This Week in Witchcraft - S1:E8

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Welcome to this week in witchcraft. The elements have been conquered with intense heat and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan.

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Can you spot it out in the wild? I'm Dylan Hampton and with me are

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Michael Durham and Andrew Hudson. I decided that I was going to take a shot at this week in witchcraft for the first time in a while.

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And it's because I've been thinking about this for quite some time, but I've noticed a different understanding in the world today of paradise than the actual picture that we get in scripture, where paradise is to be a place of order of a very capital

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R reality where we are to have dominion and tame and tend a garden that is not wild, that is not remote, that is not far off and away from all of our problems, that we have something to do when we get there.

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And I've noticed a tendency and stuff from Madison Avenue or in advertising or books or movies to tell you that paradise is a place where you can now do nothing and be lazy and be okay with disorder and untimeliness.

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And so I'm wondering, is this witchcraft and what kind of witchcraft is it?

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Or is it multiple types of witchcraft playing on our understanding of what paradise should be?

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Yeah. So you see the theme of paradise in neo -pagan thought stretching back into the follies of modernism and so on.

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But in modernism, you see more of a, an idea that a man can achieve harmony.

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Man can achieve utopia. Man can bring about paradise either by industry, invention, philosophy, idealism, and so on.

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And I think that there is a, because in the move out of materialism into pantheism is a move from the rationalism and we're going to think our way out of this into a pantheism, a paganism, a despair where we're not going to think our way out of this.

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In fact, our being here is the problem. So that paradise now doesn't look like man creating this cityscape that looks pristine where there's no pollution and everybody loves one another equally.

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And everybody has the exact same outcomes and inputs and everything else. But that paradise really looks like man going away.

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We're in planet earth, or in other words, Gaia no longer is burdened by the parasite man.

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We're in again, this, there's a lot of nuances, you know, here, but mankind is the problem.

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Man is causing all the problems. If there were a lot fewer of us, perhaps none of us, that's when paradise would come back.

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The best thing to do with the forests and the animals you see is to just let them go and to do nothing with them.

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Uh, the best thing to do with planet earth is, I mean, the best thing that could happen to planet earth is if we just don't leave, I mean, then finally earth would be happy.

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And so in this sense, what is paradise in the Bible? What does, what does that look like in the scriptures?

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Uh, well, every man under his fig tree, there's still private property. There's still tending of, uh, there's still cultivation of the ground.

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There's, there is some, a sense of rest, but there's also a sense of labor and rest in proper proportion, a shalom that only comes about in the fear of the

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Lord. And things are not right unless, well, as C .S.

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Lewis put it, you know, things aren't right in Narnia unless there's a son of Adam on the throne. Okay.

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So there, there, there's actual engagement here, not a letting of things go wild. And there's a sense of rest in that our toil is not against thorns anymore.

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We're, we, we are now, we are now having rest in our work actually, where our, our purpose and meaning in our work is completely restored, where I know what

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I want to do in this life for work. And I'm nowhere near that goal yet, but in the world to come, it's going to be exact, it's going to be for specifically set aside for me what

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I'm supposed to do. And it's going to be given to me and I don't have to, I don't have to work for it because Christ gives it to me as a part of my inheritance coming into the kingdom.

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And I think that may be part of why you see that nihilism coming from paganism because, uh, this works based righteousness of modernism to where man can create utopia.

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If we work enough, we get there. If we, uh, if we give enough to the state, we get there. Um, well, we're starting to understand and see that unravel and that doesn't work.

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So what does work? And that's where you're saying the natural end of that is some sort of nihilistic retreat.

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Yeah. Pantheonism. And it actually does allow them to be lazy with thinking and just completely back off of trying to have dominion in this world like they were created to have if they're in Christ.

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It's a religious commitment, but it's not, there's no real good news. There's no redemption or salvation in it.

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You know, people mock these gatherings of the green technology advocates and the environmental activists as they get on their planes and they all gather somewhere on planet earth rather than just using video technology or whatever.

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And they spend all kinds of pollutants, you know, all kinds of money and waste to gather together about talking about saving the planet.

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And they're rightly mocked for the absurdity. But if you go a little bit deeper and you kind of see what's, what's going on in their worldview, they are demonstrating that they have no salvation.

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They're demonstrating that there is no cure. What they're doing is penance. What they're doing is coming together to affirm to one another that things are not right with our world, which as Christians, we would agree things aren't right with this world.

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But the cause of that and the cure of that, they're completely without. So it's a sad convocation of these pagan priests and priestesses who have no salvation.

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They would rather live outside of Eden. It's almost like they have the cherubim still stationed, except instead of swords, they have their own people with a sign that says men not allowed.

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Yeah. In their view of again, their view of paradise now is, you know, obviously man is the problem, you know, get rid of man off, off the earth.

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That's what we need. Everything's about, you know, fossil fuel reduction and over population problems.

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And we're going to run out of food. And it's interesting if you go back to the 70s, late 60s and 70s, and you read the literature of the, of those decades, it's the exact same things that are being said today.

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Are you talking about the Malthusian idea of limited resources?

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Yes, we're, but mostly just prophetic predictions. I mean, just what stands out,

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I'm saying what stands out is because there's a background philosophy to it, of course, but the prophesying of running out of food and running out of oil and running out of, oh, peak this, peak that, yes, everything.

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Yeah. And we have passed so many of their false predictions that it's almost like tuning into prophecy conferences in dispensational circles, you know, on TBN.

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I mean, it's the exact same kinds of stuff. Again, we're all without Christ, we're all suffering from PTSD from the fall, from getting kicked out of the garden.

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If you don't have Christ, you can't make sense of why this is all going on.

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You know, we just, we know being made in the image of God and being exiled from God, everybody knows is a problem.

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They don't know how to describe it unless God, by his grace, gives light. Yeah, it's either Christ or chaos or Christ or cope.

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And that's what we're seeing a lot of is they're just they're finding ways to cope. And a lot of it is usually there is they see problems in the world, which like we said, yeah, sure, we agree there's there's something wrong, but it's the fall.

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But for them, it's everybody else's fall. Instead of their own, they're plenty OK with reducing everybody else's carbon emissions, but to themselves, they don't apply the same standards.

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Right. And you see, you see a particular application of the problem when paradise is seen as getting rid of humans.

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Humans are the threat. You see a particular application of this way of thinking manifested in how we handled as a culture, how we handled this latest virus pandemic crisis, whereas before we had, you know, there's avian flu, there was swine flu, there was all these kinds of nasty things running around.

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And for some reason, you know, the world didn't come to a screeching halt. But as this idea continues to manifest and this this religion gains ground, especially in leadership, think about it.

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If humans are the problem, if man is the threat, then how do you solve this existential crisis of a virus?

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Well, man's the threat. So you you shut down man, you mask man, you shut man up in his homes, you man is the threat.

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Everyone look around at your neighbor. These are all threat vectors now because that's the environmental, the environmentalists understanding of paradise at work in a practical fashion.

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You are the carbon they want to reduce. That is well put. I stole that, by the way, that is not my own.

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Well, it's still well put. I don't know. So, yeah, so I would say that it's a type of witchcraft in the sense of, you know, there's the idea of paradise, but without biblical definition to what that is, then they're going to have to enchant it with their own ideas.

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And that's always changing. It's just it's always in a flow. So the view of paradise, you move back to the early 1900s, mid 1800s, paradise is seen very differently than it is today.

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Yeah. And so on and so forth. And that's before two world wars. I think we had a lot of those two world wars that were very industrialized wars and men coming back with nihilistic views and then being placed in Madison Avenue and tossing up paradise on an ad.

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And all you have is a white sandy beach, maybe a couple of seats, but there's no people. And that's a that's kind of a perfect example of or on its way to being a perfect example of the type of paradise that we see touted by pagans today.

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Yeah. And there certainly is a fear of man at work, especially, you know, we're still we're still in the shadow of the

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Cold War. Everyone's still nervous, especially with what's going on right now with Russia.

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But we're still living in the shadow of that. Hey, look, man has the capacity to kill everything and destroy everything.

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You know, many times over there's a fear of man. So the less man we see in the pictures of paradise, the better.

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Right. Yeah, for sure. All right. I think that about wraps up paradise for us today.

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Well, let's move on to the content that we are going to suggest. Michael, I've got a book by Ian Murray.

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It's a I in Murray and it's called Spurgeon versus Hyper Calvinism.

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The subtitle is The Battle for Gospel Preaching. And Spurgeon is well known for his battles in London versus the downgrade controversy where he was fighting against the liberals and the downgrade in their understanding of scripture.

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And they're claiming that it's full of errors and so on as they all began to bow the knee to the neo Darwinian hypothesis and the critical theory that it was emerging from the continent.

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But he was also should be known for his battle against the hyper

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Calvinist who had basically a corner on the church market in London. And this book very helpfully explains what hyper

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Calvinism is, which for me is probably worth the price of the book.

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And it has to do with duty faith, meaning do all men have a duty to repent and believe? If you answer no, you're a hyper

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Calvinist. If you answer yes, then you may be a Calvinist or otherwise. But the point is that Spurgeon as a

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Calvinist fought against hyper Calvinism and he had his name drugged through the mud and he was slandered and he suffered a great deal for his insistence that all men have the duty to repent and believe.

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And it's a very encouraging book. It's very interesting book. So I highly recommend it. I'm going to go with a website that's been beneficial.

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I was talking about this website. Another brother said, hey, why don't you mention that? So this is for you. Bible hub .com

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Bible hub is a great resource. We are blessed with many different ways to read, study the word of God.

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Bible hub I use for interlinear studies for the original languages and using the

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Strong's numbering system, being able to find out how often, where each word is used in the scriptures as well as historical meanings, whether it be secular or in the scriptures themselves as well.

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So very helpful study tool. Amen. My content recommendation has yet to be completed, so I'm suggesting that everybody go out and find

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Brian Sauve. That's B -R -I -A -N -S -A -U -V -E. He is creating an album called

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Even Dragons Shall Praise Him Praise. It's a Psalm singing album, and he's already done a lot of good stuff with the

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Psalms, and he's doing a fundraising round, which they've already surpassed their goal. But I would still say you could still give to the project because he's actually putting in a lot of his own capital in order to create this album.

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So go and look him up, see what he's done. And I promise you'll be pleased with the quality and the direction with which he is trying to work.

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And that wraps it up for today. We're always very thankful for our listeners tuning in every week and for supporting us by rating, reviewing, and sharing the show.

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And we hope you can join us again for another week of uncovering and rebuking witchcraft in the modern world.