 priests among its members worldwide. And the death of its most famous demon hunter, Father Gabriele Amorth, in 2016 served only to inspire a surge of fresh applications.

But they’re not enough.

So the Catholic Church is seeking a source of fresh recruits.

SHIELD OF FAITH

When it comes to skewering Satan, there are problems of doctrine.

Not all the Christian faiths believe the same things. And they’ve put each other to the torch and started wars over such serious matters in the past.

Why not now?

“This is the first time that different denominations have come together to compare their experiences on exorcisms,” Spanish priest and theologian Pedro Barrajon, one of the convention’s organisers, told media in Rome.

“The idea is to help each other, to establish best practices if you will. The Catholic Church is most associated with exorcisms because of films like The Exorcist and The Rite, but we are not the only church that performs them. Expelling the devil goes back to the earliest origins of the Christian Church.”

It’s a spiritual battle winning secular attention.

The Italian government also apparently takes the alleged possession crisis seriously.

Its education ministry this year offered its teachers the option of attending the intensive 40-hour “exorcism and prayers of liberation” crash-course in Rome. At the cost of 400 euros ($A640) each, every attending teacher was promised to be taught how the ancient rite should be “correctly practised”.

The move attracted ire from the Italian opposition parties who insisted the education system had more to worry about than training teachers in magic.

“With all the problems in Italian schools, the ministry is trying to bring back the Dark Ages,” opposition, centre-left MP said Laura Boldrini said.

“Schools need to prepare young people for the challenges of the future. And what does the education minister do? He promotes exorcism courses. (Meanwhile) schools are not safe, gyms are not fit to be used and teachers are not properly paid.”

BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

Father Barrajon, 61, told the conference in Rome that non-Catholic denominations were less structured in their exorcism rituals. “Some of the other churches are more creative, they don’t use a precise format,” he said.

And that could present a problem: perhaps any harpies inhabiting a human body won’t be entirely evicted.

Which is why they want priests to attend demonology school.

Participants attending the conservative Legionaries of Christ religious order run university study such subjects as “The Symbology of Occult and Satanic Rituals” and “Angels and Demons in the Sacred Scripture”.

The need to get it right, according to the exorcists, is pressing.

Last year, exorcist Benigno Palilla told Vatican Radio that there were some 500,000 cases of possession appearing in Italy each year.

But there are rising concerns about the validity of the priestly practice.

Some faith healers have been accused of sexually molesting their possessed patients.

One case in Palermo saw a priest and soldier arrested after using the pretext of “expelling demons’ to touch the genitalia of women.

In another Italian case, an underage girl was sexually abused by a 69-year-old practitioner, her boyfriend and her mother. “He convinced the girl she was the victim of strong ‘negative forces’ and consequently convinced her to undergo ‘purification rites’ consisting of sexual intercourse, sometimes in a group,” Italian police said at the time.

Pope Francis said shortly before the convention that priests entrusted with the “delicate and necessary ministry” of being an exorcist must be chosen with “great care and great prudence.”

BELT OF TRUTH?

The broader Catholic Church admits to being dubious about most claims of possession.

Its officers publicly state the majority of such claimants are, in fact, mentally ill. Instead of priests, they should be seeking medical attention to address physical health issues.

But Pope Francis has recently adopted a more urgent tone.

In March, he reportedly told a group of priests they “should not hesitate’ to refer confession-box allegations of posession to an exorcist.

“They could also have spiritual disturbances, whose nature should be submitted to careful discernment,” Pope Francis said, “taking into account all the existential, ecclesial, natural and supernatural circumstances.”

The exorcism convention, however, has made some concession to modern science – admitting there may be complicating medical issues at hand and included talks on psychology, criminology, pedophilia and pornography.

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by Dr. Ronn Johnson

I have been away from this blog for some time, though it has been constantly on my mind. Since my last post, I have written and presented a course at our church on the big story of the Bible. It was rewarding, yet undoubtedly the toughest challenge I had ever faced as a Bible teacher. As I told the class several times, sometimes out of desperation, it’s one thing to teach a passage of the Bible, or even a survey of books within the Bible—most of us have tried that—but something entirely different to approach the text with the sole intent of tracking its largest narrative. Sometimes I felt like I knew where I was going, while at other times I felt very unsure of myself, even within an hour of walking into the class. Now that it’s over I look forward to stepping back and reviewing what I said, thinking through where my work needs improvement.

I would like to return to this blog for such a purpose, in fact: to review what I said in the class and hear myself talk. I invite your response if you have the time. In previous blogs my thinking has been largely negative, pointing out perceived problems with evangelicalism’s traditional understanding of the big story of the Bible. It will feel good to turn the ship around at this point and head in a positive direction. As you could guess, my understanding of the story will be categorically different from the Sin Paid For model that I have been talking about—where the punishment required for sin by God was voluntarily paid by a behaviorally perfect individual, with this payment then being applied to those who accept this gracious provision of Christ on their behalf. I realize that many people like this story because it offers God a way to relieve the tension between his justice and love through Jesus while remaining true to his own demands of grace and impartiality. But as I’ve recommended, this does not seem to be the tension played out in the biblical story. And once we change the tension or crisis of a story we are in effect writing a different story altogether.

In my class, I developed the biblical story by working through the chronological flow of the text. This is easier said than done, I came to realize, and I’ll talk more of this below. But in general, I tried to not give away what happened until it actually happened. I did this for those in the class who were unfamiliar with the Bible, as well as to experiment how this would work within my own presentation. For purposes of this blog, I will lay out the whole story right up front, from beginning to end, then return back to go through the details in upcoming posts. I presume that readers of this website are familiar enough with the Bible to not be annoyed at being given the end of the story too soon.

I have used the analogy of a brick wall before so I will continue the analogy here. What follows are the one hundred bricks which make up, in my opinion, the big story wall of the Bible. Ending up with this round number is not accidental, as you could guess, but mostly because I didn’t like the idea of ending on an odd number, like 89 or 105. I constantly reworked my pile to keep it at the century mark, which is unimportant in the long run. The number can certainly change. Here are my bricks listed in the order in which they appear (or occur) in the story, starting with Genesis 1:1:

  1. God creates the universe
  2. God creates elohim above humans
  3. God creates humans below elohim
  4. Humans fail a loyalty test
  5. Humanity dies and awakens
  6. Creation is sentenced to frustration
  7. Adam’s family shows divided loyalties
  8. Elohim interfere in human affairs
  9. God destroys the earth
  10. Elohim receive territorial rule

 

  1. Elohim abuse their authority
  2. God judges ruling elohim
  3. Abraham switches spiritual loyalties
  4. Abraham is promised blessing
  5. Elohim come to earth as messengers
  6. God designates loyalty as right
  7. God designates disloyalty as wrong
  8. Abraham’s family shows divided loyalties
  9. God’s family is named Israel
  10. Jacob bears twelve tribes

 

  1. Joseph saves the family in Egypt
  2. Pharaoh enslaves the family
  3. God reveals his name
  4. Passover redeems Israel
  5. Israel accepts Torah
  6. Israel worships Baal
  7. God clarifies his jealousy
  8. Loyalty is demanded
  9. Disloyalty is predicted
  10. Sacred space is institutionalized

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by John Staddon

It is now a rather old story: secular humanism is a religion. A court case in 1995 examined the issue and concluded, rightly, that science, in the form of the theory of evolution, is not a religion. In 2006, the BBC aired a program called The Trouble with Atheism which argued that atheists are religious and made the point via a series of interviews with prominent atheists who claimed their beliefs were “proved” by science. The presenter, Rod Liddle, concluded that Darwinism is a religion. That is wrong, as 18th century philosopher David Hume showed many years ago. Science consists of facts, but facts alone do not motivate. Without motive, a fact points to no action. Liddle was half-right: both religion and secular humanism provide _motives, explicit in one case, but covert in the other.

What is religion? All religions have three elements, although the relative emphasis differs from one religion to another—Buddhists are light on the supernatural, for example.

The first is the belief in invisible or hidden beings, worlds and processes—like God, heaven, miracles, reincarnation, and the soul. All these are unverifiable, or unseen and unseeable, except by mystics under special and generally unrepeatable conditions. Since absence of evidence is not, logically, evidence of absence, these features of religion are neither true nor false, but simply unprovable. They have no implications for action, hence no bearing on legal matters.

The second element are claims about the real world: every religion, especially in its primordial version, makes claims that are essentially scientific—assertions of fact that are potentially verifiable. These claims are of two kinds. The first we might call timeless: e.g., claims about physical properties—the four elementary humors, for example, the Hindu turtle that supports the world, properties of foods, the doctrine of literal transubstantiation. The second are claims about history: Noah’s flood, the age of the earth, the resurrection—all “myths of origin.” Some of these claims are unverifiable; as for the rest, there is now a consensus that science usually wins—in law and elsewhere. In any case, few of these claims have any bearing on action.

The third property of a religion are its rules for action—prohibitions and requirements—its morality. All religions have a code, a set of moral and behavioral prescriptions, matters of belief —usually, but not necessarily—said to flow from God, that provide guides to action in a wide range of situations. The 10 Commandments, the principles of Sharia, the Five Precepts of Buddhism, etc.

Secular humanism lacks any reference to the supernatural and defers matters of fact to science. But it is as rich in moral rules, in dogma, as any religion. Its rules come not from God but from texts like Mill’s On Liberty, and the works of philosophers like Peter Singer, Dan Dennett and Bertrand Russell, psychologists B. F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud, public intellectuals like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and “humanist chaplains” everywhere.

In terms of moral rules, secular humanism is indistinguishable from a religion.

It has escaped the kind of attacks directed at Christianity and other up-front religions for two reasons: its name implies that it is not religious, and its principles cannot be tracked down to a canonical text. They exist but are not formally defined by any “holy book.”

But it is only the morality of a religion, not its supernatural or historical beliefs, that has any implications for action, for politics and law. Secular humanism makes moral claims as strong as any other faith. It is therefore as much a religion as any other. But because it is not seen as religious, the beliefs of secular humanists increasingly influence U.S. law.

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  1. Psalm 18:39
  2. Isaiah 40:31
  3. Isaiah 54:17
  4. Luke 10:19
  5. John 16:33
  6. 1 John 4:4
  7. Romans 8:31
  8. Romans 8:37
  9. Zechariah 4:6
  10. Joshua 1:9
  11. 1 Corinthians10:13
  12. 2 Corinthians 10:3–5
  13. 2 Chronicles 20:15
  14. Matthew 18:18–19
  15. 1 Pet. 5:8–9

by Cindi McMenamin

It’s true. You have an adversary who wants to attack your desires, your thoughts, even how you see and treat your body. So you and I need to be on guard against Satan’s schemes.

According to 1 Peter 5:8, “Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (NASB). But God’s Word also gives us a strategy against those attacks by telling us to “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes…” (Ephesians 6:11-18). I find it interesting that every piece of “armor” described in that passage refers to the character of Christ. In other words, put on Christ-likeness – abide in Christ – and you will fend off the attacks of the enemy.

We abide in Christ through surrender and constant communion with Him. As you suit up with the armor of God, here are five prayers to pray against Satan’s attacks on your heart, mind, emotions, mouth, and body.

1. A Prayer to Guard Your Heart

Lord God, Captain of my heart, Satan knows if I follow Your Greatest Commandment – to love You with all my heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37) – he is powerless over me. Guard my heart, Lord Jesus, so that it beats for You alone. Don’t let me grow complacent toward You or be lured to love anyone or anything more than You. Remove the idols from my heart so that You alone command my allegiance and utmost affections Help me to love and forgive others as You have forgiven me so the enemy can get no foothold through hate or bitterness on my part. Cultivate in my heart Your love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). Finally, Lord, set my heart on things above, not on earthly things. Help me to remember that You died for me and my life is now hidden which Christ in God (Colossians 3:1-2). Increase my longing for heaven so this world holds no power over me.

2. A Prayer to Defend Your Mind

Almighty God, cover my mind with the helmet of Your salvation, reminding me constantly that I am Your child and the enemy can’t mess with me. Fix my thoughts, Lord Jesus, on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Help me to think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise so Your peace will guard my mind (Philippians 4:8-9). Don’t let me copy the behavior and customs of this world, but transform me into a new person by changing the way I think. Then I will learn to recognize Your will for me which is good and pleasing and perfect (Romans 12:2).  Saturate my mind with Your truth so I am convinced that the answers are found in Your Word, not out in the world.

3. A Prayer to Calm Your Emotions

Lord, keep the enemy at bay by calming my emotions with the peace of Your presence. Help me to follow Your command and not worry about anything, but pray about everything, with a thankful heart offering up prayers and requests to you so that You can give me that peace that no one can completely understand – a peace that will control the way I think and feel (Phil. 4:6-7). Remind me, daily, that You are the Only One who can meet my emotional needs so I don’t look to any person for my identity, validation, or for my love tank to be filled. Thank You that You are the God of peace, the God of order, the God who heals my wounds and helps me sort through and make sense of life. You are not the God of chaos or confusion. Fill me with Your Spirit so I may express to others only love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

4. A Prayer to Cover Your Mouth

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by The Bible Project

The talented folks at The Bible Project explain the Council God has created to administer his Kingdom.

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by Doug Overmyer

“I’ve received a lot of hate from Christians,” the psychic told me, her eyes guarded.

When I thought to title this post, I almost wrote, “Psychics: A Christian Perspective,” but I realized how off putting that might be to psychics who have received something from Christians that they shouldn’t have: hate.

You won’t receive that here.

I do, however, want to offer a perspective from the Kingdom of God Mindset that lays at the foundation of how I interpret what seers see.

I frequently receive emails asking for readings from seers or psychics. Obviously, that’s not what this site is about, but one of those emails last week prompted these thoughts.

In the public arena, a psychic is someone who receives hidden information from extra-sensory perceptions. Where does the information come from?

As described here, those with psychic ability probably fall along a continuum of ability. For ease of understanding, I’ve broken the continuum into 7 categories.

The source of the extra-sensory perception depends on where the psychic is on the continuum. But not all “psychics” receive extra-sensory perception.

Charlatans

Charlatans are great at reading people’s physical states. They are extremely observant and able to detect what their subject wants or needs to hear. In The Wizard of Oz, Professor Marvel is a charlatan.

Once, while staffing a booth at a psychic fair, a young man with yellow eyes came to me for a “reading.” My team, of course, was doing prophetic encouragement but in that environment, we adopted the local language and offered “spiritual readings.”

I told this young man what I told everyone: the source of our knowledge is the Father in heaven, and the only way to the Father is Jesus, so we’ll ask the Father through Jesus to have the Holy Spirit reveal what God has for this young man. I invited the Holy Spirit, asked for a word, and waited.

This man stood perfectly still with a blank affect looking directly into my eyes.

I received the prophetic word and gave it to him.

He was visibly startled.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear that. I go to a lot of these, and there’s a lot of fakes. They just read your face. I wanted to see if you were fake. Your reading was the most accurate I’ve ever received.”

I followed it up with, “It wasn’t me. God really wants you to know him.”

My point: he was looking to expose charlatans.

Empaths

An empath is very sensitive to what other people are feeling, to the point of feeling their emotions themselves. They are extremely intuitive. In the Myers Briggs/Keirsey Temperament Sorter, they are extreme INFPs or ENFPs.

It’s a marvelous gift and ability.

They are called into counseling, therapy, or pastoral ministry. Somewhere along the lines, they received guidance to channel their ability through the mask of psychic ability.

Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

These kinds of psychics were not trained to use their gifts appropriately. It is not rooted in the pure truth of God’s love as expressed through Jesus, so the help they end up offering others ends up tainted and distorted.

Parents: if your child expresses INFP or ENFP tendencies, guide him or her to get trained to use these amazing gifts for the most good.

Sensitives

These are people who are spiritually sensitive. They pick up spiritual baggage, spiritual entities, and spiritual destinies. They navigate these impressions, filtered through their worldview, to advise their clients.

They don’t see the baggage or entities or destinies, but they do receive impressions, and the impressions are probably accurate. The distortion comes from the incorrect worldview.

It’s important to adopt the worldview that Jesus had, or something close to it, rather than a gnostic or scientific framework when navigating spiritual impressions to advise someone.

Seers

Seers are sensitives to an extreme: they actually see spiritual baggage, entities, and destinies, and use what they see to advise their clients. Think of Whoopi Goldberg’s character in the movie Ghost.

The ability to see spiritual things is what this site is all about, so at the risk of sounding redundant: the best way to navigate what seers see is through the Kingdom of God Mindset.

False Prophets

Among Christians who think about these things, there is a ton of bad information regarding false prophets.

A false prophet is not a prophet speaking for God inaccurately or incorrectly. This is a “presumptuous” prophet. [Deuteronomy 17:13]

A “false prophet” is a prophet who gets his or her information from a “false god” or any spiritual entity not aligned with God. (A “false god” is any spirit that receives worship, other than the one true God Most High).

Basically, a False Prophet is anyone who delivers supernatural information from a spirit that is not the Holy Spirit or aligned with the Lord Jesus Christ.

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by TheBibleProject

In the second video in the Spiritual Beings Series, TheBibleProject explores the Biblical word, “Elohim”.

Elohim

Did you know that the biblical word for God is actually a title and not a name? And did you know that this title can refer to other spiritual beings as well as to the creator God? In this video, we explore the biblical terminology for spiritual beings and how this helps us understand what the Bible means when it says that “God is one.”

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by Frank Viola

Today I interview my friend Michael Heiser.

If you’ve read my book Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, Michael’s name should be familiar to you since I quote him in several places in my discussion of the fallen principalities and powers later in the book.

(Michael also graciously wrote a robust endorsement for the book, to which I’m thankful.)

Like all of my work, much of Michael’s work is marked by exposing unbiblical traditions that Christians have embraced. Those traditions are so ingrained that God’s people routinely filter the Bible through them.

Recently, Michael released a new book which covers the waterfront on what the Bible has to say about angels. And in so doing, he corrects many erroneous ideas that Christians have imbibed about angelic beings.

I’ll say at the outset that many books have passed through my hands that seek to expound the biblical teaching on angels.

For example, see my free article The Origins of Human Government and Hierarchy where I cite many of them.

But Heiser’s new book Angels: What the Bible Really Says About God’s Heavenly Host trumps every book I’ve seen on the subject of angels.

(Man, Heiser should pay me well for this Introduction! Cough).

I caught up with Michael to ask him some questions about his new book. My thinking behind these questions is that they would be of interest to you, my audience.

Let’s see if I’m in the ballpark on that assumption.

Enjoy the interview!

This first question would fit the category of “pastoral.” Namely, how does your book on angels benefit a believer’s day to day life? 

Michael Heiser: I’ll answer this by relaying the most frequently-mentioned item I get from readers and people when I speak on the topic of the supernatural world: the more we understand how God thinks about, and relates to, his supernatural family-partners (the loyal members of the heavenly host), the more clearly we will see how God thinks about us. One is a template for the other.

It is no accident that the vocabulary of “holy ones” used almost exclusively for the supernatural heavenly host is not used of angels in the New Testament. Instead, it’s used of human believers. It’s also no accident that the same is true of the phrase “sons of God.” God wants us in his family, alongside his supernatural family, partnering with him as they do, just in our world.

God’s vision for human believers is to rule with him, displacing the rebellious supernatural sons of God as his council-partners in a new, global Eden.

Angelology informs our identity, mission, and destiny. If we placed more attention on those items we might just be more motivated to remember that this world isn’t our real home. And if we approached each day that way, the Church would change.

There is a movement that often comes up with some wacky ideas and practices with respect to the spiritual realm. For example, they teach that Christians could command angelic beings to do things for them. What is your response to this?

Michael Heiser: I’ve heard this idea and write about it in the book. Hebrews 1:14 is usually the point of reference for the notion we have the authority to command angels: “Are they [angels] not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”

Some people presume that the verse means that God has sent angels to minister at the behest of believers, which in turn suggests that Christians can command angels to do their bidding.

The book provides more exegetical details, but it’s sufficient to say here that this interpretation can’t be sustained in light of the grammar of the verse. If we’re supposed to command angels, no one in the New Testament (or the Old) got the memo. There isn’t a single instance in Scripture where a human being commands an angel.

We agree on this. What do you believe Hebrews 13 means when it says to be hospitable, because you may be “entertaining angels unawares” (KJV)?

Michael Heiser: Hebrews 13:1 hearkens back to unexpected angelic visitations in the Old Testament (it’s the book of Hebrews). The Old Testament has several examples where people unknowingly interacted with angels. Lot’s exchange with the two “men” in Genesis 19 is a good example.

The two men looked entirely ordinary. It was only when they did something beyond human ability (they struck the men of the city blind; Gen 19:11). The two had shared a meal with Abraham (as well as God himself) in the previous chapter. There was no indication in that encounter that Abraham knew they were angels. Gideon (Judges 6) entertains the angel of the Lord without knowing who he was.

These incidents are precedent for the remark in Heb 13:1, suggesting that the same sort of episodes could happen to people in the New Testament era—and now.

In the Gospels, we are told that after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the angels came and ministered to Him? If you and I were there watching, what do you think we’d see? In other words, how do you think the angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness, exactly?

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By TheBibleProject

This is the first of a video series by The Bible Project illustrating material from biblical scholar Dr. Michael S. Heiser’s Unseen Realm.

In the first pages of the Bible, we’re introduced to God and humans as the main characters. But there’s also a whole cast of spiritual beings who play an important role throughout the Bible, though they’re often in the background. In this video, we begin to explore these beings and how they fit into the unified storyline of the Bible.

Spiritual Beings

If you’ve ever been puzzled about angels, demons, and other spiritual beings in the Bible, you’re not alone! Our modern depictions of these creatures are mostly based on misunderstandings of who they are and how they fit into the overall storyline of the Bible. In this first installment of our Spiritual Beings video series, we’ll introduce the biblical concept of spiritual beings and rediscover their role in the biblical story that leads to Jesus.

Here’s the link to the series Exploring Spiritual Beings.

by Brandon Smith for Alt-Market.com

Over many years of investigating the mechanics of global events and the people behind them I have become perhaps a little obsessed with one particular subject – the source and motivations of evil. This fascination does not stem from a simple morbid curiosity, but a strategic need to understand an enemy. Much like an exterminator needs to understand the behavior of cockroaches to be effective, I seek to understand the behavior and nature of organized evil.

One very important fact that must first be made clear in people’s minds is that evil does indeed exist. Establishment propaganda has spent immense time, effort and capital attempting to condition society into believing that evil is nothing more than a social construct – an opinion. Evil is supposedly in the eye of the beholder; a product of religious conditioning. This is a falsehood. Just like concepts of beauty, concepts of evil are actually inherent in our psyches from birth. The “eye of the beholder” is irrelevant.

Two particular areas of human psychology support this fact:

First, as the work of Carl Jung (and by extension anthropologists like Joseph Campbell) exposed, all human beings no matter where in the world they are born, from the most isolated tribe in the Amazon to the largest metropolis in America, carry the same archetypal symbols in their psyche. That is to say, we ALL have the same psychological elements in our minds regardless of environment.

This fact alone is so overwhelming to modern man that some people refuse to even acknowledge it as a possibility. We have been trained like lab rats to see only one path through the maze; we have been told over and over again that everything is “relative”; that each person is entirely a product of environment and that we all start out empty as “blank slates”.

The vicious attacks on Carl Jung by the establishment (including lies that he cooperated with the Nazis) tell me that Jung was very close to the mark. He had stumbled upon something very dangerous to the establishment; something that could derail their conditioning of the public.

Second, the undeniable existence of the human conscience suggests that we are born with an understanding of duality. Meaning, just as Jung discovered, our psyches contain inherent concepts of good and evil that influence our decisions and reactions. Jung referred to evil, or psychologically destructive impulses, as the ‘personal shadow’ and the ‘collective shadow’.

The vast majority of people have an intuitive relationship with good and evil. They feel anxiety when confronted with evil actions or thoughts, and they feel personal guilt when they know they have done something evil to other people. Some might call this a “moral compass”. I would refer to it as part of the soul or spirit.

In any case, there is a contingent of people in the world that do not have it – a small percentage of the population that is born without conscience, or that finds it easy to ignore conscience. We’ll get to those people in a moment, but first, we should probably define what evil is.

Evil is first and foremost any action that seeks to destroy, exploit or enslave in the name of personal gain or gratification. Unfortunately, evil actions are often misrepresented as advantageous for the group, thereby making them morally acceptable. The needs of the many supposedly outweigh the needs of the few, and thus evil is rationalized as a means to a “positive end” for the “greater good”.

In most cases, however, destructive actions do not end up serving the interests of the majority, and only end up giving more wealth and power to an elitist minority. This is not a coincidence.

Evil begins with the denial of the existence of conscience, or the denial of the existence of choice. Each person is born with a capacity or freedom to choose. We can listen to conscience, or we can ignore it. We can do good, or we can do evil. Evil tells us the choice is relative and that morality is relative; that there is no difference between a good choice and a bad choice, or, that the evil choice is the only choice.

Beyond ignoring conscience, we must also define the motivation that drives evil. Psychology would suggest that destructive self serving actions stem from an obsessive desire to obtain or control things we cannot or should not have. Interestingly, this is also what some religions teach us, but let’s stick to a secular examination.

As mentioned earlier, there is a group of people in the world who do not see good and evil the way most of us do. Their psyche functions in a completely different way, without the filter of conscience. These people exhibit the traits of narcissistic sociopaths.  Full blown high level narcissistic sociopaths represent around 1% to 5% of the total human population, and most of them are born, not made by their environment. Also, 5% to 10% of people hold latent traits of either narcissism or sociopathy that generally only rise to the surface in an unstable crisis environment.

I have written extensively on narcissistic sociopaths and the globalist establishment in numerous articles. I have also outlined how such people, contrary to popular belief, are not isolated from one another. They do in fact organize into groups for mutual gain.

There is an ideology or system of belief that argues for the exact opposite of what conscience tells us is “good”, and that system is Luciferianism. In fact, luciferianism appears to be the source influence for most existing destructive “isms” in our society today (including socialism and globalism).  It is my theory that luciferianism is a religion or cult designed by sociopathic narcissists for the benefit of sociopathic narcissists.

It is sometimes difficult to identify the true “sacraments” behind luciferianism because, for one, luciferians refuse to admit that the system is a religion at all. They prefer to call it a philosophy or methodology, at least in public. The system also seems to encourage active disinformation in order to dissuade or mislead non-adherents. The historic term for this religious secrecy is “occultism”. I would call it “elitism”.

There are some foundational beliefs that luciferians do openly admit to. First and foremost, the goal of luciferianism is to attain godhood. That is to say, they believe that SOME human beings have the capacity to become gods through the accumulation of knowledge.

I have written about the insanity of the goal of godhood in the past, outlining how quantum physics and Kurt Godel’s Incompleteness Proof make total scientific and mathematical observation and understanding of the universe impossible. But mathematical reality does not stop luciferian circles from destructively chasing that which they cannot have.  By extension, scientific knowledge not tempered by discipline, wisdom and a moral compass can lead to catastrophe.  Material knowledge is invariably abused by those seeking godlike power.

The notion of self-worship is a core trait of sociopathic narcissists; Luciferianism just codifies it as if it is a virtue. Another problem with the idea of becoming a god is that one inevitably develops a desire for followers and worshipers. What is a savior, after all, without a flock? But how does a human being gain a flock and become more a god? Through force or through trickery?

Second, luciferians claim they seek to elevate the power of the individual in general. In the minds of many people this doesn’t sound like a negative at all. Even I have argued for the importance of individualism in the midst of societal controls. That said, any ideology can be taken to extremes.

The pursuit of individual gratification can be pushed too far, to the point that the people around us begin to suffer. Because of the elitist nature of luciferianism, they are not necessarily seeking the elevation of ALL individuals, just certain “deserving” individuals. There is a tendency to view non-adherents as “inferior”; stupid people that should be sheared like sheep by those who are chasing a superior dream of personal godhood.

This attitude can also be seen in the common actions of narcissistic sociopaths, who have no qualms about conning or exploiting people around them as resources, feeding off others like parasites.

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