Wednesday, January 4, 2006

An Essay On The Great Apostasy: A Conspiracy Of Satanic Christianity

An Essay on "The Great Apostasy: A Conspiracy Of Satanic Christianity"

Satan is smarter than you are....Believe it.. The entire concept of the new Babylon Mystery Orchestra CD, "The Great Apostasy: A Conspiracy Of Satanic Christianity," can probably be boiled down to that one statement. I will attempt here to explain some of the thinking that went into this work.

"The Great Apostasy," as can be deduced from its title, is an exploration of how the church has not only failed to live up to its promise and potential, but has actually been used as an instrument of deception against the very people it was meant to serve.. The idea that Satan could infiltrate and dominate the very apparatus designed to bring believers together in the name of God is not an idea that will sit well with the masses of church goers, but with the world spinning towards a certain inevitable apocalypse, the time has arrived to present and consider these ideas. When Jesus was brought before Pilate he told him "My kingdom is not of this world," yet even a casual observation of the church and its history reveals an institution not only "of this world" but obssessed with this world.

At the beginning of the book of Revelation, Jesus has a message for seven churches that existed in the first century. These were real bodies of believers that gathered to worship and glorify the ressurected saviour at a time when the new Christian religion was being persecuted as an outlaw cult.. I have during my lifetime encountered many explanations as to what these messages to the seven churches are supposed to disclose, but never have I heard or read any interpretation them at their simplest and most obvious meaning. Of the seven churches, five of them he compliments on certain attributes of their faith, but then he has something against each one.. He chastises each of them for allowing something in their teaching or behavior that he finds unacceptable, and warns them of the consequences of continuing on those paths. A sixth church is already so corrupted that he calls its works dead. Only in the one church, Philadelphia, is he totally satisfied. To this one church, and to this church only, does he issue the promise to be kept from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world. Combine this with Paul's first letter to the Thessolonians 4:16-18 and you have the foundation for one of the modern churches favorite beliefs...the pretribulation rapture.. However, it is quite clear that since only the church of Philadelphia would even be eligible for such a thing, every church ever since that time has made it a point to find some way of marking themselves as either Philadelphia itself or its rightful descendant.. If the rapture had occured in the 1st century AD six churches would have been "left behind." The modern rationale is that everybody elses church is in a state of apostasy but not yours. Its the only way to keep them filled.

So what really happened here? There is a tremendous statement being made in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Revelation that needs to be trumpeted loud and clear because its entirely to obvious: These churches, the very first churches that were spawned in the same century that Jesus walked the earth, were under direct Satanic attack! Already Satan had managed to infiltrate five churches by planting a small seed of compromise in each of them. Such things may have seemed harmless to the fledgling churches but Jesus is warning that it is anything but harmless. Only Philadelphia was promised to be kept from the hour of temptation. One church, Sardis, was already corrupted to the point of being called dead. Six out of seven churches compromised. By any standard of measurement 6/7 is a very impressive ratio of success for our favorite fallen angel.

Now lets step back and extrapolate the history of the church since that time from this point of observation. If Satan had established this firm foothold in the churches from their inception, we should be able to see evidence of his influence throughout the church's history. Lo and behold what do we find? Unsurprisingly we find a church wallowing in the affairs of the world at the expense of the real Kingdom of God.

Perhaps the single biggest accomplishment of the early church was to rise from a small persecuted cult in the first century to the religion of the state in Constantine's Rome. With the Christian church enshrined as the official religion of the state we have this unholy marriage that set the precedent for a thousand years of church intervention into government and international affairs. Along the way accumulating more wealth and more influence for itself as an institution and its leaders. The church even went so far as to finance wars, from the obvious Crusades to the Spanish Armada of 1588 (a bad investment for the church on that adventure!). Inquisitions, wars, schisms, the selling of indulgences and my personal favorite:: The St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre of 1572, when as many as 100,000 Christians may have been killed, by Christians, for not having the right Christian beliefs. Of course these are just some of the bigger events in church history. What was that Jesus said again? "My kingdom is not of this world." No small wonder that churches don't spend any time teaching the history of Christianity.

It must be mentioned here that a large part of the success at diverting the church's attention away from where it belonged was due to the total control the early church maintained over access to the Bible itself. A priest could easily go his entire life never seeing the actual written word of God for himself. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that all copies of the Bible had to be written by hand until the invention of the printing press came along. However the church didn't see it as important that the majority of its representatives be involved in the actual reading or interpreting of the word of God. Were these populations of Christians therefore putting their faith in God or in the institution of the church? Satan had successfully manipulated the church into an institutional heirarchy, with levels of authority and control over information and resources, and a large part of that success, at least in its early history, was achieved by limiting access to the word of God. These people were willing to follow their church leadership on the mere hope that they were honest and faithful perveyors of God's wishes. Now thats blind faith!! The church, at least at its highest levels, was obviously not operating with regard to God's words or their congregation's needs..

With the arrival of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation you would think this would resolve itself. Luther being the first dissident cleric to take advantage of the new technology of the printing press and print contradictory views of church doctrine.. Eventually he would go so far as to print the Bible itself in his own native language with the idea that any and everyone should read it for himself. Such heresy! Did this have the effect through history of actually reforming the church or did it just open up the competitive floodgates, releasing a variety of interpretations on an unsuspecting public? To be sure we in the modern world enjoy a tremendous freedom to explore the word for ourselves as well as interact with the views of others. Yet looking through any newspaper today you will find a world still fervently at war with itself over religious ideology. There are so many denominations with so many alternative interpretations of the Bible that one can't help but think there is an intelligent design behind all the confusion and acrimony, and of course that is the case.. Alternative is almost synonymous with satanic in the modern cultural lexicon. The result has been a diversity strewn path to perversity, with the church as the battlefield and their flocks as the casualties. All of it intelligently designed and manipulated by Satan, who permits enough truth in the equation to bait the faithful lambs into his trap only to shear them at the time of the great harvest at the end of days.

Still think its impossible that the church, your church, could possibly be a victim of such an insidious satanic conspiracy? Then consider the mystery religions of Mithra. The earliest lore surrounding this prechristian diety suggests that Mithra was a benevolent intermediary between the creator God and humanity. He was even refered to as the "Redeemer." Mithra was supposedly was born in a cave where he was visited by herdsman bearing gifts who were guided to the site by a star. Does this sound familiar? There are historical records that indicate Mithra worship goes back as far as 1400 BC. In fact, the persion religion of Zoroastrianism is a direct descendent of the Mithra religion. Zoroaster himself supposedly was immaculately concieved and survived an assassination attempt while he was a baby. How does this apply to our topic of satanic control of the church? Well for starters, many intellectuals have used the Mithra and Zoroastrian religions as an excuse to deny the existence of God and the viability of Christianity altogether. It predates Jesus by over a thousand years! Therefore the Christian religion is likened to a modern rock band that plagiarizes what has come before and claims it as its own. However the person of faith should have an entirely different perspective altogether.

We know that though Jesus was born as a living breathing being in on our world over 2000 years ago, he no more began on that day than he ended at calvary. Quite the opposite. Only his physical existence began with his birth that day. He has always existed and the angelic power we call Lucifer knew him, and had known him for thousands, perhaps millions of years. Here is the danger: Satan knew how Jesus would enter our world, why he would enter our world and what he must do to redeem us, and he knew it in significant detail. With this information he did what he has always done.. He replicated the messiah in alternative religions thousands of years before Jesus was born by Mary in Bethlehem. Confusion, distraction, replication and always alternatives are the satanic method of operation. Those alternatives have been multiplied exponentially to this day, even within the Christian churches.

Still think it can't happen to you? Consider one last thing. Biblical scholars will argue about almost anything especially details concerning the birth, life and death of Jesus. However they are pretty united in one thing, Jesus almost certainly was NOT born on December 25. You want to guess who was born on that day.....you guessed it:: Mithra's birthday was celebrated on December 25th, a thousand years before Jesus was born. Consider also the "wise men" that followed the star to Bethlehem. They were Zoroastrians!! Members of the very religion Satan created to replicate and confuse Christ's birth were looking down on him as a child!!

Now ask yourself: Who has us celebrating Jesus birth on December 25th? Who has raised this as an issue that you should say "Merry Christmas" and look upon the phrase "happy holidays" as an attempt to remove Christ from the national holiday? Who fights for the right to have manger scenes depicting the three "wise" Zoroastrians bearing gifts looking down on the baby Jesus? Of course the church has been teaching these things all these years. Like you, the church was being decieved, even before it was born.

Paul said in Ephesians 6 to "take unto you the whole armour of God." Make sure you wear that armor to church. Satan is smarter than you and he is there with you IN your church....Believe It..

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