I have began the research and script writing for Age of Deceit II. I haven’t decided on a subtitle yet, but I hope to tackle some topics that have interested me in the last year. Please pray for me and my family as I know I will encounter spiritual warfare in the process. This process will be different from the first time since I will have Basil, my co-host on Canary Cry Radio to help with the artistic direction and imagery of the film. That means a lot less google images and youtube clips. I also plan to get exclusive commentary from many researchers and authors regarding all the topics I will tackle in this film.
While the Fallen Angels and the New World Order were the themes in the first video, I plan to display more information regarding the Divine Council in this film. Along with this foundation, I will look at who the Antichrist might be. There are several theories regarding who the Antichrist is. There are prominent alternative Christian authors and researchers who are doing the dirty work in deciphering the character traits of this enigmatic character. My goal will to take a side by side look at the several theories that are out there and propose my own. While so many people have spoken about the Antichrist, I think a side by side comparison would not only be good for analysis, but also for the body of Christ to open up to the varying possibilities of how prophecy is fulfilled. All of this will of course be presented all while exposing the global agenda in the economic and geopolitical realm.
The film will also contain plenty of views on spirituality and science. After establishing the Divine Council view, I hope to show that these entities truly does reside in a realm or dimension that science is only beginning to tap into. I will also look at transhumanism, technocracy and the push for human immortality by 2045. Along with this, I hope to tackle recreational and pharmaceutical drugs as a way to open spiritual doorways into that other dimension. As before, my goal is to present all of this in the context of unfolding Biblical prophecy.
Of course the punchline will be the message of Jesus Christ. I hope to display some really cool information about how Yeshua fulfilled the first spring feasts in his first coming and plans to fulfill the fall feasts upon His return. And as always, I will do my best to present the Gospel.
If you feel led to support the project, please consider doing so.
Recently, there was a conference held by the non-profit group TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). This is a think thank group that’s main mission is to spread ideas. TED’s own website declares that they are quote, “…a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. ” [1]
In the most recent conference, a Sociologist named Jonathan Haidt made a speech entitled, “Religion, Evolution, and the Ecstasy of Self-Transcendence.” Here is the 20 minutes talk below.
The talk itself was an interesting one. Had it been a few years ago when I was studying Sociology at a University and seeking meaning and purpose in life, I would have thought this video makes a whole lot of sense and is the forefront of intellectual thinking. But as a follower of Jesus, there were some important things to consider with his talk.
His main point is that by presupposing an evolutionary framework of group, one is able to understand why we have the capacity for self-transcendence. Haidt begins his talk by asking who in the crowd considered themselves religious. Only a few hands went up. He then asked how many would consider themselves spiritual, and a majority of the hands went up. He then used a phrase coined by French Sociologist Emile Durkheim, “homo-duplex” to describe the difference between the profane or everyday experience of self indulgence, and the sacred level where one’s own desires are sacrificed for the well being of the group, or whole. He gave several examples of how this spiritual, or religious experience has been demonstrated to be achieved through several religions throughout the ages, but also that people find self-transcendence through drugs, raves, and other social phenomena.
He makes the analogy of the staircase to demonstrate this point. Downstairs is the profane, everyday, selfish life. But when you go up the staircase, you find self-transendence. So then he poses this question, “is this so-called staircase a feature of our evolutionary design, or is it a bug?” He reckons that the new atheists would argue that it is a bug, while others attune with the spiritual realities say it is real. Haidt doesn’t really take one position over the other, but it’s obvious he tends to believe that latter, that it is part of the “evolutionary design”.
So as a Christian, there a couple things I would like to point out. First and foremost, this talk is basically asserting that my personal experiences with God are merely just a part of an evolutionary design. In other words, it’s just me going up the staircase into self-transcendence and nothing more. A mere sense of letting go of my self, and opening up to larger realities which flow the feelings of love, empathy, and the feeling of an overwhelming desire to be compassionate and caring to all the living. These all sound tremendous, and certainly, being someone who studied sociology, it makes complete sense in that it analyzes the social reaction to such phenomena.
Haidt gives several examples of this including the soldier who found self-transcendence in war by having to work together and knowing he will live on through his fellow soldiers, the people of the United States during the 9-11 attacks on the WTC and a sense of unity, and the feeling of anger which have been seen in the Arab Springs. He then states quote, “So the real question is what do all these very different examples of transcendence actually have in common? Answer: the elevating idea that self can become unimportant–and that can be a good thing.” In other words, Haidt is suggesting that there is an inherent good in the coalescence of individuals into a team which results in something far more than the sum of our own parts. But therein lies the problem. The desire to “transcend self” and “coalesce” is in itself, a selfish desire. Let me explain.
From the existential point of view, a desire to transcend the self is a desire to reach beyond your own boundaries of understanding and experience. Therefore, when Haidt uses examples of raves, drugs, meditation and other mystical practices to “let go of the self”, what he is describing is a hedonistic desire, in other words, ultimately a self serving experience whereby one can pat him or herself on his/her own back and say, “I am so compassionate, loving, generous, caring…I have eliminated all desires of the self.” Notice, where these things are said of ones self, to ones self. Contrary to this form of thought, what having God as the central point of reference does is true self-transcendence. That is because the purpose of seeking such experience and understanding is not a product of our own doing, but rather the doing of an external force, namely God. And from that an understanding, we are able to draw infinite amounts of love, grace, forgiveness, compassion, hope and truth and externalize it into the world.
Haidt is correct that uniting for a cause and working together in community are powerful things for the human race, and seemingly in general, nature as he uses bees and the hive mentality as an example. But by omitting God and simply suggesting that it’s part of the evolutionary design still has the problem of not having any true purpose beyond overcoming opposing groups in the working of natural selection. The purpose becomes nothing more than survival. Insert God into the equation, and a similar thing happens as to the individual. The purpose of doing anything good will be for the glory of an all mighty Creator God who gifted us with life.
I believe the most humbling stance one can take is that of complete surrender. This is where the conflict lies. While Haidt promotes a self-transcendence that is achieved by the individual for the purpose of the group, complete surrender to God posits a stance where nothing is possible without God, and nothing is impossible with God. It’s the difference between empowering one’s self and surrendering one’s self. But if we are to model the Creator of the universe becoming a mere human being, Jesus, then we are to subscribe to the latter. Total and complete surrender to the all powerful, all knowing God. And the irony behind it all is that this submission ultimately empowers the individual. This might be the ultimate definition of self-transcendence.
Some of you might be thinking that the entire Christian worldview still falls under hedonism, whereby an individual is seeking heaven, or avoiding hell. But that’s only true if you’re looking at it from the outside in. When you are in the position of total surrender to Jesus, what one realizes is that one’s own salvation is only the beginning. It is the launching pad to serve the world which is in dire need not for the purposes of self gratification, but for the grand purposes of God. This is where faith comes in. We don’t always know what God’s grand purposes are for our individual lives. But, we can know it’s for good…ultimate good. Again, to me, this transcends a mere desire to transcend the self. An infinite God has no limits, and therefore, connecting and having a personal relationship with the infinite provides an infinite amount of love, generosity, grace, forgiveness, compassion, and all the good things, which is not something we can produce on our own. When one is able to grasp this, it is no surprise that one will fall on his/her knees, praise, and worship this infinite being because in no way have we earned such grace.
In concluding this post, I would like to also suggest that the entire idea of self-transcendence in the way Haidt describes it echoes the Luceferian Doctrine which states that humans will be gods, and create our own reality. Haidt is suggesting that by having mystical experiences, one is able to shed the profane and attain the higher plane. But the point of my post is that a mystical experience is not necessary to achieve what is labeled transcendence. I want to be clear that I say things like that, not to be judgmental, but just to point it out. It’s not an easy thing to say, and certainly, I will be labeled the closed minded, primitive thinking, bible thumping, irrational barbarian. I have no problem that we as a humanity are progressing and thinking and making strides. But as a Christian, my main message to these people is, proceed with caution. Why the rush to attain such goals? Why not do what the body of Christ is doing in helping the needy, the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten? And lastly, if these people truly consider themselves spiritual, how do they know that their spiritual agenda is being led by truly good intentions?
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”- MATTHEW 7:7
As some of my recent posts have expressed, I sometimes feel tremendously frustrated with my home church. Some folks I have spoken to have suggested that I just pick up and leave. Well, I would love to, and I am still in prayer about it, but it’s difficult to leave. I am an A/V tech at my church, and in all honesty, I love my job and I love the community of people and friends who have been a part of my walk. I get to serve the pastors, the worship team, and the church leaders in a way that is very humbling.
But as I near my sixth spiritual birthday since I was born again, I have been more and more convinced that something is not right. What I was learning through the bible, does not fully line up with what was being taught in my church. And in many ways, no church is going to get it perfect. I get that. I’m not saying I know a better way to do church, or I know somehow exclusively the “right” way to do it. Nevertheless, I knew something was off. It began last year when I was an AV tech for a large church leaders event that was hosted at my church.
This event is one of the biggest events for young church leaders. There is one that happens on the east coast, and one that happens in the west coast, which happens to be hosted by my church. As an AV, I was responsible for the break out rooms where different leaders were able to talk about a particular topic which they were experts in. Mine happened to be on contemplative prayer.
As I sat in my booth watching this couple speak about contemplative prayer, two things struck me as odd. First was that they were teaching us to clear our minds with deep breathing. Now as someone who grew up in a non-practicing Buddhist home with a personal interest in Zen as a young man, I immediately thought this was odd. The second thing was that they claimed that this was what the early church fathers taught as being the best way to pray to God.
Needless to say, I was confused and quite frankly in a bit of shock. I was in that stage of really understanding what the whole new age movement was about and how channeling and spiritual experiences may not be from God, but from false spirits and demons. So to have these people talking about something that sounded much like eastern mysticism was very frightening. But there was one thing they kept repeating, like a mantra (pun intended). They kept saying that “Contemplative prayer is not mysticism…contemplative prayer is not mysticism…it’s a different way to pray to God and communicate with God.”
The Documentary
So as you can imagine, I wasn’t sure what to make of all of this. But like most things, I let it go and wasn’t too concerned about it. But just recently, my memories of this event were stirred. It came when I watched a film by Elliot Nesch called The Real Roots of the Emergent Church.
Because I am a fairly young Christian, I haven’t been around church culture long enough to see changes or even phases or styles of church. All I know is that when my buddy Robbie is converting old worship service tapes to digital, the worship services from 2006 look like they’re from 1986! But Elliot with this film really helped me understand what was going on.
Here is the description of the film:
“This Christian documentary film The Real Roots of the Emergent Church will take an honest look at the leaders of the Emerging Church movement such as Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, Rob Bell, Tony Campolo, Steve Chalke, Peter Rollins, Dan Kimball, Richard Rohr, Phyllis Tickle, Spencer Burke and others. Who are they and what are they teaching? Become familiar with the postmodern Emergent Church and its popular tactic of literary deconstruction applied to the Bible. This film takes an in-depth look at what the Emerging Church believes concerning the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Scriptures, absolute truth, hell, homosexuality, mysticism, contemplative prayer, other religions, and eschatology in comparison to the Bible. Much more than candles and couches!
Subjects of this film were contacted for direct interviews. Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones and others were contacted in April 2011. No response. At a Love Wins book signing, Rob told us he would be willing to do an interview and to contact his church which was done several times with no response. We do not fault them for that knowing they are all probably very busy people. But for this reason we have resorted to their own public statements. This film is our way of joining the conversation.”
Comments on the Film
I think Elliot and his team did a great job on the film. It’s precise, honest, and grounded. It really does expose much of what the emergent movement is all about and why it is essentially heretical to biblical doctrine. It cleared up my concerns about contemplative prayer, and also went into the topic of heaven and hell which was such a big topic last summer after Rob Bells, Love Wins was published.
There were moments in the film when I was moved to tears. These were not tears of joy, but rather great sadness. While listening to Rob Bell and Doug Pagitt talk about their views, I began to think about how many people in the church were being swayed to think in this post-modern, deconstructionist paradigm. It made me sad because I realized there are plenty of pastors and people at my church who would and do buy what these fellows are promoting. It reminded me of a verse from Jude 1:16 where it states, “These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.” There are other verses that describe what the emergent church is all about.
The bottom line that I got out of the film was this: The emergent church is the resurrection of Christian mysticism. Mysticism has its roots in other forms of spiritual mysticism, which line up with the new age movement, which itself lines up with theosophical philosophies, pagan worship, and ultimately Satanism. One way to attack an enemy is to infiltrate. I believe the emergent church is the modern infiltration of Satan into the institutional establishments of Christianity in the west. Not only that, I believe these are the first steps into establishing what bible prophecy tell us is the One World Religion of the end times.
I recommend anyone with a least bit of concern for the body of Christ to watch this film. It is the best film done on the topic and something that probably won’t be too popular, but will expose the deception being practiced by these alleged “Christian leaders.”
Great Job Elliot Nesch and the entire team behind this film! Make sure to support them over at holybibleprophesy.org
