In This Spreading Sea of Apostasy, the Bible is the Only Safe Place to Be.

The film I talked about in the previous post is part of a series titled Counterfeit Christianity and I've decided to watch the whole series starting with #1:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSdFmV4zgOQ

I expect to have a much clearer idea of the scope of the end times Apostate World Religion by the time I've finished this series.

I'd been avoiding for some time learning about the various apostasies and heresies I knew were flooding the Church, it just seemed too much to try to absorb and too much of a distraction from my own projects and Christian life. I knew there was so much deviation from the truth, which I gleaned from the teachers I trust, it is most likely why we have not had a real revival in decades and why God will likely not not give us a revival, but I didn't want to delve into the beliefs of the Emerging Church movement or the Contemplative Prayer movement or Rick Warren and other megachurch teachers.  I'd spent some time on the Word of Faith people and the Charismatics, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and so on, but it takes a lot of work to really understand a heresy.  

For instance, until this film I had only the vaguest idea of why Rick Warren is considered to be a false teacher, but the film makes it quite clear.  Now I'm very grateful for this particular series because it's doing the job I haven't been up to doing, it promises to teach me all that without the painstaking research necessary.    I'm very grateful to Caryl Matrisciana and the many others in the film who expose the false teachers.

It's already changed my own focus.  Although I love the poetry in Tozer's Christian Book of Mystical Verse, I realize it's derivative and I need to immerse myself in the Bible instead.  I didn't expect the Bible to have the consistent focus I thought I needed to revive my Christian life, but then I realized that's a deception.  It's the Word of God.  If it's the Word of God then there's no part of it that wouldn't have the focus I need, all of it reveals God to us, every bit of it.  Nevertheless I've decided to start with the Psalms rather than the historical books,  and spend time with each of them rather than just read them through.  The Word of God is LIVING  (Hebrews 4:12) , and that means all of it.  I want it to sink down into me and impart its life to me.

A Film about Pagan Mysticism in the Church

 Here's another video on tghe dangers of mysticism and it's very good.  Hosted by occult-watcher Caryl Matrisciana.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYrP_VQ0SO8 

I'm going to have to stop calling Tozer's book of verse "mystical verse" because it's too bad he made so much of that word and it's become a huge headache.  \\

I guess I have to say again, though, that I understand why he felt it's necessary, because some of the people who wrote this poetry wree branded with that label while what they actually wrote is completely biblical.  Even the poetry of the Catholics among them is completely biblical.  Perhaps he chose the ones that are and others aren't so defensible, I don't know, but if the poem is biblical that's all that matters for its effect on the reader.    

And of course what Tozer was objecting to was the tendency in churches to accept a rathre low level of Christian experience as normative, when scripture itself calls us to a closer relationship with Jesus than that standard.    It's also observed by many these days, and it's true in my own experience, that Christian life hardly differs at all from the lives of unbelievers.  Outwardly anyway, and I'm one of whom that's unfortunately true.  I had the jarring experince recently of watching one of John MacArthur's videos and hearing his congregation erupt into hooting and whistling in praise of his dealings over the legal battle of their meeting during COVID restrictions.  It was jarring because it sounded like any crowd at a football game.  Why shouldn't it?   All I can say is I didn't expect it from a large group of Christians.  I can't even say why not, I can't even defend my impression.  It was just jarring.  It just didn't sound right.   And there's nothing unusual about it in my experience.  Silly joking around, acting like a fooball crowd, all par for the course these days.  

Anyway, I see a book like Tozer's as aiming for a more serious Christian life than would ever provoke such a fleshly outburst, and I think from what he wrote in his Pursuit of God, some of which I quoted quite a few posts back, he was saying pretty much that:  the Christian life is meant to be more than what it usually is in today's churches.  For him the term "mystical" was included in that "more."  But then he wrote the book before the great avalanche of Eastern religions and occultism that hit America in the sixties, so maybe that exonderates him.

But the film by Matrisciana is all about that avalanche.   That is her calling, to expose all that, and the pagan mysticism from early Catholicism is another part of that unfortunate influx into the churches so it became one of her subjects..

I love Tozer's book though.  It lifts me out of my flesh into a greater love of the Biblical God than I've felt n some time.    And it's all biblical, no artificial methods for emptying the mind or creating any special mental condition or that sort of thing, just thoughts about God that are clearly in line with scripture that in themselves take you out of your flesh to some extent and lift you into God's presence.    An appreciation of the beauty of Christ rapidly causes the beauties of the world to fade.  That's the only "method" I find there.

More on the suppression of HCQ, plus a "walkaway" video about leftist lies

This is all-out politically motivated censorship.  Yes we are already living in the USSRA.  It's not exactly the government that is doing this, it's people in the media, those who run social media.  It's a huge disinformation campaign.   The link below is to an article about Dr. Simone Gold.  She's been banned for spreading "misinformation."  I guess most Americans just don't believe this is possible so they'll find the fault to be with her somehow.  We've got to stop being cowardly, they'll muzzle anyone who opposes them but there must be avenues we can find somewhere.  

 https://www.thesfnews.com/dr-simone-loses-her-job-after-promoting-hydroxychloroquine-rewrite/61666

While I'm at it, I also found this really interesting video by a young woman who has changed her mind about the Democratic Party.  She was a teacher and is now an ER nurse.  Who knows how long they'll let her video stay up on You Tube.  She says she's been "shadow banned" already.  As a teacher she'd dedicated herself to helping black students and over time saw how the liberal policies she'd accepted actually having the opposite effect to what she thought they were all striving for, to help these students succeed in life.   Her experience as an ER nurse also contributed to her change of heart.  She's wonderfully articulate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flp7gKg5G4E

The Suppression of HCQ is Scary and Frustrating

 President and Melania. Trump have tested positive for Coronavirus.  He has some slight symptoms.  NO MENTION OF HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE, which they should be taking as of now.  

WHY NOT?

Why are they all acting like the virus will either get them or it won't?  He took HCQ prophylactically some time ago.  WHY IS IT NOT EVEN BEING MENTIONED NOW????:   

Update:  Friday morning I heard a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh expressing sadness about Trump's having the virus.  NO MENTION of HCQ.    Later in the day Ben Shapiro also talked about the incident without mentioning HCQ although he had as a guest an MD who discussed all the various treatments they are working on for the virus, many "promising therapeutics" among them.  Mark Levin also discussed the situation without mentioning HCQ.  I didn't hear Hannity at all today so I have no idea what he said about any of it.

I thoughjt I was used to strange and dangerous misbehavior these days, and confusing reports about everything that's going on, including the crazy banning of HCQ, lying media, fake news etc. etc. etc. but this complete blackout of any mention of this drug that many reputable medical people say is pretty much a cure for COVID, yes a CURE, is scarier than anything else that's happened.  Trump himself took the drug but not a word about that.  I can name many sources of positive information about it, but it's as if it never existed.  As the Australian politician says, withholding this drug is a crime against humanity, it's not just the usual expectable slander and character assassination and that sort of thing, it's actual all-out murder by people who know the drug would work if used properly.  We don't need more "promising therapeutics" although why not? the more the better;  we certainly don't need to be in a big rush to get a vaccine which is likely to be dangerous in itself, BECAUSE we already have a treatment that WORKS.  Harvey Risch of the Yale Department of Public Health aid we have it, all we need to do is use it.  

Besides Risch, ER physician Simone Gold and cardiologist Daniel Wohlgelernter both testified to its efficacy with COVID.  She lost her job for it, don't know what happened to him.  Risch was interviewed by Mark Levin but haven't seen anything by him recently.  The Nigerian doctor who was one of those strongly advocating its use based on her experience, got trounced because of her belief in some demonic something or other which has nothing to do with the virus.    I wish I knew who to bombard with this information.  Most would ignore it, but there must be some out there who woulde take it seriously.  I guess if I did too much of that sort of thing I'd just end up dead.  Happens.  I pray of course, maybe the LORD in His mercy will provide a path to sanity about this.

Australian Politician Calls for Criminal Trials of Health Bureaucrats who Banned Hydroxychloroquine as COVID Cure

This was forwarded to me.  I suppose it won't hit the main media but it ought to be headlines all over the world.  It's the only sane public response I've seen to this unconscionable banning of a drug that could actually cure COVID.  

https://vaccineimpact.com/2020/australian-politician-calls-for-criminal-trials-of-health-bureaucrats-who-banned-hydroxychloroquine-as-covid-cure/

Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

Craig Kelly MP, a member of the Australian House of Representatives, has claimed that Health Bureaucrats have “engaged in crimes against humanity and they should be taken to the criminal court in the Hague,” for their ban on hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which has been shown to cure COVID patients by thousands of doctors in the U.S. and around the world.

Sky News Australia has published an interview with the MP.

Liberal MP Craig Kelly says the ban placed on COVID-19 treatment hydroxychloroquine by Australian bureaucrats violates the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors and is based on a study since proven false.

Mr Kelly said health bureaucrats interfered in the doctor-patient relationship by prohibiting the use of hydroxychloroquine even if the doctor thought the treatment would save the patient’s life.

Health bureaucrats have “violated the very first principle of the hypocritic oath” which is to ‘do no harm’,” he said.

Mr Kelly told Sky News technically bureaucrats should only ban the use of hydroxychloroquine if the evidence shows beyond all reasonable doubt that firstly, hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work and secondly, that it is dangerous.

“Recent studies show that proposition is no longer sustainable … and they must lift their bans otherwise they are engaged in crimes against humanity and they should be taken to the criminal court in the Hague,” he said.

“They are withholding medical treatment from Australians that the evidence shows can save their lives.”

Watching and Waiting Through A Time of Looming Threat

 We are living through a time that is unprecedented in the lives of most of us, and perhaps unprecedented, period.   Our lives have changed practically overnight and it doesn't look like we're going back to normal any time soon, if ever.  

And it's hard to know what to believe about a lot of it too.  Disinformation is probably most of the "news" these days.   Is the virus really responsible for all those deaths, or is a lot of it conflated with other medical conditions so there is no way to know?  The CDC came out a couple of weeks ago with the information that only 6% of the deaths attributed to COVID were clearly the result of COVID, while the rest involved other causes, in such a confused way that there's no way to know the true cause of death.  Then there is this unconscionable situation that a drug that could actually stop the virus in its early stages has been politically suppressed and is hardly mentioned at all any more while the death toll is reported every day as if no such remedy exists.  We're supposed to be expecting a vaccine which many fear is going to be as dangerous as the virus.    

Then there are the protests and the rioting that has been destroying businesses and property in some major cities.  The entire protest movement itself is founded on false information.  Supposedly it's a protest against systemic racism practiced by police against black citizens during arrest procedures.  The information has come out that the actual incidence of deaths by certain police methods is just as common in police dealings with whites, in some cases even more frequent.  That information is out there but the protests continue as if it weren't.  And at least in Portland the protests regularly turn to violence at nightfall every day while the media continue to describe it as "mostly peaceful."   Meanwhile there is this utterly irrational move to get rid of the police altogether as if they were the cause of all the problems.  Truly we are living in an upside-down world.

On top of all that, as if it weren't enough, wildfires swept the western US, and are still burning in some places, covering an enormous swath of land.  It's been a summer of high temperatures, which happens periodically anyway, which brought on lightning storms as the cause of the fires.  Some of it is attributed to global warming but how much should be is hard to determine since the west does go through periodic cycles of heat waves and fire danger anyway.  Not to mention that the cause of global warming is still in dispute:  how much is due to human causes?   There is also the factor of politically/environmentally motivated laws that have cut back on normal fire prevention methods such as the clearing away of fire hazards.  

In all these things emotional reactions are provoked as one group blames another with a great deal of righteous passion.   Does the wearing of face masks help against the virus or not?:  Violence against those wearing them and those refusing to wear them has occurred, and we still don't know for sure whether the argument for or against is the correct one.  A couple of California churches, after shutting down for the virus for a few weeks, have gone back to meeting regularly as the threat of the virus was seen to be a lot less dangerous than had originally been anticipated.  Yet they are under legal sanctions for their choice to hold services, and are the target of angry accusations.   And again we don't really know what the real danger of of the virus really is.  So far the churches are free of it though.

The times are chaotic and grave threats in many forms lurk just behind a fragile curtain of social habits, threat of violence, threat of loss of supplies for our everyday needs.  Nobody is really starving to death because the government keeps giving economic support, but how long is that going to last?  How long before the systems that sustain us can't continue?  Some people are stocking up for a future of total breakdown but how many are in a position to do that?

I've personally backed off my usual immersion in the political situation to make a big effort to renew my Christian life.  God is the only refuge in such a time.  And if the Rapture is right around the corner as it certainly seems it must be, I want to be spiritually strong for it.   Otherwise there's not much preparation I'm in a position to do for my own protection or the protection of family and friends.

We're in a waiting pattern.  Who knows what is going to happen next?

More

’Tis not enough to save our souls, 

To shun the eternal fires; 

The thought of God will rouse the heart 

To more sublime desires.

How little of that road, my soul! 

How little hast thou gone! 

Take heart, and let the thought of God 

Allure thee further on.

---------Frederick William Faber (two stanzas from The Way of Perfection) 

Tozer, Christian Book of Mystical Verse

The simplicity of the idea that you can draw near to God by merely thinking of Him is very attractive.  It can't mean that anyone could do this of course, there do have to be some preconditions.  You'd have to be born again for starters, and you'd have to know the biblical portrait of God or who knows what "god" you'd be invoking.  

But I've experienced the truth of it myself.  After much prayer and tears of repentance that God would forgive me for getting so far from Him, and would renew my first love of Him and guide me to a deeper love, now if I just have the thought of God I experience a deep peace, and even a "panting" like the deer of the psalm that pants for the waters.  This is not just an emotional thing but something spiritual or supernatural.  

Faber must be talking about such an experience, though it would make sense that there would be varieties and deeper versions of it.  No complex methodology here, just sincere desire to draw nearer to God, to know God as Jesus prayed His followers would.  Lovesick for God is where I want to be for the rest of my life, though there may not be much of my life left.  (And of course I use the word "lovesick" to invoke the Song of Songs, which is so frequently misinterpreted to be referring to merely human love.)

Later:  In searching for more inspiration at You Tube I kept running into the false mystics, which does make me wish again that Tozer might not have been so casual about his use of the term.  Anti-Christian mystics abound, wresting the scriptures to fit some notion of their own that denies the whole history of Christian theology.   Even mytics who may have started out pursuing the true God in prayer veer unnervingly off the path into all sorts of false ideas.  These ideas can often be identified as focusing on us, the human beings, rather than on God.   I may want to write more about this later.