False prophets come in many shapes and sizes. The most dangerous of all are prophets (teachers) of Nihilism:
Nihilism: Why the West and America are Committing Suicide
For fifteen hundred years the Christian West, which includes America, had followed St. Augustine (AD 354-430) in affirming that as all men are the image-bearers of the transcendent Triune God the Father Almighty then it logically follows that every human being is a trinity of being, intellect, and will. And when God the Father entered into history to walk this earth as the man Jesus Christ it was then known beyond a doubt that God is the living, personal Father and not the impersonal, non-living androgynous energy-force running through nature as pagans believed, nor was He the distant unknowable God as the Pharisees and Sadduces and then later on the Muslims and the Wests Deists such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine held.
In the light of this reality St. Augustine went on to observe that at no time or in any place can it ever be wrong for men to love God with all ones heart, with all ones soul, and with all ones mind, nor to love ones neighbor as oneself. Furthermore, all men must unhesitatingly obey God, the Ruler of all creation, in everything He commands and as He designed only two sexes, male and female, then what is today euphemistically called gay sex are crimes against the very nature of man designed and created by Almighty God. Thus crimes against nature must:
everywhere be detested and punished. The crimes of the men of Sodom are of this kind, and if all nations in the world committed them they would all stand guilty of the same crime against the Law of God, which did not design men so that they should use each other in this way. (The Confessions of St. Augustine, p. 49)
The Western civilized world arose to heights of glory and individual liberty on the wings of the Bible and Christian theism in particular:
The Bible brought its view of God, the universe, and mankind into all the leading Western languages and thus into the intellectual process of Western man Since the invention of printing, the Bible has become the most available, familiar, and dependable source and arbiter of intellectual, moral and spiritual ideals in the West. (H. Grady Davis cited in The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, Vishal Mangalwadi, Part 1)
But for for over two-hundred years, Western intellectuals and their eager followers have been sawing away at the Wests Biblical foundations, even going so far as to declare the death of the Triune God. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) realized that having killed the Biblical God, the West could not possibly save the civilizational fruits of its faith in God the Father for
the death of the Triune God means not only the death of the West, but the death of mans soul. In the words of George Orwell:
we had sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake: The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all; it was a cesspool full of barbed wire It appears that amputation of the soul isnt just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out. The wound has a tendency to go septic. (Orwell, Notes on the Way, 1940)
Six centuries before Jesus Christ, the Buddha already knew that if God does not exist then the human self cannot logically exist either. Not wanting there to be a God, he took God away from the Hindu religion and deconstructed the idea of the soul, with devastating consequences. Mangalwadi, Indias foremost Christian intellectual notes that when one:
starts peeling the onion skin of ones psyche, he discovers that there is no solid core at the center of ones being. Your sense of self is an illusion. Reality is nonself (anatman). You dont exist. Liberation, the Buddha taught, is realizing the unreality of your existence. (p. 6)
For over two-hundred years the secularized West has been moving closer to Buddhas denial of the souls existence. Buddhism and Buddhas revamped version of Hinduism try to merge the soul into a universal, impersonal nothingnessthe void.
The anthropomorphized impersonal, non-living androgynous energy-force of Augustines day is now the universal nothingness variously known today as the christ-consciousness, the all that is everything, Chaos, the Force, universal soul, and the singularity for example.
The Marxist evolutionary-materialists who ruled the Soviet Union were actually very Buddhist in the sense that they tried to liquidate all expressions of God-endowed individuality in favor of an impersonal collective, communal consciousness.
Todays New Age post-modern Progressives go further. They seek to annihilate their sense of individuality through drugs, Tantric sex, yoga, and meditation. Like Buddha and contemporary Hindu gurus some of them are trying to merge their individual consciousness with the void.
Nihilism, or nonbelief in ones own self, is the logical assumption if God the Father does not exist. Nihilism is spiritual, philosophical and moral suicide. It is the emptiness that lands indivduals and entire societies on the Highway to Hell for why should anyone be concerned by anything, no matter how wicked and perverse if nothing is true, good, natural and beautiful in any absolute sense?
Mangalwadi observes that never mind and dont bother are logical virtues for nihilists who believe that there is nothing out there to give meaning and significance to anything herebe it your daughter, wife, or life. (p. 4)
Nihilism throws open the door to the wickedness committed by the Sanduskys. It puts out the welcome mat to murder-minded jihadists, Sharia-enforcers and floods of unassimilated immigrants. It asks, what is it to you if the Madoffs and nihilistic corporatists and politicians bilk thousands of Americans out of their jobs, homes, and life-savings or that Biden has redefined the Taliban as good guys? And why should you care if Americas youth are not only being homosexualized and diseased as a consequence but that the military openly embraces Satanism, Wicca, and gay sex? And when crowds of cheering families and toddlers dressed in sailor suits gathered to greet the home-crewing crew of the Oak Hill and the Navy made a show of two lesbians kissing, Nihilism said, dont bother, its nothing. (Womens First Kiss at Homecoming a First for Navy, Too,
http://hamptonroads.com.nyud.net/2011/12/first-lesbian-couple-get-first-kiss-navy-homecoming
Nihilism is the barbarianism of St. Augustines time revamped, modernized and disguised for example as evolutionary progress, free-thought, rationalism, materialism, scientism, tolerance, inclusion, safe-schools safe-sex, sustainability, choice, and open societies.
As they did in Augustines day, spiritually-dead Nihilists, or Subverters as they were called then, engage in a:
wanton kind of persecution of the modesty of ordinary unknown people, a persecution carried out for no reason at all except that by jeering and mocking they were able to give themselves a malicious amusement. Nothing can be more like the behavior of devils than this. (p. 42)
Having declared the death of God and the revealed truth that defines the moral value of every individual, nihilism is busily amputating the soul of the West. Thus the West is progressively discarding the source of its morality, rationality, humanity, and family: the spiritual, intellectual and philosophical foundation of personhood, human rights, justice, compassion, and education. The West is committing suicide on an individual and collective basis.
Your conscience is the part of you which embraces what is good and which rejects evil. It is like the doorkeeper of a house which is open to friends and closed to enemies. Hilary of Arles, Ancient Christian Devotional, p. 127
Individual suicide, or spiritual death results when the spirit of Nihilism forces open the door of the conscience, which it first compromises and then finally converts. It is the severely sullied conscience that enslaves the soul to the Devil, the father of nihilism.
@Linda Kimball
http://patriotsandliberty.com/?p=15460
Placemark
i’m certain St Augustine did not believe God the Father entered history to walk the world as the man Jesus Christ.
This is called “modalism” and is heresy to the Church.