Posted on 01/20/2003 9:37:18 AM PST by Cvengr
In her excellent 1993 book, Goddess Earth, Exposing the Pagan Agenda in the Environmental Movement, Raiders News Update friend Samantha Smith warned that Gaia worship was at the very heart of today's environmental policy. Bluntly she decried, "The Endangered Species Act, the United Nation's Biodiversity Treaty and the Presidents Council on Sustainable Development are all offspring of the Gaia hypothesis of saving "Mother Earth."'
This week, in a National Review commentary, Christopher Horner conferred, saying, "...the environmental movement, now more than ever, does represent the American Left at worship. The green crusade is now crafting a new way for its own troubling religion to pervert traditional faith. Having fought in federal court to deny its religiosity — and thus continue its life-sustaining flow of taxpayer dollars — the Down With People machine is donning religious vestments and teaming up with the Bush administration to tap the president's faith-based initiative.
"CNSNews.com reports that 'EPA is informally seeking 'ideas' regarding how religious groups who promote green causes like climate change and pollution controls, can qualify for the White House's faith-based funds.' The very idea of green evangelizing infecting Bush's faith-based initiative should raise alarm, since the movement has far more in common with pagan themes than with traditional tenets of faith."
What's more worrisome is the goals of "greens" past, present, and future. Gaia-ism points to humanity - especially western civilization - as the world's great evil.
"Western Culture [is perceived as] the root of all evil," Smith observed. "These are some of the teachings of what is little more than the bastardized products of Eastern mysticism. Now called New Age religion, it culminates in deep ecology, eco-feminism and the worship of an ancient Greek God called Gaia - Mother Earth.
"Gaia teaches that man has damaged or destroyed the fragile balance of nature. Disciples of Gaia believe that all living things on earth are interconnected (except man) and to damage or destroy even a tiny insect is to damage whole ecological systems. Such a premise was the basis for Vice President Al Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance."'
So if man is the problem, what should be done about it? Horner reminds us that the faith-based funds-seeking environmental movement (a.k.a. EPA's Gaia worshippers) have a paper trail detailing their answer to the "people are pollution" quandary.
"To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem." Lamont Cole (as quoted by Elizabeth Whelan in her book Toxic Terror)
"This is as good a way to get rid of them as any." Charles Wursta, Chief Scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, commenting on the likelihood of millions dying from a global ban on DDT (also quoted in Toxic Terror)
"I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds." Paul Watson, founder of Greenpeace (quoted in Access to Energy, vol. 10, no. 4, Dec. 1982)
"The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state." Kenneth Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept (quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982)
"The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species [man] upon the rest of the natural world." John Shuttleworth, Friends of the Earth manual writer
A prime spokesman for these Gaia-centered goals, according to Smith, is Father Thomas Berry, "a dissident Catholic priest and a leader of the Temple of Understanding, located in New York City. Father Berry contends that Christianity promotes 'deep cultural pathology of human greed and addiction.' He advocates that the earth is disintegrating and that Christianity is mostly to blame."
In his own words, "the world is being called to a new post-denominational, even post Christian, belief system that sees the earth as a living being - mythologically, as Gaia, Mother Earth - with mankind as her consciousness."
In an effort to make contact with Gaia's consciousness, a representative of The American Policy Center attended a meeting in Boulder (Colorado), called by Jose Arguelles (leader of PAN and New Age Transformation) where participants were presented with the idea that the earth is a living, spiritual being that can feel pain.
The group was asked to tune in to the crystal matrix frequency (Mother Earth's heartbeat) and to relax. Many went into trance-like states. As people felt they were being filled with the Earth's energy, they became vocal, with sounds rising and falling rhythmically. Some swayed and some fell down on the ground and began writhing. They were then 'brought to silence.'
Arguelles told the audience to concentrate on a cloud floating overhead, just drifting, and then told them to invite the cloud in to fill the empty spirit, the empty soul. He said to invite "PAN" in, accepting him as the leader and guide for their lives.
Jose explained that Pan was the first son of Mother Earth and used to live close to his mother in the primeval forest with his brothers and sisters, who went out and founded the temple-building societies (Aztecs, Egyptians, etc,). When Pan refused to join his siblings in the cities, they called him evil and Satan. They invented their own selfish religion, Christianity, which must be removed because it includes a vision of an Apocalypse.
The Boulder audience was told that 'right now Mother Earth is bringing Pan back to save us and lead us into the New Age. We can help by surrendering to him, tuning into the crystal matrix frequencies and carrying out the directions received while tuned in.' Arguelles explained this might include the physical removal of Christians, because they are the biggest obstacle to transformation."
(Pan, cloven-hoofed half man/half beast is one of the infernal names given to Satan in Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible.)
The National Review article ends with a word to the wise:
"But the green charade must be fought, for it is intolerable that taxpayers should be asked to fund such objectives under the guise of aiding the poor and disadvantaged. The greens' philosophy has nothing to do with Judeo-Christian — or even simply humanitarian — principles. Their projects have no place in President Bush's Faith Based and Community Initiative."
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." [ John 1:1]
And are we just playing a word game here?
Salvation is no game to me.
What would the implications on salvation be in light of Mary being the mother of God?
The implications go to the heart of Christian belief. To be a Christian, one must believe that Jesus was 100% God. Since Our Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary is the mother of Jesus, then one must necessarily believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of God. To deny that Our Lady is the Mother of God is to deny that Jesus is God, and to deny that Jesus is God is to damn oneself to Hell.
Who says these commentaries are correct?
Astarte was called "the queen of heaven" by the Canaanite pagans. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the true Queen of Heaven, as revealed to the Church by the true God. Darius and Xerxes were each called "King of Kings" by the Persians. Jesus Christ is the only King of Kings as proved by His Resurrection. To say that Astarte = Mary just because they were both called "queen of heaven" is the same as saying that Christians really worship Xerxes because he was called "the King of Kings".
I believe in the trinity.
I believe Mary gave birth to Jesus who is the son of God.
So, now what?
And I am being serious when I ask now what. I don't see any implication here. I understand that Catholics believe her to be a perpetual virgin if I'm saying that correctly. And as I stated above I believe that Jesus is God in that he is part of the Trinity. Mary was his mother and.....what am I missing?
God does not inhabit linear time. All time is Now to God. When God became Man, he did so by being born of a mother -- the Mother of God -- and, like all humans, He experienced linear time. But He was not bound by linear time; He inhabits the eternal Now in the present tense. As Our Lord Himself said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am" [John 8:58].
BTW, with all due respect to Mary, she in fact was the human vessel that birthed the human Son of God in his form as man, Jesus Christ.
Saying that the Blessed Virgin was merely a vessel that bore the Word of God is like saying the Ark of the Covenant was merely a box used to carry a couple of tablets around. In each case the vessel is inhabited by special Divine Grace that sets them apart from other, impure vessels.
And God did not take the form of man; God became Man, in the Person of Jesus Christ. To deny that Christ came down from Heaven by the Power of the Holy Spirit, became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man is to deny the Creed -- and to deny the Creed is to deny the Christian Faith.
God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is the Son.
Mary is the Mother of Jesus.
Therefore, Mary is the mother of the Son.
But not the other Persons of the Trinity.
Where is that in the Bible?
Only Christ listens from Heaven.
Where is that in the Bible?
Pray only to the Father in His name. To believe anything else is to risk His wrath.
With all due respect: sez you.
Jesus is not 33% God. He is 100% God. To believe that Jesus is only one-third of God is to be a polytheist.
God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is the Son.
Therefore, Jesus is God.
Mary is the Mother of Jesus.
Jesus is God.
Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God.
Can God only be one aspect of the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit at a time?
When Jesus was here on earth who did he pray to?
When the voice from Heaven spoke saying this is my Son in whom I am well pleased who was speaking?
I'm confused, sorry.
With all due respect, you've let your fervor on this one point lead you into saying something more fitting for a Oneness Pentecostal or a Modalist than for an orthodox Trinitarian.
No. As Christians we must believe that Jesus Christ is "of one Being with the Father" whence proceeds the Holy Spirit.
When Jesus was here on earth who did he pray to?
The Father, with Whom He is eternally One.
When the voice from Heaven spoke saying this is my Son in whom I am well pleased who was speaking?
The Father, of Whom He is eternally begotten.
I'm confused, sorry.
Don't apologize; we're all confused about the Trinity. As God, the Trinity is beyond the capacity of human reason to understand; The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way:
"The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the 'mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God'... To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit." [CCC, 237]As Christians, we are not called to understand the Holy Trinity; we are called to accept It by Faith. Please pray for the strengthening of my faith, as I will pray for you.
Will do friend. Thanks!
Youre paging me here why?
LOL
And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ - Ephesians 4:11,12
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