Post Modernism - Promise Keepers - Induced Schizophrenia? 

Specifically, postmodern religionists call for people to leave all rational categories behind before ascending to the godhead.

All ISMS are postmodernISMS. As science began to CRACK AWAY the faith in a predictable world, the SOPHISTS rose to the occasion and provided a NEW VISION for the new age.

Post modernism sees one thing as the "Berlin wall" to deep religion: Reason, and its only source, truth. Post modern cults such as Promise Keepers work because the "pastors" are hired from liberal schools and are often clergy but not believers. Secondly, cults sound cute because the elders are rarely competent Bible students.

Therefore, Post Modern or Promise Keepers work because of two fundamental violations of the Biblical mandate: hired clergy as secular administrators rather than as evangelists, and secular elders who are as "apt to chase a coon as apt to teach."

Because postmodern cults have their origin in the intellectual incest of theological colleges no longer faithful to their founders, the "laity" including the local elders don't know what has hit them until it is all over. Unfortunately for the dominate leadership, the lambs know more about wolves with their "sheep skins" than the elders. In the process even those who "go along" with madness lose all respect for their "shepherds." As a result, Christ's "separation of the lambs from the goats" is an ongoing process.

We are not impressed by numbers because even a million of Jesus' "people" were destroyed along with their "church house" while perhaps a few thousand followed Him "outside the walls" and therefore into all the world. That is about 1 half of one percent who remain faithful even when God Incarnate speaks and they don't listen.

As with Darwinism, postmodernism has its origin in intellectual and academic circles. While they believe that they are "Jim Jones" reincarnated and have God at their ears, they are using the same old human reasoning which they condemn in others.

All generations are "modern" and the next infant born is "post modern" and knows, within a few years, that he is God's awaited Messiah. Of the victory of the Catholic church over paganism:

"The generation that arose in the world, after the promulgation of Imperial laws, was ATTRACTED within the pale of the Catholic Church, and so RAPID, yet so GENTLE was the fall of Paganism, that only twenty-eight years after the death of Theodosius [the elder], the faint and minute vestiges were no longer visible to the eye of the legislator." Now, how can this great and rapid revolution be accounted for? Is it because the Word of the Lord has had free course and been glorified?

Then, what means the new aspect that the Roman Church has now begun to assume? In exact proportion as Paganism has disappeared from without the Church, in the very same proportion it appears within it.

Pagan dresses for the priests, Pagan festivals for the people, Pagan doctrines and ideas of all sorts, are everywhere in vogue.

The testimony of the same historian, who has spoken so decisively about the rapid conversion of the Romans to the profession of the Gospel, is not less decisive on this point. In his account of the Roman Church, under the head of "Introduction of Pagan Ceremonies," he thus speaks:

"As the objects of religion were gradually reduced to the standard of the imagination,

the rites and ceremonies were introduced that seemed most powerfully to effect the senses of the vulgar.

If, in the beginning of the fifth century, Tertullian or Lactantius had been suddenly raised from the dead, to assist at the festival of some popular saint or martyr, they would have gazed with astonishment and indignation on the profane spectacle which had succeeded to the pure and spiritual worship of a Christian congregation.

As soon as the doors of the church were thrown open, they must have been offended by the smoke of incense, the perfume of flowers, and the glare of lamps and tapers, which diffused at noon-day a gaudy, superfluous, and, in their opinion, sacrilegious light." Gibbon has a great deal more to the same effect. Now, can any one believe that this was accidental? No. It was evidently the result of that unprincipled policy, of which, in the course of this inquiry, we have already seen such innumerable instances on the part of the Papacy. *

Gibbon distinctly admits this. "It must ingenuously be confessed," says he, "that the ministers of the Catholic Church imitated the profane model they were so impatient to destroy."

He has seen that, about the very time when the Bishop of Rome was invested with the Pagan title of Pontifex, the Saviour began to be called Ichthys, or "the Fish," thereby identifying Him with Dagon, or the Fish-god; and that, ever since,

advancing step by step, as circumstances would permit, what has gone under the name of the worship of Christ,

has just been the worship of that same Babylonian divinity, with all its rites and pomps and ceremonies, precisely as in ancient Babylon.

When once it was proved that the Pope was willing to adopt Paganism under Christian names, the Pagans and Pagan priests would be his most hearty and staunch defenders. 

And when the Pope began to wield lordly power over the Christians, who were the men that he would recommend--that he would promote--that he would advance to honour and power? Just the very people most devoted to "the worship of the strange god" which he had introduced into the Christian Church.

Gratitude and self-interest alike would conspire to this. Jovinian, and

all who resisted the Pagan ideas and Pagan practices, were excommunicated and persecuted.

When you listen to postmodernists you believe that they are absolutely insane. However, they are not insane but are calculating enemies of any objective truth. It is a fact that when they claim to be apostles, prophets, Christs or even gods you get the Jonestown Koolaide shakes, but someone said that the children of darkness are wiser than the children of light.

Not to worry: if you can rescue 5 believers out of a thousand "go alongs to get alongs" then you are doing as well as God Himself did in Jerusalem and a whale of a lot better than Noah.

In this perverted thinking, "modernism" was the attempt to destroy the power of Christ's Words by the use of human logic gone insane. Modernists said that there is no truth: Post modernists say that there is no truth unless, in the words of Blackaby, God personally gives me an "assignment" to make me co-equal or more than Jesus. Modernists said that there is no God: Post Modernists say, "There is a God, I have seen Him personally in my mirror."

Insane? No just change agents of Lucifer like Judas who also carried along his "bag to carry mouthpieces" and to take up the collections because he was a God-permitted thief.

In Modernism, the destruction was better accomplished by the "friends" within the church wearing the mask of clergy. The same people are Postmodern and destroy the power of Christ's words by denying that mankind -- created in the image of God -- has the power to understand His revealed Word. Both "extremes" are just obverse sides of the same coin.

This, of course, denies the power of God and of mankind created in His image.

The goal of Postmodernism is to deny you the power to understand Scripture, but as "clergy" claim the only congregational power to even suggest an understanding of Scripture. Because Paul said that "fools love to be fooled" the goal sounds insane but is not -- in their minds -- as foolish as the fools who pay them obscene wages to tell you NOTHING and confess that you can understand nothing.

Spiritual Schizophrenia

When these same people once lived in the mental state of "unity in diversity" it was believed that all people could be spiritually correct whatever they believed about God and His Words.

The next, dangerous, stage is the belief that all diverse groups must be united into one group. Mind control or shepherding is used and those who do not want to jump into that "great pond in the sky with alligators" are branded as legalists. And using the terminology of the mentors of these control groups -- Machiavelli and Hitler -- those who cannot see the wisdom of the new proposal are clearly not of the pure blood stream and must be eleminated.

While this seems bizarre, it is already well in place on a "right to participate" or fellowship level. We have no doubt that these same people have literal extermination in their heart but for fear of the law.

Christianity Today notes that most Europeans don't fall for these schemes because Hitler is in their still-alive history.

First, look at the word which really describes the goal of Post Modern performance worship teams:

Schizophrenia: "a mental disorder characterized by a separation between the thought processes and the emotions, a distortion of reality accompanied by delusions and hallucinations, a fragmentation of the personality, motor disturbances, loss of basic intellectual functions."

If you listen to any of the new "Praise Craze" or imposing instrumental "contemporary" music you will understand that the deliberate goal is to disconnect the emotions from the thought process so that nothing can be learned.

Furthermore, the spiritual schizophrenia which happens at Sunday morning "happy hour" is believed to be more spiritual than simply obeying Christ and reading His words.

This is the basis of all paganism. Paganism understood that music and feminine or effeminate "performers" were the most powerful tools of creating schizophrenia or dissociation. Even the "sweetist" musical worship teams with the closest "harmony" succeed (among some) because of the underlying dissonance. This is why God, in Numbers 10:7, made music for the assembly unlawful and why Paul put the "melody" in the heart.

From my wife's Niece, Jeanne: "Schizophrenia beats being alone."

Dissociation: is "a split in the conscious process in which a group of mental activites breaks away from the main stream of consciousness and functiona as a separate unit, as if belonging to another person. The abnormal separation of related thoughts."

When men like Saul listened to and David "praised" with instruments it was to alternately calm and induce madness -- insanity. David's "praise" is from the Hebrew:

Chalal (h2490) khaw-lal'; a prim. root [comp. 2470]; prop. to bore, i. e. (by impl.) to wound, to dissolve; fig. to profane (a person, place or thing), to break (one's word), to begin (as if by an "opening wedge"); denom. (from 2485) to play (the flute): - begin (* men began), defile, break, defile, eat (as common things), first, gather the grape thereof, take inheritance, pipe, player on instruments, pollute, (cast as) profane (self), prostitute, slay (slain), sorrow, stain, wound.

Chalah (h2470) khaw-law'; a prim. root [comp. 2342, 2470, 2490]; prop. to be rubbed or worn; hence (fig.) to be weak, sick, afflicted; or (causat.) to grieve, make sick; also to stroke (in flattering), entreat: - beseech, (be) diseased, (put to) grief, be grieved, (be) grievous, infirmity, intreat, lay to, put to pain, * pray, make prayer, be (fall, make) sick, sore, be sorry, make suit (* supplication), woman in travail, be (become) weak, be wounded.

Because of drugs and alcohol and even institutionalization among the gurus of the men's movement, it is fair to ask whether there has not been actual drug (wine) abuse or its charismatic equivalent which has damaged the thinking of these people. For instance, of the Beatles:

By 1994, Promise Keepers was becoming very popular in the evangelical church in America. In February 1994, James Ryle, who by this time was a rising star Director of Promise Keepers, wrote a piece for Charisma magazine (published by the same publisher as the PK organ, New Man) titled "The New Sound of Music," wherein he toned down quite a bit what he had emphasized on earlier occasions about the Beatles' exclusive "anointing." Instead he attributed their success to the "social climate" of the time, not unlike contemporary 1990's culture. Thus in the name of "history repeats itself" he claimed that

we will see musicians who are anointed by God and gifted with even greater ability than The Beatles.. these musicians will not fail to glorify God-and therein will be the secret of their success. (Charisma, 2/94, p.14).

I knew there was some possible connection with cannibis [marihuana] in the studios -- "smells" were noted -- but I never pursued it. I had a pretty close relationship with the Beatles, largely because they were so successful. -- SIR JOSEPH LOCKWOOD of EMI

This drug-abused mind permitted the Beatles to break down the walls:

Until this album we'd never thought of taking the freedom to do something like Sgt. Pepper. Marijuana started to find its way into everything we did. It coloured our perception, and

we started to realise there weren't as many barriers as we'd thought, we could break through with things like album covers,

or invent another persona for the band. Let's pretend we're not the Beatles. That was a pretty big dare, you know, and it changed everything.

This is the meaning of football stadiums and arenas where the "persona" of the artificial warfare breaks down the walls, dissociates the mind and allows disturbed people to escape into another "persona" and pretend that it is not insanity but "religion."

The open-ended or multiple choice question format is essentially a values clarification exercise. Some elements of it are designed to create cognitive dissonance, a condition where one's feelings, values, beliefs and behaviors become disoriented and mixed up. Cognitive dissonance is a primary tool of dialectics, and is often applied to education or psychology for the purpose of changing one's belief system. This moves one away from absolute Truth to subjective realities.

The Promise Keepers developmental "journey" includes times of "separation from the past, INITIATION to something new, TRANSITION from one place to the other, and temporary confusion" (p. 8). These stages are a good description of the process of COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. This raises a number of questions about the intentions and purposes of the activities in the study guide.

If the exercises were designed to solidify men in the absolutes of scriptural Truth there would be no need to go through this orchestrated process of psychological disruption. "For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints." (I Cor. 14:33)

If someone denounces you for depending on your understanding of the Bible rather than on their new status as "Christs" in their own church and family, you know that there is a split: two people are talking to you.

Post-Modern and Promise Keepers would fail miserably without their explicit need to perform and boast of artificial schizophrenia created by the "Football" paradigm which is a warfare pattern--through dissociation you actually get out on the battlefield to kill the enemy but you don't get dirty. No sports would work without this "Peter Pan Syndrome" where the boys can't grow up. The "coach" knows that and probably is unable to suggest anything but a warrior pattern. Notice that dissociation is really schizophrenia:

"Most also call for dissociation as a preface to the religious experience. Dissociation is the loss of conscious awareness of the real world.

"Specifically, postmodern religionists call for people to leave all rational categories behind

before ascending to the godhead. Thus, they see one thing as the supreme barrier to deep religion: Reason, and its handmaiden, truth. The Death of Truth

In the Jubilee 99 or Willow Creek model of post modernism, or called post denominationalism by Rubel Shelly, a new level of "ministry" is treated quite identical to the same role in neo-paganism or witchcraft:

Position Title: Worship Facilitation (manipulation) Minister

"Work with the worship planning committee, the preaching minister and worship presentation groups (music, drama and technical) to facilitate group worship experiences which will help bring worshipers into the presence of God.

We have become aware of a church in Seattle where an avowed Promise Keeper who is a self-proclaimed Post Modernists could quite consistently attempt to sneak in a change of the bylaws for the explicit purpose of introducing instrumental music. The urge to tell the people what they were voting on was denounced as divisive and legalistic. Perhaps because of completing the course of Experiencing God by Blackaby the unlawful pastor believed that the old order had passed, he had become a new Christ (as promised) and had received his "assignment" directly from God which (as promised) would be superior. This undoubtedly allowed him to ignore those old Christ-like rules about honesty and common decency. >

However, the Promise Keeper - Post Moderns are "warriors" and rules don't count in war.

Perhaps, like a lot of our youth, he got his new theology from his president, Bill Clinton who demonstrated this other-worldly form of thinking:

"In August, the president's four-and-half minute speech-his first acknowledgment of wrongdoing-was a textbook example of postmodernism at work. Here were

compartmentalization (I did wrong, but it doesn't matter because it was private),
contradiction (I accept full responsibility, but I'm a victim of my accuser), and
constructivism (my account, while legally accurate, was not forthcoming).

Most remarkable is how the president has been basing his defense on postmodernist language theory. According to postmodernists, words do not have a definite objective meaning. Rather, meaning is only a matter of interpretation. People interpret words in different ways; therefore,

words are incapable of communicating any kind of objective truth, as such.

In practice, this "deconstruction" of language means that such texts as the Constitution and the Bible do not have fixed meanings, but are open to unlimited interpretation. [Well, maybe they are truly schizophrenic]

This sort of thing has become almost a game in the literary criticism fashionable in academia. In this context, though, Mr. Clinton's reasoning comes across as ludicrous and pathetic.

To be sure, if there is no truth, it is impossible to lie [cheat or steal]. If language has no meaning, there can be no perjury. And, we might add, if there is no right and wrong, there can be no moral failure.

But now it appears that the whole postmodernist house of cards is collapsing.

Mr. Clinton's admission that he did things that were "improper" was occasioned by an inexorable fact, a bit of physical evidence that could not be explained away: a certain blue dress. This was something real, revealing information that was scientifically verifiable, an intrusion of objective, unspinnable truth. Though he would have liked to construct a different version of reality, the dress was a truth that is not relative.

The Words of Christ are accompanied by inexorable facts and those who take the pay and do not believe it should, in the name of common decency, get off the dole and get some help. The old question: "Is there no shame" rings in our ears and and we hear the answer, "That depends on what you mean by shame."

And we might add that in Seattle truth is still truth, lies are still lies, cheating and deceiving is still immoral and getting caught is not the fault of others.

This process continues as lies triumph over the truth of the Words of Christ. This is why "pastors" can lie and deceive to try to force a church into some new system of worship which will appeal to everyone on the face of the earth -- except those "enemies of God" who oppose the pastor.

Neo-Paganism

If you will compare the practices of Navigating the Winds of Change or the Zoe group or Jubilee group to neo-paganism or witchcraft you will find an almost-identical new but ancient belief system:

"First among the beliefs of witchcraft is the "creed of experience."

Experience is exalted dogmatically above,
and often set in opposition to, creeds or doctrines.
........ In short, experience is superior to doctrine.

Aidan Kelly, who was formerly involved in neopaganism, noted: "What really defines a witch is a type of experience people go through. These experiences depend on altered states of consciousness. The Craft is really the Yoga of the West" (emphasis in original). The witchcraft experience is often expressed as a mystical experience,

that feeling of ineffable oneness with all Life."
Witchcraft is therefore a religion based first and foremost on the sense of
........ being one and in harmony with all life.

Tolerance is another highly-touted value among witches.

Diversity of belief and practice is viewed as not only healthy but essential to the survival of humanity and planet earth, and to spiritual growth and maturation as well.

Independence, autonomy, and the freedom to experience, believe, think, and act as one desires
........ are defended as if they were divine rights.

Witches do become intolerant, however, when they perceive intolerance and authoritarianism in other individuals and faiths (which they would term "religious imperialism"). [legalism]

So we have statements like number 10 of the Council of American Witches' "Principles of Wiccan Belief":

"Our only animosity toward Christianity, or towards any other religion or philosophy-of-life,

is to the extent that its institutions have claimed to be 'the only way' and have sought to deny freedom to others and to suppress other ways of religious practice and belief."

"These beliefs stem from the notion that
........ ultimately there is no right or wrong religion or morality.
........ Relativism in all areas of life, including ethics and metaphysics, is the rule.
........ Truth is what is true for you; right what is right for you; but neither are necessarily so for me.

The only absolute is that there are no absolutes. Thus, all have the right to believe and practice "what they will." In this context, one often hears the story of the three blind men who have all grasped different parts of an elephant (tusk, trunk, and tail), and, in describing it, each man thinks he alone has the truth.

Plato Phaedrus

If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? 1 Corinthians 14:23

Mainomai (g3105) mah'ee-nom-ahee; (to long for; through the idea of insensate craving); to rave as a "maniac": - be beside self (mad) 

In the Old Testament, Saul rejected the words of God until he could no longer get a message. Therefore, he went to the witch of Endor. The "familiar spirit" of the witch was really an old water or wineskin which produced a hollow sound when the witch whispered and muttered into it. This she sold as the "voice of the gods" or of the dead. The booms and clangs of First Corinthians 13 had about the same meaning. This is in agreement with the common theme that the gods lived inside of musical instruments.

Well, Augustine thought that they were insane:

"Again, if you prefer to test the presence of God by the agreeable effects on the hearing, and not sight, or smell, or taste,

harps get their strings and pipes their bones from animals; and these become musical by being dried, and rubbed, and twisted. [This is why Paul called them lifeless instruments or carnal weapons]

So the pleasures of music, which you hold to have come from the divine kingdom,

are obtained from the refuse of dead animals, and that, too, when they are dried by time, and lessened by rubbing, and stretched by twisting.

Such rough treatment, according to you, drives the divine substance from living objects; even cooking them, you say, does this. Why then are boiled thistles not unwholesome? Is it because God, or part of God, leaves them when they are cooked? ST.AUGUSTIN: ON THE MORALS OF THE MANICHAEANS, Ch 16,46

This ridicule describes the literal meaning of "melody" -- to rub into bits (like the sop Jesus fed Judas) or to "grind into powder." Oh yes, it sounds good because it hurts first and your brain create morphine-like endorphines to kill the pain and then give you a "drug high."

The Promise Keeper's Atlanta Breaking down Mental Walls

"Atlanta changed my life! There, I've said it, OK? To be a part of the world's largest-ever collection of clergy (42,000) in one building at one time; to hear the thunderous, ear-splitting applause, the four-part harmony, and that eerie, haunting, inspiring chant of "Je-e-e-s-u-s" as this hand-holding, mid-sized city of men affirmed their common faith-what can one say? It will never be forgotten.

This is clearly not the path to a masculine journey. Indeed, everything the Promise Keepers and the Musical Worship Teams say -- and so clearly show -- that feminine and effeminate men are trying to seduce people into an effeminate form of religion which means "look at me, worship me." To say effeminate was always to say pagan. Music, indeed, was identified as "the effeminate art" and this is why there are so many question marks resting on the story of David.

"Loud" or "music" creates the impulse of fight, flight or sex. Therefore, we can understand how such mass meetings at football games is much like a sexual encounter and your mind gets confused. One "broken down" clergy person notes of Atlanta:

The highlight for me had to be somewhere around the time of Steve Green's emotional presentation of "Let the Walls Come Down," leaving thousands of male pastors of every race and denomination tearfully hugging while offering and receiving apologies for centuries of injustice and blindness to each other's plight. Hats off to Coach Bill McCartney and the team for bringing vision to fruition as they launched the much-needed Promise Keepers' theme for 1996, "Break Down the Walls."

"Sports Motif: Oh, some things were missing-the beer, the cigarettes (for the most part) and the gutter language. But the similarities to professional football were all too noticeable-the incredible hype, the "wave," the close-to-hypnotic chanting for your team (now here's a difference-everyone cheered for the same team!), the frenzied buying of souvenirs, the loud singing on the go-train after. After all, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, right? And now it's time for that big annual cup game. So it's expected that you leave the wife and kids at home to take off and do the male-bonding thing for a few days. Too bad it's over Valentine's Day, but she'll understand-I'll send her a card....

Again, male bonding may sell to some people but I would keep my legs crossed if I had the impulse. If I agreed to share my sexual experiences I would know that I had been permanently mentally altered.

By definition, paganism meant using women or effeminate men to use music, excitement or wine to go out of their mind. In the process they "knew their gods personally' and he spoke to them giving them some new truth. What was described about Atlanta when many "clergy" was dissociated could be said of all ancient pagan religions especially those of the "phallic kind of guys."

Hitler would explain Atlanta this way:

"But the community of the GREAT DEMONSTRATES not only strengthens the individual, it also unites and helps to create an esprit de corps.

"The man who is exposed to grave tribulations, as the first advocate of a new doctrine in his factory or workshop,

absolutely needs that strengthening which lies in the conviction of being a member and fighter in a great comprehensive body.

"And he obtains an impression of this body for the first time in the mass demonstration. When from his little workshop or big factory, in which he feels very small,

he steps for the first time into a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of people of the same opinions around him, when,

as a seeker, (Als Suchender.' A Wagnerian phrase, which Hitler was apparently determined to use at all costs)

he is swept away by three or four thousand others into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm,

"when the visible success and agreement of thousands confirm to him

the rightness of the new doctrine and for the first time
arouse doubt in the truth of his previous conviction -

then he himself has succumbed to the magic influence of what we designate as 'mass suggestion.'

The will, the longing, and also the power of thousands are accumulated in every individual. The man who enters such a meeting doubting and wavering leaves it inwardly reinforced:

he has become a link in the community.

Hitler followed the old methods of intellect for the few inside leaders (Highly homosexual influenced) but the "masses" who succumbed (in Atlanta) he would identify as the emotional "fodder" of "human material."

You could not, as a Post Modernist, trust the ancient words of Christ who was the spokesman for God during his time. However, you could use musical worship teams -- women normally but effeminate men will do in ancient paganism and by Hitler -- to "move the mass worshipers into the presence of God" or to deliver a new prophecy hot off the "composer's" note pad.

You could "exterminate" in one way or another the old legalists who believed that everyone had a right to choose their own religion, but at the same time join the Fourth Reich to exterminate everyone who denies that every religious opinion is right.

Well, Hitler's Nazism was a religion which flowed from the same "racism" or "blood line" paganism which insisted that everyone "join" or be exterminated. Hitler, too, looked at the sword which was said to have pierced the side of Jesus and fell into dissociation and believed that God had chosen him to rule the world.

When the same mentality tried to triumph over Jesus we often ask: "I wonder what I would have done?" And when confronted with the Nazis whose outward symbols were almost exclusively homosexual, we nervously want to know: "Would I have bonded or burned?" Well, anytime you "succumb to the magic influence of 'mass suggestion'" you have, in the certain words of Adolf Hitler, your answer. You no longer have to worry.

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