Posted on 11/24/2018 9:07:32 PM PST by pastorbillrandles
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis 1:4)
One of the fiercest spiritual attacks upon the Church of Jesus Christ, and in a wider sense, upon Western civilization itself has been launched through a religious philosophy called Gnosticism.
The Word ‘Gnosticism ‘comes from the Greek word for Knowledge, Gnosis. A Gnostic claims a higher, deeper or even esoteric knowledge as opposed to common knowledge. Thus the ‘secret teachings’ of the occult, or the so called ‘lost books of the Bible’ are gnostic concepts.
Gnosticism is actually the ever evolving religion of the Serpent in the garden of Eden, because it is an accusation against God the Creator, it promises secret knowledge, and because to tells men that through such knowledge they can become “as gods, knowing good and evil”.
The early church was confronted with this philosophy in the form of a combination of Oriental, Greek and even Jewish ideas, which were seeping into the teaching of parts of the early church. Gnostics were literally re-defining the knowledge of God to those who would listen to them, for it’s evil genius was incorporation into existing religions, morphing them into distorted expressions of Gnosticism itself.
The Gnosticism of the early centuries was never totally banished , it has ebbed and flowed over the centuries in direct contrast to the swelling or contraction of Christian thought in the West.
In Gnosticism, one of the secret teachings is that the Creator God is a different Being than the Redeemer, Jesus. In fact much of Gnosticism actually taught that the Creator of Heaven and earth was evil! Gnostics were anti material, they believed that the physical World, (and the human body) was a prison hose, to escape from through the secret knowledge.
In the biblical account of Creation, The Creator spoke all things into existence, but then commenced the work of distinction. He separated everything; water from earth, the waters above and the waters below, day from night, light from darkness, etc. Perhaps the primal and most important distinction is the Creator/Creation distinction.
All of the rest of the actual Creation is a matter of separation, division and distinction. The last work of separation was the separation of male and female. God made man different from woman, in a different order, and according to a different fashion of creation, and with different roles in mind.
In the law of Moses God taught Israel to think in a very specific way, by insisting son distinction in food, clothing ,hygiene, the calendar, etc. This food is clean, this unclean, these materials are prescribed, but not these, Israelites schooled in the Law of Moses were rained to think in terms of thesis and antithesis and to constantly make judgments.
In the gnostic scheme, the Creator is evil and his work must be undone…in other words the ‘bondage ‘ of distinctions must be erased on order for man to be ‘liberated’ from the bondage of the Creator.Gnostics are at war with all judgments and distinctions, they see to eradicate them. We are living in a day very much shaped by Gnostic thought and philosophy. Thus Truth and error are thought to be false constructs, so also good and evil, right and wrong, etc. There is an attempt to wipe out all distinctions, including and especially the male female distinction.
The Philosophies of Post Modernism, and of Multiculturalism are both very much in sync with Gnosticism. Postmodernism is the radical lack of confidence in any universal Truth, and Multiculturalism is the insistence that all cultures are equally valid, there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ cultures, all are One.Radical egalitarianism is just another expression of the war on distinction, and judgment of righteousness and wrong.
The “transgender” revolution is just a further extension of this Gnostic rebellion against the Creator, who created us as sexual beings in a Binary fashion, with assigned sexual roles. The distinctions are being attacked, erased, denied and judged as bondage, in the name of “Liberation”. As the Apostle Peter said of false prophets , “Promising them liberty, they themselves are the slaves of corruption…”
When God quizzed Job about how much he knew, that should clue us all in to the limits of our philosophy.
“Esoteric knowledge” just plain gives me the willies. I have quite enough difficulties (though by the grace of God, less and less as time goes on) with the bible, thank you very much. What good does it do to know all that stuff and to neglect a salvational relationship to our Savior.
If I might be forgiven for being quite prosaic, this trans stuff is just plain about being lost. We don’t need to be scientists about lostness and how that works. We need to tell the world about foundness, and what that does.
We don’t have to choose either or look at Romans One
I think what happened in the example below is why we are hearing so much about “trans” stuff.
“Sybil was the first major book to tie “MPD” to child abuse. Published in 1973, it was followed by a compelling 1976 movie. Sybil played a substantial role in the cultural and psychiatric tsunami, later known as the “false” or “recovered” memory debate.
According to author Debbie Nathan “In the entire history of Western civilization, there had been less than 200 cases over a period of centuries. But after the book and film, suddenly there were hundreds and thousands. And by the late 1980s there were 40,000 cases diagnosed in the United States alone.” See Sybil Exposed”
http://www.fmsfonline.org/?ginterest=MultiplePersonalityDisorder
What happens when the opposition to “gnosticism” becomes, itself, “gnostic”?
We are bidden not to fret when evil persons get their way. It’s a worldly thing, in fact, to do that, and the person who can orate about it at great length is considered the guru of the time. What if there was a simpler way? Well, there is, and Christ Jesus brought it to us.
It seems to me that transgenderism is a form of deep self-hatred and guilt. Most trans people appear to be white men.
Gnosticism = Losticism. The current form seems to be a more rage-filled rebellion against God than previous versions, such as the “New Age spirituality” of a few decades ago. There were more identifiable cults then, such as EST, Children of God, The Way International, etc. Now it’s submerged in the political wars against common sense and reality in general. And much more dangerous due to the political camouflage. People who might not claim to be spiritual are as devoted to baseless belief systems as cult members - Global Warming, the gender wars and so on. Strange times indeed.
The tendency and other gender-bending or gender-denying syndromes can certainly be learned, taught by sinful parents to sinful children. And certainly tomes could be written about how... and yet, what is the promised “way of escape”? It is a personal salvational relationship to Jesus, which might not play out the way men might try to figure it out. Jesus might not play the cards in the order that a psychologist might.
Sometimes we see the most demonic rage in a time when Satan knows the jig is about to be up.
FTFY. My experience with Gnostics is that they don't, actually, know something the rest don't. In my opinion, rather, authentic Christianity is exactly the opposite; it removes all the arcane rules and secret whatevers and is starkly plain.
Our rational, egoistic nature tries to rebel against the simplicity of Salvation, almost screaming "that's too easy! It must be more complicated than that" and in recent example Skinhead O'Connor's Muhammedan diatribe boasts the minute regulation of everything that is Muhammedism.
Of course when one says it must be complicated two things happen:
It's easy, which of course makes it challenging to us, to discern; the rule is in 1 John 4: "Try the spirits whether they are of God: … Ever spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God..."
Everyone can readily admit that they don't know all of God's plan; but at the same time it's not too hard to see what it *isn't*; and among the things it *isn't* are super-secret mystic knowledge He didn't tell us and behavior entirely at odds with everything He did.
Yes, quite right. The serpent-sold illusion of the garden was a promise that couldn’t even be kept. The amount of knowledge needed to pull it off would surpass our own capacity — it would have to equal God’s.
At this point, the wise man chuckles (a la Psalm 2, laughing along with God) and then turns back to the Lord, thanking Him for His mercy in the face of all our bumbling.
Go to Chicago. Most of them there are black.
In these days, Gnosticism is the cult of Cultural Marxism. It is a suicidal cult which foments widespread discord in the society. It is a Marxist scheme to tear a nation apart. Its driving force is the human emotion of envy which seeks to tear down others in a narcissistic war for perceived equal treatment. People will destroy the nation to get what they want.
it is about lost people and their perversion- plain and simple- Many of them KNOW there is a line they shouldn’t cross- but they harden their hearts and cross it out of a perverted desire to oppose God- The Holy spirit pleads with their souls not to do such an abominable thing, but they harden their hearts, drown out the Holy Spirit’s voice, and shake their fists in God’s face- They do not do this ignorantly, They make a conscious effort to ignore the universal moral code written on their hearts- They lust after a lifestyle they know is directly opposed to God’s intended role for mankind- It is wicked sinfulness- It is committed by people that are desperately wicked- They know deep down what God wants, but they don’t care- they are determined to be their own gods, and Satan, the father of lies, has convinced them they will ‘be free’ if they just shake loose the ‘shackles of morality’ and pursue their perverted desires- and yes, they DO know that what they are doing is immoral- but they and th left will never admit it, and want to drag everyone into their miserable sinful lifestyle- want everyone to accept them as ‘normal’ in stead of calling them sinful—
Good point. And there is a bottomless pit of knowledge and information related to ancient secret knowledge, Kabbalah, Sitra Achra, gnosticism, etc. There are some very interesting and informative things there, some of which are useful to know about. But in the end, it is of marginal benefit at best, and a deadly distraction at worst compared to seeking a salvational relationship with Jesus, as you say.
Bill, you make reference to the biblical account of creation as well as the system of duality infused in this world. Are you familiar with the work of Jonathan Kleck on the nature of the Creator in Genesis (Elohim) and the nature of the created human race?
You got me there. But how many of them actually do the surgery? And I guess I always made a distinction between cross dressers and the transgendered. Perhaps there isn’t one save level of commitment.
Certain Trans-Humanists hold that the Holy Triune God is an evil expression of AI (artificial intelligence). This evil demiurge holds us captive in a projected (false) reality.
My experience with Gnostics is that they don’t, actually, know something the rest don’t.
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