A federal grant issued by the outgoing Biden administration has been awarded to a podcast that has openly promoted the Church of Satan, paganism, a cult in Cuba that does animal sacrifices, astrology, and a school of witchcraft that is LGBT-friendly, and more. Yes, anything but an actual faith like Christianity. Folks, with fires burning out of control in Los Angeles, pestilence running rampant (think bird flu), economic collapse, earthquakes, and everything else, I’d say it’s safe to start thinking about the darker forces behind it all.
According to Prophecy News Watch, the podcast series says that being filled by the Holy Spirit is just like demon possession, which is absolute blasphemy because it equates the work of God to the work of the Devil. It also makes a comparison between Christian prayer and New Age meditation. The series also claims that opposition to the occult can cause harm to “innocent Satanists” and then insists that it’s possible to be a Christian and “work magically with non-biblical spirits.”
This is apostasy, heresy, ans syncretism. The Bible forbids all of these practices and for good reason. Magic like this is representative of the sin of our first parents. Adam and Eve longed to be like God, to know things that only he knew, to be on equal footing with him. Anything less was plain wrong. So they did the one thing they weren’t supposed to do and death entered the world.
Witchcraft and false worship opens doors to demonic oppression and possession. It seeks forbidden knowledge and power that is being kept from humans by God for a reason, most likely how destructive it would be for us.
The Democratic administration justified the grant on the grounds of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), claiming that “American magical beliefs and practices” represent a vital component of America’s “rich religious diversity.” The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded a $388,863 grant to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to produce the “Magic in the United States” podcast. The series would produce six episodes per season for three seasons between October 17, 2023, and last December 17, each highlighting different occult practices (often pointing out the LGBTQ status of its practitioners).
Yet the series crosses the line into full-blown celebration and advocacy of the pagan spirituality it chronicles. The very first episode begins with a Wiccan practitioner identified using the pseudonym “Thorn Mooney” describing the witchcraft he practiced at age 13 as a “wonderful bit of delirium that I remember as one of the happiest times in my life.” At the time of the episode, Mooney was studying for a Religious Studies Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, researching “Evangelical Protestant communities and mega churches.” The hostess, Heather Freeman, repeatedly claims that someone can say his “religious identity is Christian” but adopt a “bigger, richer, and more complex” set of pagan and magical beliefs. “Ceremonial magicians have many different religious identities, including Christian. And some, like [self-identified Baptist pastor “Reverend”] Aaron Davis are willing to work magically with non-biblical spirits as well.
Here’s an example of the kind of dangerous practices the show promotes. Like calling on the Greek goddess of crossroads, magic, and witchcraft known as Hekate. Freeman recalls how Davis “could really feel the spirits of the ancestors” as he sang hymns in an African Methodist Episcopal church, which then led to him taking a dive into the deep end of Afrocentric spirituality. And the fall from grace didn’t stop there. He then became involved in worshiping nature. It wasn’t long before he The hostess, Heather Freeman, repeatedly claims that someone can say his “religious identity is Christian” but adopt a “bigger, richer, and more complex” set of pagan and magical beliefs. “Ceremonial magicians have many different religious identities, including Christian. And some, like [self-identified Baptist pastor “Reverend”] Aaron Davis are willing to work magically with non-biblical spirits as well.
It is forbidden by the Catholic Church to mix paganism with its teachings. This is pretty clear from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. What these people are engaging in will most assuredly lead to conjuring dark, demonic entities that wish for their destruction.
Freeman helpfully suggests ways for listeners to identify with these religions too. For instance, “a stay-at-home mom in rural North Carolina” might want to form her own syncretistic religious “bricolage” by mashing together “her Pentecostal grandmother’s speaking in tongues and the Southern Baptist church around the corner. And she might mix these with the Rootwork [witchcraft] practices she observes from a neighbor.”
The show reaches its darkest point in the final episode of season 2, about the Church of Satan. (The episode notes that it “includes frank conversations about sex and sex-positivity.”) Freeman praises Lil Nas X, a hip-hop performer who identifies as homosexual, for producing a music video for the song “MONTERO (call me by your name),” in which the rapper “slides down a stripper pole into Hell, gives Satan a lap dance, and then kills the Prince of Hell to become its new reigning sovereign.”
The fact that this kind of material is being promoted, openly, and that people are buying into it while slandering and ignoring the God of the universe is proof that we are in the middle of an intense spiritual battle and things are most definitely heating up. Could we be headed for the end of days? The darkness and its assaults on humanity and particularly the people of God is intensifying, that much is for sure, though one cannot presume to know the mind of God and his timing for events.
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