This Week in Witchcraft (S1 E15)

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

Can you spot it out in the wild? I'm dylan hampton and with me is michael derham david casson and andrew hudson

This time on this week in witchcraft. We have had an article sent from us from afar. My brother -in -law sent me A article from the salt lake tribune.

Thank you. Jonathan. The headline reads new heavenly mother debate breaks out between lds

That's latter -day saint feminist and lgbtq activist if you want to look it up yourself You can go to the salt lake tribune online, which is sltrib .com

And the article is by peggy fletcher stack and we're going to try to Flesh out all the craziness that we see in this article

And then we're going to try to bring it down to earth as michael's going to present us with all the craziness first So basically the borg have showed up to the mormons

Oh Okay, that's crazy time to be assimilated

Here's the key question take what is useful I when I read this I read through this article.

I was thinking. Ah marxist mormons So the key question that they have on the article is how can mormonism make teachings about mother god more inclusive?

now I should have probably warned you We probably should have warned people that this is not for the faint of stomach

But when we you have to understand that they're in the theology of mormonism and mormonism doesn't call itself mormonism anymore

They call themselves the latter -day saints and they really really want to show themselves as being

Christian and they want you know christians to think you know, basically We believe mostly the same things and we think that if you believed our way

Things would be a little bit better off for you. They would like to be seen initially as just another denomination they would like to be seen as Consistent with christianity an easy move from being a baptist to a mormon or from a baptist to be a latter -day saint

But those are the initial steps when you actually see what is taught and practiced and believed in and applied in Latter -day saints and amongst the mormons becomes very clear that this is not at all christianity.

This is something completely different And is in fact a terrible cult a snare a snare a perversion of The good news of jesus christ.

So in mormonism in the teachings of the latter -day saints. There is not just one god the multiplicity of gods

Puts hinduism to shame so you have to understand that If they have all these gods, then there's no end to the theologies

Right theology can only be singular when you have one theos God as many gods as you have as many theologies that you're going to end up with and in given some of the teachings of the latter -day saints

There's a procreation that takes place between a heavenly father and a heavenly mother that brings forth

You know this world in which we live And there is interest amongst latter -day saint feminists about this heavenly mother

And how can they identify with the heavenly mother in her femininity to push forward their agenda, which is basically the marxist agenda the cultural marxist agenda of feminism

Remember that marxism turns everything into oppressor oppressed. That's their hermeneutic You're not really seeing the world and you're not really being literate and you're not really being understanding if you don't see everything in terms of Oppressor oppressed everybody is in those two classes and for feminism

The women are the oppressed and the men are the oppressor Okay So applying that cultural marxism to mormonism they're going to make a lot of hay out of the heavenly mother and there's a point in the article where An apostle of the latter -day saints is saying hey, we shouldn't speculate too much

But hey, this is what the feminists want to do now. This has brought them into conflict with another group of Latter -day saint advocates, but they are the lgbtq plus etc group

Okay, and they're saying when you're stressing the femininity of god And if you're stressing the masculinity of god or the femininity of god and so on You're overlooking the fact that we need a genderless

Not necessarily a genderless god, but a god with genderless expression so that we can all

Relate to this god gender binary of the divine leads us out of that divine participation

So if you present the gods of mormonism if you present deity divinity

As a concept in any fashion that is alien to my experience

Then I cannot worship god properly. Therefore you are oppressing me

Keeping me from worshiping And having the experience of divinity that I should

I'm the oppressed you're the oppressor Right. So as the feminists have been working under the impression that they are the oppressed

They now discover that they are the oppressors in stealing divine experience away from the lgbtq alphabet borg

But this well i'm saying the board showed up to the mormons and says resistance is futile You're gonna you know, you are going to be assimilated

This is cultural marxism This is critical theory. This is showing up And just grabbing hold of something and then the universal acid and beginning to dissolve

The structures that are there turning everything into oppressor oppressed conflicts So that we see this happening in the latter -day saints

Of course, we've already seen how the borg at work in other contexts of religion in north america.

It's incredible the the more Intersectional you are the more oppressed you are and based on your

Description the more powerful you become Because the the most oppressed are able to wield an enormous amount of power on this other group of lesser oppressed and so now we can just They're the ones that that are wielding the assimilation and for those who don't know the the borg is a reference to star trek where this technological group just sort of Assimilates all the technology and and puts it into a giant cube and it's all there's there's no like You know individual borg is just borg.

There's just one. I am borg So if anybody was confused about that that reference ask the nerd that's closest to you

And they should be able to help you with that. So did star trek did they prophesy google and facebook?

That's centralizing of all technology in the internet is like that It That seems what that's what that's speaking towards there.

I think I think alphabet even had a cube out in the san francisco bay have servers That they had to cool down Using the water out there for a little while.

I think I know you might be joking a little bit But gene roddenberry was involved with a group that was associated with the council of nine and which was an occult organization

That sought communication with extraterrestrials via occult practices

Okay, so he's not just Science fiction. He's an occultist in this sense extraterrestrial meaning demons, correct?

Um, but yeah The the concept in the concept in star trek is that you know You have all these different various factions that have a hard time getting along right ramans klingons humans, whatever

And but when the borg shows up they all become borg Right and they all end up looking basically the same and all serving the greater good of the borg

And wherever the borg goes they just can keep on assimilating and keep on assimilating And so that's the idea here.

That's what cultural marxism does is It must completely break down all distinctions and all distinctives

And then to turn everybody into this utopia Of everybody is exactly the same with no distinctions and no differences all serving the greater good

And that's why the borg are a perfect metaphor for it Yeah, that's that's the idea behind the quote -unquote perfect communism the classless society if everybody is the same then nobody is oppressed and nobody is the oppressor and we will have utopia because Human beings are innately good.

And if we just put them in the right environment where you can take down all of those structures

That just generate more more oppression and people are just free to be who they are

You know ubu and all distinctions gone then we will have absolute paradise everybody just doing what's right in their own eyes

We've tried that and it worked really well last time. Yeah. Well in this article we see are people saying

I can't worship god unless god is immediately and thoroughly

Coherent to my set of experiences Okay, which means unless god is completely compatible with my expressions and experiences

I can't worship and what we see in that is a pitfall that all humanity has a problem with not just some

Latter -day saint feminists and other types of activists. That's not it's not just their problem

It's everybody's problem in that, you know, we as sinful Have a temptation to create god in our image but that is

The absolute reversal of what happened god made us in his image and god made us according to his standards and god called us to Adhere to his word

God revealed his standards for us to understand ourselves in the light of And so when it comes to the worship of god so many times people try to look around for worship experiences and worship opportunities and religious organizations or churches or Worship community or worship centers and what are they looking for?

They know what's valuable to them They have their sets of experiences and they're looking for someone to replicate that for them

And they want to find a place that expresses and puts god forth in a way that is entirely consistent

With their experiences and preferences Now that is that is not

How the bible talks about worship? In in the biblical expression of worship

We have the fear of the lord. We have people bowing the knee. We have everybody orienting around him

There's all sorts of change that has to take place Jesus said eternal life is knowing god and jesus christ whom he has sent

Jesus says that if you want to have eternal life if you want to know god It isn't create god in your image

He says deny yourself Take up your cross and follow me.

That's what he says We live in a world that says affirm yourself

Whatever you discover about yourself. You must affirm, you know, thank you freud but what the scriptures what jesus says is deny yourself

Take up your cross and follow me because he's the way the truth and the life No one comes to the father except through him.

He's the standard. He's the authority. He's the lord And so we have to deny ourselves And here's a a quote from the article itself.

That is exactly the opposite of that if I a queer woman Only know the story of god as a cisgender heterosexual individual or couple she asks.

How can I see godliness in myself? godliness is determined by Something that's already true about me rather than Denying what's already true about me in order to follow the lamb

Yeah, it's just the exact opposite of what you were just talking about yeah, I found some six day old milk past expiration mark in my fridge the other day and I would rather drink that half gallon of spoiled substance

Than to have to read much more of that article imbibe the botulism That is rough

But it's not unique no it is not unique it's for all those who abandon the truth

Jesus says in uh, john chapter 17 verse 17. Oh father sanctify them in thy truth because Thy word is truth.

Yes Once you abandon the word of god There's no there's no breaks there's there's no categories to To bound it's all folly falsehood lies

You can exchange one life for another Because there's no truth in it. Hmm Yeah, we talked about that beforehand where there's there's no off switch or a valve switch in mormonism's case

You've got the valve kicked off and it's just a spigot spraying without a without a head to stop it

And I think the key Key point of the article that that kind of Expresses that in mormonism is their apostles speech that they talk about in the second paragraph

That said in an apostle dale renlund's speech He urged members of the church of jesus christ of latter -day saints not to speculate about the divine feminine

But rather stick to what is known in the faith gospel topics essay about her That seems

I and I know that's that's a paraphrase of probably what happened But that seems rather passive if you hold the truth

If you hold the word if you hold the truth if you truly do You are not going to be so passive as to say

I you know, just don't look into it all these internet articles About all this don't worry about it.

We don't need to confront it stick to what we already have Don't look behind the curtain. Yeah, right.

Yeah I mean it it really is and they see it coming and I think that may be one thing that is unique about mormonism in the american context is um we have uh

Them set up especially ripe for this type of danger To be infiltrated and assimilated quickly

If the board can work quickly in any of our institutions, it's there in mormonism in the state of utah and that's that's frightening for the mormon people and we should we should see that as an opportunity to Actually bring them the truth because they don't have anybody giving it to them

So i'm gonna have to find a new source of my freeze -dried foods All those guys aren't gonna be doing that anymore

Maybe that's the one thing that's left behind there. They probably They probably will be but there'll be rainbow flags.

Oh, wow. Okay. Well, it's like, you know I might as well just get skittles extra injections of estrogen and everything it's funny that the appeal to The truth was uh this essay that was written

Um, you just listen to that and that that's sufficient their

Their view of the scriptures are quite twisted as you know and the fact that you know their progenitor of this falsehood

This cult said that the bible was missing many plain and precious parts

I think I think they're getting their just desserts. Yeah. Yeah, and that particular

Statement from joseph smith The bible is missing many Plain and precious parts.

Yes is still being said today by evangelicals right because for instance in the words of uh, walter strickland from a southeastern seminary, uh, the white church doesn't have

A full gospel. Oh, yeah, there we go, right because you have to listen to the black church because of their lived experience

If all you have is the bible you're missing plain and precious parts Of the of the of the lived experience of the oppressed therefore you don't have the full gospel

You have to have these other plain and precious parts brought in Okay, so that's not that's not a new

Or that that idea hasn't gone away. Yeah, it's it's still present and it's just a reminder of the gnosticism that the borg bring

Okay, the secret knowledge, yeah the secret knowledge you have to have the lived experiences To get to the right understanding and right knowledge

That's an example of it hitting closer to home for us too. Like this this seems far away But you bringing that up that's that's much closer to home to us than than we realize

Yeah, so when we read zany articles like this The goal is not just to leave it there but to consider how the lie at the root of this situation

Is operative In situations around us and that's where it is profitable

I mean we operate off the assumption that the bible in and of itself god's word in and of itself is sufficient.

Yes And it is complete in and of itself. And so yes this article was kind of fun, you bring it up because it's so over the top but the root of it

Not so much, you know, we we see those things very very close to home Which is why whenever we try to respond to these things, uh on this week in witchcraft

You know we're trying to respond with the scripture as we as we have it and as the god's word as it is

Sufficient in and of itself and also spiritually appraised so We understand that when you apply this as a standard it requires regeneration to understand what god's word is actually

Saying so when people andrea as you pointed out Abandon god's word as a standard anything

And everything becomes fair game Which is why whenever we try to respond to anything whether it's more subtle like you don't have the full gospel or very zany um and and people jumping on uh

You know rocket ships to go off to their utopia. The response is still the same correct

Have you not read have you not read? Yep. There we go Hey, man. Well, I think we've wrapped that up for today

Why don't we go on to our recommendations for content that we think would be edifying and helpful to you out there in the audience?

So i've got a book named created in god's image By anthony a hokuma.

That's h o e k e m a and this is

An excellent book. I you know someone was just talking about notes and underlines and also the things in the margins and this is definitely one of those books that is that way for me and one of the most helpful things in this book is

A deep investigation into what does it meant that were made in god's image? Looking at the text from genesis and then seeing how that is consistently

Applied and fleshed out throughout the rest of scripture but that it comes down to Those who are made in god's image are a unique intersection of relationships and accountabilities in which

Made in god's image. We are made to love god supremely to love others rightly and to steward the creation responsibly

And that we stand in this this unique position that no other creature does and at this position in which there is perfect relationship ideally with god perfect relationship ideally with mankind and perfect governance over the creation ideally

That all of this is fulfilled in the person and work of jesus christ Who is the image of the invisible god?

We read in colossians 3 So that ultimately if we want to know what it means to be human being Look at jesus

Look at jesus of nazareth who is the son of the living god and there we see what humanity is really all

About so it's a great book anthony hokuma created in god's image. Amen, david Uh, i'm going to recommend a website that i've used over the years that I really like a lot.

It's called monergism .com It's m -o -n -e -r -g -i -s -m dot com mono meaning meaning one

So the one worker or god is the the one that works and effects Um salvation versus you know working together.

It is a database of free resources there are

Dozens and dozens and dozens of free ebooks dozens of a sermon series you can get lost for for taste

Going down all of these free resources and just on the on the front page. You say hey, are you new to modernism?

How is it used? What is it? Why trust it? You know, it has some some great historical works

And you can dive into it And if you don't have enough room in your house to store a whole bunch of books

And you don't want to buy stuff on amazon go here first Take a look and see if there's something on that's already free available in a pdf form

And you just have these enormous resources at your fingertips just by having a smartphone. So modernism .com

I enjoy it. I actually just finished up a series by a kim Riddlebarger that I enjoyed a lot.

Yeah, so Enjoy and you can follow them on facebook and watch their interactions with people who have objections to a lot of the stuff that They put out and it's actually they do a pretty good job of responding a lot of times

So their facebook page is not bad as well. Fantastic. Andrew influence The psychology of persuasion by robert cialdini.

He was a researcher. It's a book. Uh, he was a researcher on Basically using operant conditioning style procedures to elicit outcomes the idea behind this book is they're leveraging techniques

That men use against other men mankind Manipulating others to seek their own benefit.

This author purports to uncover These manipulation techniques in an effort to provide a defense for it

I'm not advocating it for that but rather to be aware that These are techniques that Fallen man uses against other fallen men to get their own way

Interesting when you read through the book, uh, andrew, do you find yourself seeing his observations and then assigning?

biblical terminology to it No, well he's not doing well, I mean but use the reader um, well,

I I wouldn't say I necessarily have Specifically done that i've taken it more like hey, there's some research that says that this is a technique that's effective on people and we know that Will worship is not to be sought after there are certain things that are good for humanity

But the only thing that constrains sin Is being born again and the expiation in christ

My recommendation is for those who want to understand how psychology impacts every single person

In a way that's goes beyond the realm of thought into how people use Manipulation tactics to try to get their own way.

I see. Okay. Well, i'm going to start my recommendation off with uh, One of my favorite memes literature memes.

It says english literature. I will die for honor french literature I will die for love american literature.

I will die for freedom russian literature. I will die So they're very sure of that um, but I I would like to uh

I'd like to go into the I will die for honor. It's got a picture of shakespeare as their representative naturally

But there is a a great series out there called the hollow crown that was done by the bbc And what they do is they go through shakespeare's histories

And most people find the histories to be the most boring shakespeare plays that you could come up with but that's because Most people who are trying to curate shakespeare's content are the most boring people alive um, so shakespeare's histories are wonderful, uh plays that he did and they are done by wonderful actors

They've got tom hiddleston They have benedict cumberbatch and it runs the gamut of english actors in the modern era who have

Had shakespearean experience and come to the screen and done very very well with it It's a high production film series and it's very very long

But it's a great introduction into shakespeare's histories and I think anybody who enjoys any bit of shakespeare would enjoy it

Excellent. I have a problem with benedict cumberbatch. He can't say the word penguin. But other than that penguin.

Yeah Well, they they yeah, they literally he can't he can't say it I have to look this up now

I know I know I planted a little seed there I just well, I just watched penguins of madagascar

And benedict cumberbatch is one of the uh voices in that. Yeah, he's the husky. Yeah Yeah, but he can't say penguin

He has a problem. That's fantastic 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 reviewing and sharing the show