This Week in Witchcraft (S1 E13)

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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 hamilton and with me is michael.

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Durham Michael has uh yet again found some witchcraft out in the wild for us. Actually. No, he did not this comes in from joel

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And joel found it out in the wild for us and we're gonna analyze it and see where we land All right.

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So the quote comes from a person by the name of neville goddard and you know, there's a lot of popular sayings and quotes that you can find of his online, you know set to beautiful backgrounds and You know, it's like, you know when you see mountains and sky and beautiful scenery

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Then whatever is said in the middle of that picture must be true You know, right if you if you see beauty then what's in the middle of that beauty must be truth, right?

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Right. All right. So that's the idea but that in itself is a bit of witchcraft So just because you have some sort of statement superimposed over beauty doesn't make it true

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So that would be a false association, but you found it out there in the middle of the beautiful creation. Yeah So this comes in from our producer which we appreciate his discernment and quick eye to this

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And so here's the quote and this is one of many quotes from neville goddard you believe in a god believe also in your imagination

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Yeah, how about that? So this is just one example of neville goddard's teaching now he had a view of the bible that was not

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Biblical it wasn't according to the bible's own claims. He saw the bible more like an analogy

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Kind of a a book that is helpful in terms of understanding the self

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So he helped give insight into how the human Worked how the human thought about things and felt about things and if if anything the bible taught

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Neville goddard would see the bible teaching humans how To bring into actuality the things that they desired

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So all of his quotes are kind of geared towards that Self -help, you know speak the change you want to see in the world wish fulfillment type stuff.

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Yeah kind of wish fulfillment um You know bring to pass, you know, you are your own god bring in your own reality through your own word type of approach this kind of spawns out of it's part of the new age movement, but To understand what new ageism is

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It is certainly an overt and confusing mess of paganism precisely

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It is a western skin put on Eastern pantheistic monism, so eastern referring to hinduism and its spinoff of buddhism pantheistic meaning that there is no true separation between creator and creation

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That atman is brahman is the confession of hinduism wherein the many and the one the one and the many are

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Ultimately of the same eastern pantheistic monism All of that in in terms of one peter jones would say one ism versus two ism so if everything is one then then you are your own god and you are able to bring into existence that which you desire and that is not a view unique to neville goddard it is something that Is very widespread in popular culture today and in various strains of christendom

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We can point to various teachers and preachers in prominent large churches highly publicized

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Celebrated authors and teachers and preachers who say similar things and so I mean we can think of various names and maybe some of the things that they say so you can think of perhaps going back to the gospel of self -esteem

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By schuler you can think of you know, the same kinds of ideas being preached by joel ostein today you can think of the name claimant health and wealth prosperity teaching, uh that has had such

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Prominence in not only american religious life, but also it has been exported across the known world through the internet

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And all kinds of people are being instructed in regards to these superstitions so the basic idea is

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Believe in yourself. The basic idea is not to say anything negative about the self not to say anything detrimental or discouraging about one's own endeavors, but only to continually say

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What seems to be? Encouraging and affirming and supportive of one's own agendas and paths

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Can we think of anything possibly wrong with that idea? It's highly therapeutic

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It's and it is a self -centered self -worshipping type of thing But it it seems to say go easy on oneself for having these thoughts and it is converging on a maybe a yearning or a tendency for all these people who are being drawn to it to have and that's one of the things of These false teachers really prey upon the depravity of man they figure out those those niches or those places that people struggle and they just massage it and that's that's kind of a

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That's part of the therapeutic Christianity and I think we actually see it and more places than we realize

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I Think they're in major denominations. I think they're in it's even in places sometimes that we would consider to be staunchly conservative

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Reformed churches and backgrounds and we don't realize it that it's there but it can sneak in through either

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Classes or teachers that we're not we're not really aware of Sure, I mean the heart is desperately wicked and who could know

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I mean, that's the observation and the question That is made by Jeremiah in the context of a culture really very religious culture his own people who were saying things like peace peace when there wasn't actually any peace and so just the affirmation that all as well

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Does not mean that all as well. In fact, it could very well be

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Inoculating you against any further word of caution or warning to be able to avoid the danger this is a horrible problem that we have in our culture today where in everything is about affirming the self and Whatever you observe about the self you are encouraged to affirm and celebrate

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This comes back from the the Freudian techniques of you know Observing everything that goes on with somebody and even

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Carl Jung as well Just saying, you know, look what you observe about yourself doesn't mean that's something wrong.

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That's just you Right, just you know, and so by observing that and affirming it

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This is the way to health, you know, as long as you remain in tension and conflict within yourself

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That's it. The problem is not that you desire these things. The problem is not that you have these thoughts the problem is that you're fighting against them and You need to accept them and understand them for what they are the opposite of dying to self

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Yes, yes going out and eating locusts and honey and we're in sackcloth.

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I mean, yeah and We'll talk more about that in terms of of Christ's Call of response to his gospel, but just a word of caution from Proverbs, right?

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So Proverbs 14 verse 12, there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end is the way of death

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I mean, that's a sobering thought That just because you think that this is the right way and you say that it's the right way you speak that the success of This path out loud and you pursue it doesn't mean that it's right and it's good and it's life affirming it the end of the way

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Easily can be death. How do you know? Which way is up, how do you know whether you are heading for disaster or you are heading for prosperity

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How do you know? The Bible tells us that man In and of himself cannot know that we are dependent upon the perspective the wisdom the understanding the truth the revelation of God to know which direction we are heading and Speaking of directions when

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Jesus proclaimed his good news. He proclaimed himself now He's the one that does that not us.

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He's the anointed of God. He's the chosen one of God He's the second Adam. And so yes, of course, he proclaims himself

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Every time we try to proclaim ourselves and trying to affirm ourselves. We are presenting a false gospel a

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Competing gospel to that of Jesus Christ and when he declares himself his person and work he is

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Showing us that he is both Savior and sovereign That he is the

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God man That he is the anointed one the chosen one the glorious one.

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And so what is the proper response? well, the only proper response is that of repentance and belief and this is entailed to us in a metaphor a picture and what is that it is one in which

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Jesus says If anyone wishes to follow after me Let him deny himself

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Take up his cross and follow after me. So what a series of word pictures there denying of the self

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There's a very clear Idea of a man Like what Paul did kind of listing out all the things that seemed right to Paul When he was a

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Pharisee of Pharisees and saying I died of this this is as a heap of dung to me

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Okay dying to self denying the self Taking up the cross which was the picture of cruel torturous execution meaning

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I bear the suffering of Denying the self I bear the suffering identify with Christ with everything that that entails not only the

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The shame and the suffering but also I identify with the salvation that Christ brings through his sufferings on the cross

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And I follow him the picture in Revelation 14 of the Saints that they sing the song of the redeemed and they follow the

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Lamb wherever he goes rather than Just affirming themselves and their individuality wherever they want to go

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I remember in my undergrad which was not a very

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Orthodox experience, but I didn't get a degree in pastoral ministries And we I did go on a short -term mission trip down to Guatemala and there was a member of the team and she

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Felt cold into the ministry. So she was gonna go be a preacher So we went down to Guatemala and they got her up into the the pulpit and she got up to preach and she preached a sermon in which she took some passages out of the

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Psalms and basically said that wherever she goes God follows her and That you know, he's always supporting her and everything that she does

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Everywhere I am there he is. He's following me and it was the exact inverse of What we're told in the scriptures not that God follows us around and affirms us that's the

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New Age mysticism that's the pantheistic idea of You know, we're creating a

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God that affirms us in and of ourselves But that we are to follow the Lamb wherever he goes

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Affirming what he does because he's the king does this play out practically because it's preaching to oneself affirming oneself all the time saying my

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Imagination is something to be believed in is this preaching to oneself soft things in order to harden the heart when we should be preaching hard things

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To ourselves in order to soften our hearts. Yeah, I think I agree with that assessment And I think that Jesus put it in in terms of some people

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They don't have ears to hear what the what the Lord says He was ears to hear that I'm here what the

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Spirit says But when people don't have ears to hear what God has to say, it's not that they hear nothing

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But they only hear themselves, right? They only hear what they want to say it to themselves about themselves and very often you'll find that people who

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Spend all their time. Like you say preaching to themselves about themselves the gospel of the self.

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Mm -hmm cannot tolerate Anybody who says otherwise? Right and it's kind of a sad picture but imagine seeing a group of people together in a room and They're all there because they agree philosophically that you should be for the self

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But what are they going to be doing? Nobody is in in conversation actually with one another they're just sitting there talking about themselves and monologuing in the same space

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To themselves about who they are and how great they are and so on the exact opposite of communion with the

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Saints Yeah, yeah, exactly So there's a there's an isolation that occurs with sin, right as soon as Adam and Eve sin

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They're isolated from each other. They're cut off from God We see the same thing in terms of being cut off from the world in the flood the separation of the nations in Babel Sin separates false gospel separate isolate you can think of the false gospel of feminism you know the destruction of the family the false gospel of Marxism the separation of societies classes and classes and so on and every false gospel

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Destroys and isolates and the gospel itself is no different. Yeah, it's interesting to think of it in those terms

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Well, I think that about wraps it up for us today on that bit of witchcraft Michael What do you have to suggest for content?

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so I got a book by David Chilton called paradise restored a biblical theology of Dominion and this is a book published by Dominion Press and What David Chilton does is he goes from?

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the beginning to the end several times over and in scripture and talks about how to see the story of The Bible as paradise restored and so there's there's hope here.

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There's Unity here harmony of the scriptures in watching the story of how

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God redeems us through Christ Do you have any areas that you disagree with? Mr.

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Chilton? Oh, well, I Agree with David Chilton in in several areas

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I think I disagree later on in his life after some severe health problems He turned to an erroneous position called full preterism, which

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I totally disagree with But the balance of his life's work was not Not with that also, there are some areas where in I think he reads the text a little too a

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Little too far in seeing certain types of fulfillments, but again, you know, there's probably

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Various areas that I just don't understand him as well as I could so All right, my suggestion is and it's actually a dietary study done by Mr.

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Weston a price. It's called nutrition and physical Degeneration a comparison of primitive and modern diets and their effects and thus far.

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I've noticed that Not in just this study, but kind of having a a small understanding a read -through of Dietary history over the last century you want to talk about a place where there's loads of witchcraft

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If you just want to research the American Heart Association Kellogg Ancel Keys they've used a lot of government subsidies and incentives to press a very inflammatory a very industrialized diet and with the absence of loads of whole foods and it's led to lots of inflammation and in our bodies cancer and that sort of thing, but price actually went out and studied primitive groups and He came back with some results that were pretty impressive even to the point of your diet

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Having a major a major effect on your appearance your facial appearance and your bone structure and your tooth decay so reading through those studies is quite fascinating and may have a

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Effect on the way that you view health and the way that you view your diet as well because he is taking

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Loads of truth about creation and the human body and other bodies out there and applying it pretty consistently

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I'm so if you want to go look at that if you're into Into your diet recently or you're looking to have a different perspective

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This is one that is not as influenced by outside sources like Government spending and it was basically done on his own dime.

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So it's a fascinating study And that wraps it up for today We are always very thankful for our listeners tuning in every week and for supporting us by rating