A Little Something For Earth Day....the High Holy Day of Paganism

Posted by Christine Pack



I love this guy, Lord Monckton. For those who don't know who he is, Lord Monckton is a renowned climate change skeptic who speaks often on this topic, with the aim of helping people recognize that there is an underlying agenda to the global warming movement (that is to say, an agenda beyond the obvious goals of forcing people to install toilets that don't flush and use lightbulbs that require hazmat procedures in the event that one breaks).

Sustainable development is apparently big business, and more than that, has at its heart the goal of the U.S. ceding its sovereignty to the Copenhagen Treaty, a United Nations climate change treaty that was signed in November 2009. According to an article in The Washington Examiner, the Copenhagen Treaty:

"mandates a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. and Europe to pay our 'Climate Debt' to the Third World, and creates a new enforcement mechanism to make it all happen." (my emphasis)

As you can hear in the above video, Lord Monckton uses something of a shock tactic by comparing these global warming protesters to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany. To the best of my understanding, several of these young people had apparently gained access to a meeting at which Lord Monckton was speaking and had made a disturbance over the issue of global warming.

As eyebrow raising as it is to hear someone invoke the brownshirts of Nazi Germany, please understand that what Lord Monckton is doing is using the shock value of this phrase to help these young people (who have been trained from a young age to embrace the ideals of the Environment Movement) to see how they are simply pawns in a game much bigger than they, that they are being used as "useful idiots," to implement a global treaty with profound implications. In somewhat the same way, the brownshirts of Nazi Germany were children who were also trained from a young age to embrace the ideals of the Nazi party, and were the youthful, glowing "face" of the Nazi party.  The young people in the above video have obviously been brainwashed by today's "science" that supposedly "has been settled," as the young man states, and which "proves" global warming.  But I'm sure Hitler also gave his brownshirters "science" that "had been settled" as well, and which "proved" the "problems" with the Jews.....and why they must be exterminated.

Could it be that the Copenhagen Treaty, at its essence a massive, global wealth-redistribution program, ends up being far more dangerous than anyone could have imagined? Sure, the idea of sustainable development might look good on paper, especially to its noble-minded young supporters on board, all rosy cheeked and earnest. But let me ask you this: when have massive wealth-redistribution programs (think Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, etc.) ever "worked" for anyone but the few in power?  Think on this: the best, the absolute best, that secular man can come up with is somehow creating a Utopia on earth. Isn't that what all political theory is about....coming up with ways for man to create Utopia, or literally, "heaven on earth?" Where people live in harmony and have all their needs met, there is no more war, the earth is "restored" to its pristine state, and every house is equipped with CFL lightbulbs?

"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Cor 1:20)

But as Christians, we ought to be able to look at history and grasp that ideas like sustainable development, social justice, wealth redistribution, Utopia, etc. are very, very small ideas. And not only that, but there will never be a Utopia, a "heaven on earth," until Jesus returns to rule and reign.  Never. Why is that? It is because the world is inhabited by unregenerated men and women who are born into sin and who choose to sin.  The unregenerated are, as I've heard it said, sinful sinners who sin, and who will continue to sin, acting out of the depraved heart they are born with, and thus will always end up destroying themselves, their relationships and the world around them, no matter how lofty their ideals and hopes and dreams are for the world and for themselves.  The ultimate problem is that man thinks that perfection can be achieved outside of himself - and apart from God - when in fact, perfection will never be achieved in this world because of the sinful heart of unregenerated man.

The unregenerated don't need a new treaty to push the world along toward sustainable development and going green.....they need forgiveness for their sins committed against a high and holy God. They need to bend the knee to their sovereign Creator God, the God who made them and who has a righteous claim on their lives, the One to whom all men are beholden, whether they recognize it or not, and whether they submit to it or not.


Additional Resources

EPA Procedure For Cleaning up a Broken Fluorescent Bulb

Paul Washer on the Foolishness of Political Theory and Man-Created Utopias

The Copenhagen Treaty

The Kingdom of God Won't Come Through Big Government

Are We On a Slippery Slope To Fascism?

"Red Letter Christians" - Neo-Marxists in the Church?

GlobalClimateScam

President Obama's Speech to the U.N. On Climate Change - Sept 2009

Lord Monckton's Speech in which he destroys the "science" of global warming

The Grave Influence of Karl Marx

Why Christianity and Marxism/Social Justice are Not Compatible

Testimony of a Former New Ager

by Christine Pack

Thank you to Andy Olson of Echo Zoe Podcast for recently having me on his program.

I gave my testimony about being a New Ager for a number of years before becoming a born again Christian by the grace and mercy of God. During my years as a New Ager, I went deeply into various religious faiths and practices (Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism, theosophy, A Course in Miracles, etc.) before being saved. We also discussed how some of the New Age practices I once did, and beliefs I once held to, are now coming into today's church.

The interview can be listened to in its entirety here.


 Additional Resources 

Echo Zoe Radio and Blog

Wrath and Love

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree." (1 Peter 2:24)

"While Jesus hung on the cross, darkness came over the land from noon until three o'clock. During those awful three hours, Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath in our place—the cup that we should have drunk. He drained it to its dregs.

We do not know all that transpired during those terrible hours. Scripture draws a veil over them for the most part. We do know that the physical suffering Jesus endured was only a feeble picture of the suffering of his soul. And part of that suffering was the very real forsakenness by his Father. Toward the end of that time he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). The night before, he had been strengthened by divine assistance (Luke 22:43), but now he was left alone. God turned his back on his own dearly loved Son.

We can perhaps better understand what transpired that day by considering Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (NIV). Christ was "made sin" for us by a judicial act of God; he charged the guilt of our sin to Jesus.

However, we must always keep in mind the distinction between Christ's sinlessness in his personal being and his sin-bearing in his official liability to God's wrath. He was the sinless sin-bearer. Though officially guilty as our representative, he was personally the object of the Father's everlasting love and delight.
Should this not make us bow in adoration at such matchless love, that the Father would subject the object of his supreme delight to his unmitigated wrath for our sake?"

- Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day By Day

Shirley MacLaine: "I have some credibility about what I think now."

Posted by Christine Pack

We wrote in a previous article that the New Age Movement never really went away, as most people believe, and this is true. The fact is, it didn't go away; rather, it was absorbed and mainstreamed into the culture. Many of its ideas and beliefs have become absorbed into everyday thinking, including how we think about:

Weather (global warming)

Business (sustainable development)

Health (holistic remedies, many based on Chinese religious beliefs)

Stress management (yoga, mantra meditation)

Food (organic, free trade, sustainably grown)

Entertainment (T.V. shows like Medium, Ghost Whisperer, Charmed; movies like The Matrix, Avatar, Hereafter)

Everyday lifestyle ("Green Living" - i.e., biodegradable housecleaning products, CFL lightbulbs, "low flow" showers and toilets, hybrid cars, fretting over one's environmental footprint, etc.)

Academy award winning actress Shirley MacLaine was one of the first prominent figures to promote the New Age movement and its beliefs in a positive way, which she did in her 1983 bestselling book, "Out On A Limb." Even though this book - and MacLaine - both became punchlines and late night talk show fodder for many years to come, it looks like MacLaine (and the power behind her) is having the last laugh:

In a recent USA Today interview with MacLaine, the interviewer writes:

"When asked what people think when they hear her name, the actress quickly raises her index finger and twirls it in the air, making a high-pitched whistle as she does. 

Translation: She's a nut case! 

'But I don't think so much anymore. I think I have some credibility about what I think now,' she says, adding that she was a few decades ahead of the curve. 'Remember what people used to say about meditation? Now everyone is doing it.'"

And she's right.  Look around at our culture today. Do people today have to make a special trip to New Age bookstores to find their books on meditation? Or to purchase their tarot cards, runes, or crystals?  No, they only have to drive as far as Barnes & Noble, or click on Amazon, to get all of these things. Do people still joke about wacko, tree-hugging environmentalists? Well, they might, but the car they're driving to Barnes & Noble in is a hybrid, and has a yoga mat rolled up in the back. The New Age is no longer a punchline.  It's our everyday reality.

photo credit: Marilyn M via photopin cc

 Additional Resources 

Universalism: The Gospel Message of the Emergent Church Movement and New Age Spirituality

Julia Roberts: "I'm definitely a practicing Hindu"

Ayurveda "Old Fashioned" Therapy? Well, Sure, If You're A Hindu.

"Christian" Yoga?

Karma Just Doesn't Cut It

The Light That Was Dark

The Beautiful Side of Evil

Tim Keller and "Social Justice"

Below is an excerpt of an excellent article by my friend Jonathan Cousar that was originally posted on the Freedom Torch website:

"I was so surprised to see an article posted here - on my own website about my former pastor, Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York city!  I went to Tim Keller's church for nearly 20 years and in fact I left just last year because of my growing concern that the church and Tim were far more liberal, theologically and ideologically than I had ever imagined. 

However, I never intended to write anything about it here because it just didn't seem like a relevant topic on FreedomTorch.  But since conservative FreedomTorch members are writing about him and doing so in a most positive way, I feel I must warn my conservative political and conservative Christian friends that Tim Keller, despite all claims to the contrary, is not a theological or an ideological conservative and he is most definitely not a traditional Evangelical.  He is in fact very liberal on both counts.  As J. Gresham Machen so well put it in his book “Christianity & Liberalism” liberal Christianity really isn't Christianity at all.  And I might add the corresponding political statement that liberal Americanism isn't Americanism at all either! 

The Christian media is fond of telling us that Tim Keller is an Evangelical Christian… just like us, they seem to imply.  So one thing Christians need to know about Tim’s teachings is that they are really anything but what we have come to know as “Evangelical” or conservative Christianity.   To sum it up most succinctly, you should know that Keller says "the primary purpose of salvation is – cultural renewal – to make this world a better place."  Whether you agree or disagree with that statement – it’s certainly not an “Evangelical” or conservative Christian belief." (Continue reading article here.)

Think Only Christians Have "Eschatology?" Think Again.

es·cha·tol·o·gy

noun \ˌes-kə-ˈtä-lə-jē\

Definition of ESCHATOLOGY

1

: a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind

2

: a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind.

Contrary to what some might think, Christians aren't the only ones who have beliefs about the end times. After all, "Eschatology" simply means the study of, or knowledge of, the end times.  All false religions have an "Eschatology;" that is to say, a view of how the end times are going to play out.   It's wrong eschatology of course, but it is still that religion's view of how the end times will look.

In the video below, John MacArthur presents a brief, side-by-side comparison of Islam's eschatology next to the eschatology of the Bible. (This sermon in its entirety can be listened to here.)

Wrath Revealed

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men." Romans 1:18

"Some people like to think that although the wrath of God is a reality in the Old Testament era, it disappears in the teaching of Jesus, where God's love and mercy become the only expressions of his attitude toward his creatures. Jesus clearly refuted that notion: "Whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him" (John 3:36, NIV). And he frequently referred to hell as the ultimate, eternal expression of God's wrath. (See, for example, Matthew 5:22; 18:9; Mark 9:47; Luke 12:5.)

In the inspired letters of Paul, we read of God's wrath being "stored up" for the day of judgment (Romans 2:5) and that God's wrath is coming because of sin (Colossians 3:6). And the whole tenor of Revelation warns us of the wrath to come.

Having then established the grim reality of God's wrath, how are we to understand it? God's wrath arises from his intense, settled hatred of all sin and is the tangible expression of his inflexible determination to punish it. We might say God's wrath is his justice in action, rendering to everyone his just due, which, because of our sin, is always judgment.

Why is God so angry because of our sin? Because our sin, regardless of how small or insignificant it may seem to us, is essentially an assault on his infinite majesty and sovereign authority. As nineteenth-century theologian George Smeaton wrote, God is angry at sin "because it is a violation of his authority, and a wrong to his inviolable majesty."

Here we begin to realize the seriousness of sin. All sin is rebellion against God's authority, a despising of his law, and a defiance of his commands."

- Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day By Day