Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)
In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,
"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."
John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.
Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:
“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)
Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy
Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.
Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:
"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)
In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.
As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.
Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:
“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,
“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)
The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.
With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.
Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.
Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:
“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:
“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)
Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)
Pouring more contempt on them he asked,
“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)
Concerning Matthew 19:5:
“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)
And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)
After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,
“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)
The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.
From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,
“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
You’re full of words, but lack two gray cells to rub together.
And that’s supposed to fool who?
Fools......
FR was explicitly declared not to be "anti-science" for a reason.
I’m sure you’re happy to provide grist for the liberal lurkers that love to paint FR and conservatives in general as anti-science Luddites who want to take us back to the Dark Ages.
And you’re proposing what?... stopping that?..
Never happen.. the secret is some freepers are RINOs.
Some are democrats... even some libertarian democrats..
being a freeper does not mean you must be smart...
Not catholics are catholics nor are all Americans americans and not all freepers are freepers..
It’s not what you say that counts it’s what you do and don’t do that counts..
Most scientists don’t do... they talk about doing.. and get credit for what someone else DID..
What's your evidence?
tacticalogic: Then you are, by any objective measure “anti-science”.
Spirited: Better watch your step hosepipe, one of the “witch doctors” has found you guilty of blaspheming the science totem. Burning at the stake will be next.
We don't do inquisitions and stake burnings.
To which hosepipe replied: “You do me a service I do not require. I’m not after the term ‘scientific method’; I’m after the very term ‘SCIENCE’.
"It has become a 'juju bag' term… a term for 'witch doctors' and “Gurus'... A bag full of bones and rattlers shaken to amaze the dumb and naive…."
Well, confronted with this exchange of views, I must say that I take side with hosepipe.
Dear tacticalogic, I don’t think I have ever said that the currently-understood scientific method is “fundamentally flawed.” My main — and only — criticism is that it is an “incomplete” method by which to understand Reality as fully engaged by human beings.
By which I mean to suggest that its very method is a limit on what can be known by human beings about the natural world.
Yet as my dear brother hosepipe is entirely correct to point out, to the extent that just because “science” enjoys such prestige nowadays, it succeeds in reducing the World of common experience to what can be observed and measured in “objective” Nature (i.e., that part of Nature that can be directly observed and measured). Given this limited mission, it cannot possibly address the biggest, most perplexing, even seemingly most “mysterious” aspects of common human historical experience — problems such as What is Life (why am I alive?); What is Consciousness/Mind (what are the sources and structures of my personal thoughts?); for what purpose(s) do I exist?
When the Logos — ultimate Truth as a standard of human judgment — has been abolished, such questions become meaningless. Thus people are free to discount/discredit such aspects of common human personal and historical/cultural experience/existence as unworthy of “serious” — that is to say, “scientific” — study. Talk about a "vicious circle!"
So dear tacticalogic, when you allege that such miscreants as hosepipe and moi, who it seems you feel are consumed with going after “a few ‘evil bastards’ that have taken up residence” as public “truth-speakers” of “modern science” (e.g., Dawkins, Lewontin, Dennett, Pinker, Singer, Monod, et al. — the "usual suspects" who qualify for "evil bastard" stature — that this proves this somehow results in the “tearing out the foundation” of science itself, I am not just a little perplexed.
You have made it very clear — and I do accept your findings — that “science” ultimately is all about what can be “observed and measured”; that is, subject to the “replicability of experiments,” on the sole basis of which the original finding can be verified by independent observers. Get enuf "consensus," then you know it's "true."
In short, we here have a case of "science" — and effectively of Life and Mind — conducted by public opinion poll.
While that understanding may give you great comfort in the “certainty” direction, there is still ever so much more in the common world of human experience that categorically cannot be measured in this way.
That is NOT so say that science is necessarily “flawed.” Its methods and techniques are eminently well-suited to its legitimate pursuits.
I suspect that what my dear brother hosepipe and I commonly object to is not the inherent limitations of the scientific method, but to the corruption of science itself (by folks who want to do philosophy/ideology, theology, and/or politics “under the color of science”) — so evident these days in the abuse of science for political, social/cultural, and/or economic ends.
I can give you a great analogy, dear tacticalgic, from the maths, that might shed further light on this issue. But I’ve already run on so long, I perceive I should give you a break for now.
But if you’re interested in the said analogy, please do feel free to get back to me!!!
And as for you, dear 'pipe, my brother in Christ: Meta-HUGS!!!
Thank you so much, dear hosepipe, for writing!
Reverend R7 Rocket's Blessed Sermon:
"Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. " - Hebrews 13:4
"For if she cheats, you get a sweet ride!"
- Book of Calloway, 1:14
"Whosoever spends on a stench trench betrays his brethren and shall be smitten with alimony. However, he who shall spend upon himself in the form of two wheeled transport shall be blessed and freed to enjoy all the Earth." - Epistle of Bro 5:28
"You shall know that the fruits of thy labor are for the enjoyment of yourself, and let the golf be played without fear or hesitation. Woe betide those who shall divert their funds away from motorcycles, beer, video games, and golf into the support of single mothers, for they shall be declared manginas, white knights, and Captain Save a Ho - deserving only of derision and contempt, forever cursed to pay alimony and child support. Know then that all goodness is bestowed upon he who Goes His Own Way, and all contempt is focused upon him who shall prevent a cock coozie from experiencing the consequences of her actions." - The Lamentations of MGTOW 1:74
"It is a great blessing and triumph to spend upon one's self and one's brothers: yay, let him who shall buy a round be counted among the blessed! And let he who shall pay the rent of a slattern, trollop, slut, skank, whore, or feminist be numbered among the accursed who shall forever wander the Earth forsaken looted of all they possess in the name of the sentinel of evil, Andrea Dworkin, the emissary of Lucifer upon Earth." - Revelations of Tom Leykis's Shade 8:21
"Put not your trust in princesses."
Manly Psalms 146:3
"Therefore shall a man leave his single mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall divorce with great woe."
Bluejeanesis: 2:24
"After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death."
James 1:15
Lieth not down with whores and witches lest thy loins be corrupted with disease and thy purse be barren forever.
Amen.
"I’m after the very term ‘SCIENCE’.
"It has become a 'juju bag' term… a term for 'witch doctors' and “Gurus'... A bag full of bones and rattlers shaken to amaze the dumb and naive…."
Then you say:
'That is NOT so say that science is necessarily “flawed.” Its methods and techniques are eminently well-suited to its legitimate pursuits.'
You want it both ways, and it's impossible to have a rational conversation with someone who does that.
In what way does that lovely post justify your deviant “sexual orientation?”
>> “You want it both ways” <<
.
No she doesn’t.
She merely pointed out that science has some legitimate use, when it doesn’t try to go beyond its logical limits.
She merely pointed out that science has some legitimate use, when it doesn’t try to go beyond its logical limits.
Science is just a tool. It doesn't try to do anything by itself. There are people who try to abuse it by trying to apply it beyond it's logical limits, but that's not the proposition she's agreed to. What she's agreed to is not just going after the people who abuse it, but going after science itself, in any context and any application, by anyone.
The Reverend R7 Rocket sayeth:
"Woe to ye, editor-surveyor, that ye give praise to Jezebel. Those who bless Jezebel are guilty of sexual deviance and shall be cursed and smitten by Saint Tom Leykis."
The Reverend has spoken.
I didn’t know that you had taken the name Jezebel. Are you a woman, or have you been “re-assigned?”
The Reverend has said that you are guilty of praising Jezebel.
Science is just a tool.
WRONG again.. science is PEOPLE.... people trying to be logical..
Science is not a “thing”.. it’s flawed humans attempting to understand.. i.e. be logical..
True..... some WORSHIP science... with a godlike dogma..
When IT-(science) takes on it’s “religious” characteristics is where I jump off the turnip cart..
Also; true I landed “funny”... and limp a little (metaphorically)..
And truth be told love pointing a finger at those on the cart.. with a snicker..
HEY!.. nobodys perfect..
I don’t agree with your assesment, but I’m glad the “science people” can provide entertainment for your inner bitch.
Spirited: Better watch your step hosepipe, one of the “witch doctors” has found you guilty of blaspheming the science totem. Burning at the stake will be next.
What dont kill you makes you stronger... AND
may be damned good entertainment..
You’ll get no praise from me.
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