Is Your Church Worship More Pagan than Christian?

Todd Pruitt

There is a great misunderstanding in churches of the purpose of music in Christian worship. Churches routinely advertise their “life-changing” or “dynamic” worship that will “bring you closer to God” or “change your life.” Certain worship CD’s promise that the music will “enable you to enter the presence of God.” Even a flyer for a recent conference for worship leaders boasted:
"Join us for dynamic teaching to set you on the right path, and inspiring worship where you can meet God and receive the energy and love you need to be a mover and shaker in today’s world…Alongside our teaching program are worship events which put you in touch with the power and love of God."
The problem with the flyer and with many church ads is that these kinds of promises reveal a significant theological error. Music is viewed as a means to facilitate an encounter with God; it will move us closer to God. In this schema, music becomes a means of mediation between God and man. But this idea is closer to ecstatic pagan practices than to Christian worship.

Jesus is the only mediator between God and man. He alone is the One who brings us to God. The popular but mistaken notions regarding worship music undermine this foundational truth of the Christian faith. It is also ironic that while many Christians deny the sacramental role of those ordinances which the Lord Himself has given to the church (baptism and the Lord’s Supper) they are eager to grant music sacramental powers. Music and “the worship experience” are viewed as means by which we enter the presence of God and receive his saving benefits. There is simply no evidence whatsoever in Scripture that music mediates direct encounters or experiences with God. This is a common pagan notion. It is far from Christian.

In his helpful book True Worship Vaughan Roberts offers four consequences of viewing music as an encounter with God. I will summarize them.

1. God’s Word is marginalized.
In many Churches and Christian gatherings it is not unusual for God’s Word to be shortchanged. Music gives people the elusive “liver quiver” while the Bible is more mundane. Pulpits have shrunk and even disappeared while bands and lighting have grown. But faith does not come from music, dynamic experiences, or supposed encounters with God. Faith is birthed through the proclamation of God’s Word (Rom 10:17).

2. Our assurance is threatened.
If we associate God’s presence with a particular experience or emotion, what happens when we no longer feel it? We search for churches whose praise band, orchestra, or pipe organ produce in us the feelings we are chasing. But the reality of God in our lives depends on the mediation of Christ not on subjective experiences.

3. Musicians are given priestly status.
When music is seen as a means to encounter God, worship leaders and musicians are vested with a priestly role. They become the ones who bring us into the presence of God rather than Jesus Christ who alone has already fulfilled that role. Understandably, when a worship leader or band doesn’t help me experience God they have failed and must be replaced. On the other hand, when we believe that they have successfully moved us into God’s presence they will attain in our minds a status that is far too high for their own good.

4. Division is increased.
If we identify a feeling as an encounter with God, and only a particular kind of music produces that feeling, then we will insist that same music be played regularly in our church or gatherings. As long as everyone else shares our taste then there is no problem. But if others depend upon a different kind of music to produce the feeling that is important to them then division is cultivated. And because we routinely classify particular feelings as encounters with God our demands for what produce those feelings become very rigid. This is why so many churches succumb to offering multiple styles of worship services. By doing so, they unwittingly sanction division and self-centeredness among the people of God.

Scripture is full of exhortations to God’s people to sing and make music to the Lord. Our God has been gracious to give us this means to worship Him. But it is important to understand that music in our worship is for two specific purposes: to honor God and to edify our fellow believers. Unfortunately, many Christians tend to grant music a sacramental power which Scripture never bestows upon it.

Todd Pruitt serves as Lead Pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Raised a Southern Baptist, he is a graduate of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City. He blogs regularly at Ref21 and 1517. Todd, along with Carl Trueman and Aimee Byrd, is one of the hosts of Mortification of Spin. He and his wife Karen have three children.

Read this article at - http://www.christianity.com/church/worship-and-hymns/is-your-church-worship-more-pagan-than-christian.html

The New Sins Of ‘Nonjudgmental’ Millennials

Millennials are like the Moral Majority, except genderqueer.
 

By Daniel Payne

 

One of the greatest theological dialogues of the last 500 years is found between St. Thomas More and William Tyndale, the former a giant of the Catholic Church and the latter one of the more significant figures of the early Protestant Reformation. Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into English, and his work The Obedience of a Christian Man, was controversial and problematic enough that More, one of the fiercest critics of the Reformation, was compelled to respond. Tyndale responded with an “Answer” to More’s “Dialogue,” to which More responded with a “Confutation” of Tyndale’s “Answer” (the titles alone are worth reading). The tracts are rich with conviction, both utterly sure of their interpretation of the Word of God as it is revealed to humanity, both certain the other is not merely factually incorrect but sinning, going against the will of God to the detriment of the other’s eternal soul.
 

There’s not much of that going around these days. If you speak to the average 20-something or Millennial about the concept of sin, you may be treated to a kind of quasi-Unitarian dismissal of the concept, a sort of uncomfortable rejection of the notion of ecclesiastical proscription in any sense: “I’m very spiritual,” you’ll hear a lot, “but not religious.” What this looks like in practice is generally a dismissal of accountability towards any higher power, or at least towards any rules He might impose upon His people: It is, after all, 2014.

Yet the Millennials, having sloughed off the religious notions of their parents and grandparents—at least one-third of Generation Yers are more or less without religion—have taken it upon themselves to adopt a new set of mandates and dictates to guide their lives. Call them the “new sins,” a number of commandments by which one might stay on the narrow way. The old interdictions now cast aside, a new series of injunctions must be obeyed: and like most religions and denominations, adherence to these commandments is held sacrosanct, any deviation from them fairly blasphemous. Religion may be out for a large number of Millennials, but its vacuum has been more or less filled.

Climate Change Dogma

One of the most fervent dogmas to which the Millennial cohort now cleaves is that of climate change. Indeed, if there is a modern-day corollary to the Apostolic Age, say, and the apocalyptic predictions to which it was in thrall, it is in the Church of Global Warming, which is as certain as was Paul that the end times are at hand. More than two-thirds of Millennials agree that the earth is “getting warmer,” and 75 percent of those agree that man’s activities have something to do with it. Since Millennials are a firmly liberal voting block, this is rather unsurprising.
 

A sin against God would have once demanded penance: prayers for forgiveness, a rosary, some good works, perhaps. A sin against the environment demands equal absolution: two-thirds of Millennials are “willing to pay more for products from sustainability-focused companies” (echoes of trading alms for indulgences). Eighty percent of polled Millennials also believe that utility companies should “generate at least 1/3 of their power from renewable sources” by 2030—not merely that this is a good idea, mind you, but that it should be required. The alleged threat of climate change grows every day, even if the dangers never actually materialize; and so we must absolve ourselves of the sins of burning fossil fuels. Thus has the God of Abraham been replaced by the God of Atmosphere; salvation by Christ is increasingly being supplanted with salvation by carbon tax.

Why not? It is, after all, Science.

The Church Of Gay Sex

I don’t mean to imply, of course, that all Millennials have rejected religion in favor of a kind of angry, portentous neo-paganism, only that a great many members of this age demographic have more or less done away with religious belief, and in the absence of religion they have ascribed a quasi-religious morality to a great many other issues and societal affairs, some of them quite passionately.

Yet another third of Millennials claim, for instance, that they have left their “childhood religion” due to “negative religious teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people;” nearly three-quarters agree that religions “are alienating young people” by judging gays and lesbians too harshly.

Regardless of how one feels about “gay and lesbian issues,” it’s obvious that Generation Y feels very positively about them, and its members are repelled by notions and convictions about which many of their parents (aside from the gay ones, maybe) were untroubled. Indeed, shadows of religious conviction are to be seen within the LGBTQI movement’s rhetoric (the seemingly-biannual addition of a new letter to that acronym itself is a faintly religious custom; it is reminiscent of the struggle and the debate over Apocrypha, indicative as it is of a competing set of opinions regarding the One True Canon). Witness, for example, an excellent example of the average young adult’s position on transgenderism, the devout and pious thundering of Tyler Coates, responding to Kevin Williamson’s recent charge that Laverne Cox “is not a woman:”

As far as I’m concerned, the fact that Laverne Cox identifies as a woman is quite enough evidence to say, ‘Yes, Laverne Cox is a woman.’ Because that’s how gender identity works. It’s pretty much the end of the discussion.

Ah, yes: Laverne Cox am who she am. It is “the end of the discussion,” a person’s gender identity being That Which Is, an article of faith so devout that Williamson’s unremarkable claim landed him on the syndication circuit’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Millennials are not the only demographic to have started worshiping at the altar of 21st-century America’s bizarre sexual politics, but they are increasingly the most vocal and aggressive in advancing it: they’re like the Moral Majority, except genderqueer.

Read the rest of this article at - http://thefederalist.com/2014/06/27/the-new-sins-of-nonjudgmental-millennials/

Blood on the Altar - Part 4

by Thomas Horn

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PART 4 - Will Beast Tech Provide Conditions For A Global "Lucifer Effect"

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In 2013 I published the book Beast Tech. In it is considered how much of technology today appears to be sufficient for use by the coming Man of Sin—in particular, human tracking and monitoring utilities, including versions of embeddable smart tattoos and biochip devices that may provide some aspect of the Mark of the Beast.

A related area of equal concern we did not have time to address in that book involves the social implications involving technology and how it can be used by unseen forces to challenge religious faith or to open channels for spiritual warfare. This has been illustrated in thousands of ways down through time—from the creation of Ouija boards for contacting the spirit world to online pornography gateways. But, lately, the course on which technology and transhumanist philosophy seems to be taking mankind threatens to quantitatively elevate the potential for a global Lucifer Effect. 

                                                                                                                                                            

How so? 

                                                                                                                                                            

Given that the key to Dr. Milgram’s and especially professor Philip Zimbardo’s findings (see parts 2 and 3 of this series) involved the need to deindividualize the victims of abuse, the Internet and associated forms of electronic information-driven technology are important to understand in light of how they are creating a new kind of society by “rewiring our brains’” ability to sympathize with others, says Nora Volkow, world-renowned brain scientist and director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse. For one thing, the lure of “digital stimulation” can actually produce dopamine releases in the brain that affect the heart rate and blood pressure and lead to drug-like highs and lows. Studies show this addictive craving for digital stimulation is leading to the electronic equivalent of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) among a growing population in which constant bursts of information and digital stimulation undermine one’s ability to focus—especially in children (tomorrow’s adults), whose brains are still developing and who naturally struggle to resist impulses or to neglect priorities. A growing body of literature is connecting such digital dependence to personality fragmentation, cyber relationships over personal ones, and the very type of psychosocial issues that were manifest in the Stanford Prison and Milgram experiments. Today, Volkow and similar researchers see these antisocial trends leading to widespread, diminished empathy between people—what Antichrist will need—as a result of humans paying more and more attention to iPads, cell phones, and computer screens than to each other, even when sitting in the same room. New research shows this situation becoming an electronic pandemic as people escalate their detachment from traditional relationships while consuming three times as much digital information today as they did only a decade ago, checking e-mails, texting thirty-seven times per hour, and spending twelve hours per day on average taking in other e-media. Add to this phenomenon how brain-machine interfacing (BMI)—one of the hottest emerging trends in the marketplace—will multiply the divide between human-to-human relationships versus human-machine integration, and substantial concern for readers should be raised for several reasons, including how: 1) BMI will naturally exasperate the decline of the family unit and interpersonal relationships upon which society has historically depended; 2) the increase of euphoric cybernetic addiction will multiply as cerebral stimulation of the brain’s pleasure centers is added to existing natural senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch; and 3) the threat of computer viruses or hijackers disrupting enhanced human neural or cognitive pathways will develop as cyber-enhanced individuals evolve. To illustrate the latter, Dr. Mark Gasson, from the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, intentionally contaminated an implanted microchip in his hand that allows him biometric entry through security doors and that also communicates with his cell phone and other external devices. In the experiment, Dr. Gasson (who agrees that the next step in human evolution is the transhuman vision of altered human biology integrated with machines) was able to show how the computer virus he infected himself with spread to external computer systems in communication with his microchip. He told BBC News, “With the benefits of this type of technology come risks. We [will] improve ourselves but much like the improvements with other technologies, mobile phones for example, they become vulnerable to risks, such as security problems and computer viruses.”^[i]

Such threats—computer viruses passing from enhanced humans to enhanced humans via future cybernetic systems—are the tip of the iceberg. The real danger, though it may be entirely unavoidable for some, will be the loss of individuality (or, as Zimbardo phrased it, social deindividualizaton), anonymity, privacy, and even free will as a result of cybernetic integration. Dr. Christopher Hook contends, “If implanted devices allow the exchange of information between the biological substrate and the cybernetic device,” such a device in the hippocampus (the part of the brain involved in forming, storing, and processing memory) for augmenting memory, for instance, “would be intimately associated with the creation and recall of memories as well as with all the emotions inherent in that process.” Hook continues: 

                                                                                                                                                            

If this device were to allow the importation of information from the Internet, could the device also allow the memories and thoughts of the individual to be downloaded or read by others? In essence, what is to prevent the brain itself from being hacked [or hijacked by Antichrist]? The last bastion of human privacy, the brain, will have been breached.^[ii] 

                                                                                                                                                            

Despite these significant ethical and social dangers, industry and government interest in the technological dream of posthumanism, as documented in the highly recommended book Forbidden Gates, is more than laissez-faire. The steady migration toward the fulfillment of biologically and cybernetically modified humans, combined with corporate and national investments, will predictably fuse this century, ultimately leading to strong cultural forces compelling all individuals to get “plugged in” to the grid. Whoever resists will be left behind as inferior Luddites (those who oppose new technology), or worse, considered enemies of the collectives’ progress, as in former counterterrorism czar Richard Clark’s Breakpoint, which depicts those who refuse technological enhancement as “terrorists.” 

                                                                                                                                                            

According to the work Human Dignity in the Biotech Century, this pressure to become enhanced will be dramatic upon people in all social strata, including those in the middle class, law, engineering, finance, professional fields, and the military, regardless of personal or religious views: 

                                                                                                                                                            

Consider whether the military, after investing billions in the development of technologies to create the cyborg soldier would allow individual soldiers to decline the enhancements because of religious or personal qualms. It is not likely. Individuals may indeed dissent and decline technological augmentation, but such dissenters will find job options increasingly scarce. 

                                                                                                                                                            

Because the network of cyborgs will require increasing levels of cooperation and harmonious coordination to further improve efficiency, the prostheses will continue to introduce means of controlling or modulating emotion to promote these values. Meanwhile, the network [will be] increasingly controlled by central planning structures to facilitate harmony and efficiency. While everyone still considers themselves fully autonomous, in reality behavior is more and more tightly controlled. Each step moves those who are cybernetically augmented toward becoming like the Borg, the race of cybernetic organisms that inhabit the twenty-sixth century of the Star Trek mythology. The Borg, once fully human, become “assimilated” by the greater collective mind, losing individuality for the good of the whole.^[iii] 

                                                                                                                                                            

Lest anyone think the writers of Human Dignity in the Biotech Century are overly paranoid, consider that NBIC (Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science) Director Mihail Roco, in the US government report, Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, wrote, 

                                                                                                                                                            

Humanity would become like a single, distributed and interconnected “brain” based in new core pathways in society. A networked society of billions of human beings could be as complex compared to an individual being as a human being is to a single nerve cell. From local groups of linked enhanced individuals to a global collective intelligence, key new capacities would arise from relationships arising from NBIC technologies. Far from unnatural, such a collective social system may be compared to a larger form of biological organism. We envision the bond of humanity driven by an interconnected virtual brain of the Earth’s communities searching for intellectual comprehension and conquest of nature.”^[iv] 

                                                                                                                                                            

Nowhere will the struggle to resist this human biological alteration and machine integration be more immediate than in those religious homes where transhumanism is seen as an assault on God’s creative genius, and where, as a result, conservative Christians will seek to maintain their humanity. Yet the war against such believers is poised to emerge over the next decade as much from inside the “organized church” as it will from external social influences.

 

Already, the Internet “has unlocked something dark in humanity,” says acclaimed author Anthony Horowitz in a recent newspaper interview.^[v] Horowitz, a best-selling children’s fiction writer in the UK, was speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival when he described how parts of the Internet are “foul, disgusting and cruel” and that “evil is getting the upper hand.”^[vi] His passionate comments came on the heels of relentless and vicious online feedback he received following a television appearance. Mr. Horowitz is certainly not alone in this experience, as any notable writer can attest—especially Christians who pen edgy, newsworthy, or prophetic material.

 

And yes, that includes me and people like me. In fact, every leader with whom I am associated in news, print, television, and social media has been under growing attack the last few years, and not from those you would expect. Religious Christians, not unbelievers per se, form the largest part of the swelling ranks of warfare aimed at silencing our work. Because such discontents cannot (yet) stop people from hearing our voices, they (and/or the spirit behind them) at a minimum seek to divide and confuse ungrounded babes in Christ who, while seeking a deeper relationship with Jesus, end up online. Those who would destabilize these believers have always existed, of course. I witnessed ingrates in every town where I pastored throughout the 1970s–1990s. But today the Internet has given such malcontents a place to hive and to hide behind screens while using spiritual-sounding titles and websites to voice their ungraciousness. And while their audiences are very small at this time, their contaminated spirits threaten to take root and could explode under the coming legions that will fuel the empire of the Son of Perdition. In fact, I can say unequivocally from decades of experience that the most powerful instruments of satanic conflict by far are those demons of religion who can infect and infest institutional Christianity. As we noted in Forbidden Gates: 

                                                                                                                                                            

Just as a lying spirit filled the mouths of the prophets in 2 Chronicles 18, and just as Jesus confronted unclean spirits inside the synagogue (Mark 1:23) and connected some of the priestly leaders of the Temple to the strongest power of Satan on earth (John 8:44; Matt. 13:38 and 23:15), robust echon daimonion exists today from the lowest to the highest levels of denominational establishment among institutional members who are possessed (whether they perceive it as such or not) by luciferian ambition. This will come as no surprise to seasoned spiritual warriors, as it is the result of a common military strategy. The church represents the single establishment on earth capable of undoing Satan’s plans, and is therefore the natural enemy of the kingdom of darkness and the epicenter against which all spiritual wickedness must ultimately be focused. The church, through its hierarchies and institutional constructs, is therefore the primary target for infiltration by agents of darkness wherever human weakness allows for penetration by daimonions. Among others, the apostle Paul recognized this specific danger, warning the church in Corinth that “false apostles” were masquerading among them as ministers of Christ. “And no marvel,” he revealed, “for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:13–15).^[vii] 

                                                                                                                                                            

Writing about such activity within evangelical institutions, Rev. David Wilkerson reported a short while before his death that: 

                                                                                                                                                            

A number of [former] witches are warning that Satanists are infiltrating the church—especially charismatic churches. Some of these [are] telling of a diabolical plot by evil witches to enter congregations posing as super-spiritual Christians. Many of these evil witches, they say, are already firmly established in numerous churches, controlling both the pastor and congregation and causing great confusion, wickedness, divorce—even death. We have received many letters in our office from people who say they believe their pastor must be under some kind of demonic influence—and I believe many of these letters are very legitimate.^[viii] 

                                                                                                                                                            

Wilkerson, who at one time was a member of the same organization we [Tom and Nita Horn] served, was correct in asserting that some of those who pose as super-spiritual Christians, online “teachers,” department leaders, pastors, and even state office holders and denominational headquarters executives are in fact instruments of evil. Thankfully, there are other church members, pastors, and leaders who, as sincere believers, have become increasingly aware of this sinister invasion into organizations by daimonions and in recent years have made special efforts to teach their congregations how to identify the differences between “religious spirits” and true Christianity. 

                                                                                                                                                            

Sometimes “identifying” their misdeeds is not really all that hard to do. 

                                                                                                                                                            

For example, just about every solid Bible expositor I know has been tirelessly harassed online the last few years by fake defenders of the faith. Yet, not once have these self-proclaimed “guardians of the truth” actually followed the Bible’s mandates themselves, mandates that very specifically outline how believers are to deal with error in the church. The New Testament books of Matthew, Galatians, Thessalonians, Romans, and others provide guidelines for dealing with differences between true believers. These verses teach us that if we perceive a brother or sister as falling into error, we are to go to him or her PRIVATELY in a spirit of humility and redemption. If those we approach will not receive our advice, we go to the elders of the church PRIVATELY and share our concern. If the elders believe the issue is legitimate, they go to the person PRIVATELY in hopes of restoring him or her. If the person still refuses council, the church is to have nothing more to do with him or her. With that in mind, the next time you are online reading some diatribe about Chuck Missler, Gary Stearman, Steve Quayle, David Flynn, J. R. Church, L. A. Marzulli, Cris Putnam, Jonathan Cahn, yours truly, or any of the other current favorite targets, ask yourself if the hatchet people attacking them ever bothered to obey Scripture and go to the person PRIVATELY with their concerns in a loving spirit of restoration (they haven’t), and then “be careful little eyes what you read,” because destructive forces seek to contaminate your mind and spirit (see Prov. 4:23–27) in order to prep you for service to the dark side. 

                                                                                                                                                            

Be absolutely clear about this, too: NOTHING in Scripture allows for setting up websites, blogs, or other mediums to PUBLICALLY and routinely lambast believers with accusations—that is the job of Satan and his followers! He is the father of lies and the “accuser of our brethren…which accused them before our God day and night” (John 8:44; Rev. 12:10). 

                                                                                                                                                            

Simply put, the words of Jesus that “ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:15–16) have never been more important. These instructions of Christ should also serve as a warning to all believers to monitor their own motives, to examine their hearts, if truly they are altruistic or if in fact they are energized by selfish ambition, because the latter is the Lucifer Effect Antichrist will use to energize the coming war between Christian vs. Christian, a time when it will be eternally important to know you are on the right side.

COMING UP NEXT: Will Genetics Also Play a Role in a Global Lucifer Effect?

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[i] Rory Cellan-Jones, “First Human ‘Infected with Computer Virus,’” BBC News, May 27, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10158517.

[ii] C. Christopher Hook, Human Dignity in the Biotech Century (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004) 92.

[iii] Ibid., 93.

[iv] Mihail Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, ed. Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance (New York: Kluwer Academic, 2003) emphasis in original.

[v] Rebecca Evans, “The Internet Unlocked Something Dark in Humanity,” March 24, 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2298600/The-internet-
unlocked-dark-humanity-Top-author-Anthony-
Horowitz-uses-speech-make-claims.html.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Thomas Horn, Nita Horn, Forbidden Gates (Crane, MO: Defender, 2010) 92.

[viii] David Wilkerson, “Witchcraft in the Church,” Believers Web, May 2, 2003, http://www.believersweb.org/view.cfm?ID=735.