By Lisa Miller
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 1:24 PM ET Dec 8, 2007
You need only go back to the first chapter of Genesis to see how elemental water is to the observance of faith: “And the Spirit of God,” the Bible says, “moved upon the face of the waters.” In the Torah, water is used to ordain priests and to purify the sons of Aaron before they enter the temple. In the New Testament, John baptizes Jesus with water from the Jordan River. Observant Muslims wash hands and feet before they pray, orthodox Jewish women take ritual baths once a month—and every Christian denomination still uses water as part of its sacred rites. Mormons, when they take the weekly sacrament, drink water instead of wine.

So it’s not surprising that a few savvy marketers would seize on this universal symbol of purity for financial gain. Inspired, perhaps, by vitamin and energy waters, a number of new companies have begun making more explicit claims: their water doesn’t just promote good health, it actually makes you good. Holy Drinking Water, produced by a California-based company called Wayne Enterprises, is blessed in the warehouse by an Anglican or Roman Catholic priest (after a thorough background check). Like a crucifix or a rosary, a bottle of Holy Drinking Water is a daily reminder to be kind to others, says Brian Germann, Wayne’s CEO. Another company makes Liquid OM, superpurified bottled water containing vibrations that promote a positive outlook. Invented by Kenny Mazursky, a sound therapist in Chicago, the water purportedly possesses an energy field that Mazursky makes by striking a giant gong and Tibetan bowls in its vicinity. He says the good energy can be felt not just after you drink the water but before, when you’re holding the bottle.

The most recent entry in this niche is Spiritual Water. It’s purified municipal water, sold with 10 different Christian labels. The Virgin Mary bottle, for example, has the Hail Mary prayer printed on the back in English and Spanish. Spiritual Water helps people to “stay focused, believe in yourself and believe in God,” says Elicko Taieb, the Florida-based company’s founder who was formerly in the pest-control business. All three companies give a portion of their profits to charity.

This small band of feel-good entrepreneurs may face objections from a surprising quarter. Some religious believers, also convinced of the elemental importance of water, are campaigning against its ubiquitous sale and packaging on the grounds that the practice is neither ethical nor good for the environment. “Water is life,” says Sister Mary Zirbes, a nun in the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Minn. “It really should not be a commodity to be bought.” The Franciscan Sisters, together with a community of Benedictine nuns nearby, have launched a letter-writing campaign against the largest producers of bottled water and they’ve designed coasters to encourage people to drink glasses, not bottles, of water from the tap. The Vineyard church in Boise, Idaho, sells slim reusable plastic bottles in its bookstore, and it has placed water stations throughout the church. “In a world where a billion people have no reliable source of drinking water, where 3,000 children die every day of waterborne diseases, let’s be clear: bottled water is not a sin, but it sure is a choice,” says Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals. “Spending $15 billion a year on bottled water is a testimony to our conspicuous consumption, our culture of indulgence.” Taieb calmly refutes the implication that his Spiritual Water is bad for the planet. People put fewer of his bottles in the trash, he says, because they don’t want to discard images of Jesus or Mary. Instead, they refill them with other beverages. Obviously, even do-gooders can disagree. Some believe that water is life, while others believe that water is their livelihood.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/74380©   Newsweek Mag

Although there are far too many examples of apostasy influencing the church today to cite in this brief series of articles, there is one spurious trend that encompasses nearly all of what the above verses address. It’s called the Emerging Church Movement (ECM). The ECM is a development among evangelicals that appears to have some worthwhile goals: 1) It professes to speak to today’s culture about the relevancy of Christianity and the value of the gospel of Jesus Christ; and 2) It desires to keep young evangelicals continuing in the faith. The movement involves a number of churches (mostly non-denominational), some supportive ministries and parachurch organizations, and the support of a number of prominent evangelical leaders and authors.

The ECM has no official organization or leadership, although some of its adherents have “emerged” as recognized leaders and spokesmen. For many of those helping to promote the movement, their motivation to “try something different” grew out of the frustration of their own very limited success in evangelizing and discipling young people. Some of the leaders were in seeker-sensitive and purpose-driven churches, and they saw firsthand that their church-growth marketing schemes were not effective for drawing those in their late teens, 20s, and early 30s. The main fare of most consumer-driven churches features contemporary music with shallow, repetitive choruses, topical 30-minutes-or-less sermons (mostly psychology-based), a host of social programs to attract the lost (and the fleshly nature of Christians), and “Bible studies” that address everything but the Bible (see “Consumer Christianity I & II”, TBC, 2/05 [5] , 3/05 [5] ). For a surprising number of young adults, that was a spiritual turnoff.

In his book The Emerging Church (with contributions and endorsement by Rick Warren), Dan Kimball relates his own breakthrough in overcoming the frustrating experiences in trying to motivate the young people in the evangelical church where he was youth pastor. He tells about watching a concert on the youth-oriented MTV network late one night that was a candlelit, all-acoustic performance. Recognizing that MTV certainly knows its audience and the youth culture, he refashioned his church’s youth room into a subdued, “catacombish,” candlelit environment and had the worship band use acoustic guitars, forgoing their usual flashing light show and loud electric music. He was delighted by the reaction of one usually unresponsive teen who said, “I like this. This was really spiritual.”

That was an epiphany for Kimball. As he expanded the service with what he considered more “authentic Christian” elements and liturgy, it attracted hundreds, young and old alike. He is convinced he’s found what the church of today needs: “As the emerging church returns to a rawer and more vintage form of Christianity, we may see explosive growth much like the early church did.”

On the contrary, the “explosive growth” in the early church came from an approach that is almost nonexistent in the ECM. Peter’s confrontational address to the crowd on Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 is directly at odds with the modus operandi of the emergent leaders. In the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter’s preaching brought conviction of sin, repentance, and belief; 3,000 came to Christ that day. Kimball’s “vintage form of Christianity,” featuring rituals, ceremony, candles, incense, prayer stations, and images to create a spiritually experiential atmosphere for evangelicals is “vintage” only in the sense that it is an imitation of the later unbiblical Eastern Orthodox and medieval Roman Catholic liturgies. The early New Testament church knew nothing of this idolatrous and sense-oriented worship.

Ironically, emergent churches around the world, in their attempt to “reconstruct” the church, are passing each other like ships in the night. Kimball’s efforts at spiritual stimulation by introducing to young evangelicals the liturgical bells and smells of Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, and high-church Episcopal and Presbyterian rituals, stands in contradiction to some European cathedrals and churches going emergent. Europeans are trying to revive their congregations, deadened by centuries of imagery and ritual, by covering their gothic interiors with decorated drapery, exchanging the organ and traditional hymns for electric guitars and contemporary choruses, and adding throw pillows for comfortable seating to create a seeker-friendly environment. These churches are abandoning the very things that are “spiritually” alluring to American emergent evangelicals. Regarding both sensual approaches, Scripture tells us, “the flesh profiteth nothing.”

In reading the works of the ECM leaders, we would agree with many of their criticisms of current Christianity. There is plenty to oppose as apostasy and the abandonment of the Word increases in Christendom. The ECM’s corrections, however, rather than having restorative value for the church, are just as contrary to the Scriptures. Even worse, they go far beyond subtly “weaning evangelicals off the Word” to rendering the Bible and its doctrines as the enemy when it comes to drawing the world in general and, specifically, our postmodern culture, to the love of Jesus.

The Emergent Church Movement claims to desire—above all things—to show the love and life of Christ to a culture that is distrustful of the Christianity it perceives as oppressive and absolutist. We’re assured by ECM writers that “numbers of postmoderns are attracted to Jesus but detest His church” and can therefore be reached by the emerging church approach. It professes to be more amenable to the culture, more viable in its practice of Christianity, and truer to what Jesus had in mind for His church on earth.

Admirable—but let’s see how true it is to the Scriptures. As Isaiah exhorted, “To the law and to the testimony [i.e., God’s Word]: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” Isaiah 8:20 [6]).

First of all, one has to wonder what a postmodern—a person characterized chiefly by his or her general disdain for authority and absolutes, particularly those dealing with moral issues and religion—thinks about this “Jesus” to whom he or she is supposedly drawn. The critical question is “Jesus who?” Is it the biblical Jesus they like, the one who declared absolutely, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6 [7])? What about the authoritarian Jesus, who announced, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love” (John 15:10 [8])? His words weren’t referring only to the Ten Commandments but rather to every instruction He gave. Is that the Jesus a postmodern desires? What about the Jesus who gave mankind an ultimatum: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36 [9])?

The biblical Jesus certainly does not accommodate postmodernism, which is one more example of humanity’s rebellion against its Creator. The good news is that Jesus offers deliverance from the delusion of postmodernism, as well as all the other man-centered isms: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31,32 [10]). The bad news is that the emerging church approach attempts to accommodate Jesus and the Scriptures (actually “another Jesus” and a corrupted and emasculated Word) to our postmodern culture.

Although some regard the Emerging Church Movement as nothing more than a passing spiritual fad among young evangelicals, its potential for shipwrecking the faith of our next generation (should the Lord not yet return for His saints) is staggering. Here are just a few of the faith-destroying beliefs as espoused in the writings of the emergent leaders. First of all, foundational to the ECM is the subversion of the Bible. It’s akin to Satan’s scheme to destabilize Eve’s trust in what God commanded: “Yea, hath God said…?” (Genesis 3:1 [11]). They give lip service to the importance of God’s Word while undermining its inerrancy, authority, and sufficiency.

Rob Bell writes in Velvet Elvis, following 22 pages of weakening the authority of the Bible (making statements such as “It is possible to make the Bible say whatever we want it to, isn’t it?” and “With God being so massive and awe-inspiring and full of truth, why is his book capable of so much confusion?”): “[L]et’s make a group decision to drop once and for all the Bible-as-owner’s-manual metaphor [i.e., God’s specific instructions for mankind]. It’s terrible. It really is….We have to embrace the Bible as the wild, uncensored, passionate account it is of experiencing the living God.”1 No! “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pt 1:21 [12]).

His view, common to most emergent writers, is that the key to the authority of Scripture is one’s interpretation, and that is most authoritative when the interpretation takes place in a community and validated by a “group decision”: “Community, community, community. Together with others, wrestling and searching and engaging the Bible as a group of people hungry to know God in order to follow God.”2

Although we find thousands of times throughout the Bible clear, direct, and absolute commands prefaced by phrases such as “Thus saith the Lord” and “The word of the Lord came to me,” we’re now told that understanding and obedience to what God said are subject to a community’s interpretation. Consequently, ECM churches disdain preaching and authoritative teaching, yet they delight in discussion, causing some to dump the pulpit in favor of a dialogue-led Starbucks environment. As the goals of the community change, we’re told the interpretation may also change.

The claim that the ECM approach has not jettisoned sound doctrine is either a delusion or an outright deception. This becomes clear when one asks for a biblical position on an issue. Kristen Bell acknowledges in a Christianity Today emerging church article, “I grew up thinking that we figured out the Bible…that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means, and yet I feel like life is big again—like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color.”3 Brian McLaren, the most prominent of the emergent leaders, echoes Bell’s “doctrine” of avoidance regarding what the Bible says about homosexuality:

Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making [doctrinal] pronouncements. In the meantime, we’ll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they’ll be admittedly provisional. We’ll keep our ears attuned to scholars in biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related fields. Then in five years, if we have clarity, we’ll speak; if not, we’ll set another five years for ongoing reflection.4
TBC has received numerous letters from parents and evangelical pastors who find their young people seeking out emergent churches for the “new” experiences, which they offer in abundance: religious art (primarily impressionistic images of “Jesus”), “biblical” films, rituals based upon Catholic/Orthodox liturgy, community, personal relationships, contemplative spirituality and mysticism (some include yoga), Bible dialogues, ecumenical interaction with “people of faith,” a social gospel, plans to save the planet, restore the kingdom, and so forth.

Regarding the seductive nature of such things, few evangelicals, young or old, have a defense. Too many function as biblical illiterates, meaning they know some things about the Bible and are capable of reading it but simply haven’t made any effort, outside of following along with their pastor’s teaching on Sundays. They are the spiritual con man’s delight.

Satan’s seduction of Eve began subtly, “Yea hath God said?” It was a confusion tactic, setting her up to believe his lie and reject what God had said: “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.” That was his punch line to destroy the human race. Eve fell for it; Adam went along.
One finds a strikingly similar approach in the writings of the ECM leaders in regard to destroying faith in the gospel: Brian McLaren leads with doubts about what God had said:

The church latched on to that old doctrine of original sin like a dog to a stick, and before you knew it, the whole gospel got twisted around it. Instead of being God’s big message of saving love for the whole world, the gospel became a little bit of secret information on how to solve the pesky legal problem of original sin.5

He says elsewhere, “I don’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be saved?…None of us have arrived at orthodoxy.”

British emergent leader and Zondervan author Steve Chalke delivers the punch line that unabashedly rejects the essential gospel belief that Christ paid the full penalty for the sins of mankind necessary to satisfy divine justice. Incredibly, he condemns that doctrine as a form of “cosmic child abuse” and a “twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.”6 This is where these emergent pied pipers, wittingly or unwittingly, are seductively leading our youth.

Hopefully, the above will move you to prayer and action regarding the biblical strengthening of your own children and the youth in your fellowship. If you need more motivation (this brief article allowed me to give you only the tip of the “emerging” iceberg), see our TBC Extra page (p. with multiple emergent leaders’ quotes helpfully compiled in Roger Oakland’s latest book Faith Undone: The emerging church…a new reformation or an end-time deception? TBC

Endnotes

1. Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 044-45, 062-63.
2. Ibid., 053.
3. Andy Crouch, “The Emergent Mystique,” Christianity Today, November 2004, Vol 48, No 11, 36ff.
4. http://www.christianitytoday.com/leaders/newsletter/2006/cln60123.html [13] .
5. Brian McLaren, The Last Word and the Word After That (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005), 134.
6. Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 182-83.

Published on thebereancall.org (http://www.thebereancall.org)

Therapists who attempt to help clients remember events and feelings from their childhood often use hypnotic techniques that actually move clients into a trance state.  They may deny using hypnosis, but guided imagery and other techniques used in leading a person back into the past are hypnotic induction devices. Dr. Michael Yapko, author of Trancework, says:

Many times therapists aren’t even aware that they’re doing hypnosis.  They are doing what they call guided imagery or guided meditation, which are all very mainstream hypnotic techniques.

The suggestions, the emotions, and the focus on feelings in the past rarely produce true memories.  In various forms of regressive therapy the therapist attempts to convince the client that present problems are from past hurtful events and then proceeds to help the client remember and re-experience hurtful events in the past.  However, rather than positive change, many false memories are produced.

Some writers, such as Campbell Perry, indicate that such techniques as the eliciting of memories, relaxation, and regression work are often disguised forms of hypnosis.  In introducing his paper on controversies regarding the False Memory Syndrome (FMS), Perry describes some of the procedures that:

. . . appear to be strongly linked with the development of a subjectively convincing memory that a person (usually a woman) was sexually abused during childhood by (usually) her father, that the putative memory has been repressed, only to seemingly resurface during the course of “recovered memory” therapy. Special emphasis is placed upon the role of “disguised” hypnosis in eliciting such memories——that is, upon procedures that are characterized by such terms as guided imagery, “relaxation,” dream analysis, regression work and sodium amytal represented as “truth serum.” All of these appear to tap into the mechanisms thought to underly the experience of hypnosis.

Leading questions, direct guidance, and voice intonation are enough to serve as an induction into the trance state for many individuals. Mark Pendergrast says:

The “guided imagery” exercises that trauma therapists employ to gain access to buried memories can be enormously convincing, whether we choose to call the process hypnosis or not. When someone is relaxed, willing to suspend critical judgment, engage in fantasy, and place ultimate faith in an authority figure using ritualistic methods, deceptive scenes from the past can easily be induced.

Various forms of regressive psychotherapy and inner healing with the use of visualization, guided imagery, powerful suggestion, and intense concentration can very easily result in inducing a hypnotic state.
                    
LARGE GROUP AWARENESS TRAINING

The Forum (formerly est), Life Spring, and Momentus are the names of some of the more well-known large-group training seminars that promise life-transforming results.  Using many of the ideas and techniques of the encounter movement, such group sessions attempt to alter participants’ present way of thinking (mind set, world view, personal faith, etc.) through intense personal and group experiences.  Some have marathon meetings that last numerous hours and take advantage of fatigue working together with much repetition, group pressure and various psychological techniques, some of which attack personal belief systems and cause mental confusion.

The confusion technique, which is also a hypnotic device, may be used to disorient the subject to make him more responsive to cues. Michael Yapko says:

In the confusion technique, you give a person more information than they could possibly keep up with, you get them to question everything, you make them feel uncertain as a way of building up their motivation to attain certainty.

While hypnosis may not be intended or admitted in such large group training sessions, the possibility is very strong for participants to experience hypnotic suggestion, dissociation, and impaired personal judgment.

OTHER SETTINGS AND SITUATIONS

Other activities and settings where hypnosis may occur also include:

Music
Church Services
Prayer and Meditation
Medical Offices
Self-Help Tapes

In today’s landscape of promises for self-fulfillment, self-mastery, personal well-being, and quick fixes for problems of living, one could easily find oneself in an environment conducive to hypnosis.  You may recognize some of the inductive techniques described in this book being used innocently or purposefully and therefore be forewarned.

Note: Quotation references may be found in the book Hypnosis: Medical, Scientific, or Occultic?

PAL V9N4 (July-August 2001)

www.psychoheresy-aware.org

But now Crouch must deal with the worst slur of 21st-century Christendom: his network, critics say, is soft on Islam.

The charge followed TBN’s recent decision to drop the half-hour Zola Levitt Presents from its broadcast schedule. Network officials told the show’s producers they were no longer interested in running the show after its longtime host, Zola Levitt, passed away this spring from lung cancer.  Levitt’s ministry says . . . “TBN, you see, is modifying its programming to be suitable for broadcast in Arab nations.” Zola Levitt Ministries offered no elaboration but added it would “join the good company of Hal Lindsey in dusting our feet.”

“Dusting” refers to Jesus’ admonition to his apostles: if people don’t want to hear the Good News, “when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet” (Mt 10:14).

But the inclusion of Lindsey . . . was intended to inflame evangelicals.  This January, Lindsey announced to followers that his “The International Intelligence Briefing” would no longer air on TBN after the network asked him to temper his statements on Islam. He cited no examples. TBN originally denied Lindsey’s claim, but network spokesperson John Casoria eventually retracted that statement, telling the conservative website  WorldNetDaily that TBN was concerned Lindsey “placed Arabs in a negative light.”

This isn’t the first time TBN has faced the charge that it coddles Muslims. In January 2002, Crouch published an open letter to disgruntled TBN programmers explaining his fire-and-brimstone-free approach to proselytizing among Muslims.

“Let’s be careful how we treat the Arabs and Islam,” Crouch wrote. “Let’s not slam Mohammed and Islam. Let’s reach out to them in love.” Similarly, TBN released a statement after canning Zola Levitt Presents that read, “As to TBN being accused of reaching out to the Muslim world with the love of God, TBN must plead guilty. When Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission, he said, go into ‘ALL nations,’ not just the non-Muslim ones.”

(Arellano, Orange County Weekly, 9/14/06)

NewsWithViews.com

Many public schools have become pagan religion indoctrination centers. These schools now teach children anti-Judeo-Christian beliefs and pagan religions, and try to mold children’s minds through the latest techniques in behavioral psychology.

Here are two examples of how schools now use spirit religions as brainwashing techniques in classrooms across America, from Berit Kjos’s book, “Brave New Schools:” “Come to the medicine wheel!” the teacher’s cheery voice beckoned the Iowa fourth graders to a fun Native American ritual. “And wear your medicine bags.”

Jonathan grabbed his little brown pouch and hurried to his place. His favorite teacher made school so exciting! She brought Indian beliefs about nature into all the subjects: science, history, art, reading. She even helped the class start The Medicine Wheel Publishing Company to make writing more fun.

She taught Jonathan to make his own medicine bag, a deer-skin pouch filled with special things, such as a red stone that symbolized his place on the medicine wheel astrology chart. This magic pouch would empower him in times of need, such as when taking tests. Jonathan wanted to show it to his parents, but his teacher said no. He didn’t know why.

Sitting cross-legged in the circle, the class sang a song to honor the earth: “The Earth is our Mother. We’re taking care of her. . . . Hey younga, ho.” Then the teacher read an Indian myth from the popular classroom book, Keepers of the Earth. It told about a beautiful spirit woman who came to save a starving tribe of Sioux Indians. This mystical savior brought sage to purify the people, and she showed them how to use the sacred pipe, a symbol of “the unity of all things” for guidance and prayer to the Great Spirit.

When Rachel Holm, a Minnesota mother, visited Mounds Park All-Nations School, she found magic dream-catchers in every classroom, mystical drawings of a spiritualized earth, and a ring of stones in the schoolyard for medicine wheel ceremonies. She heard politically correct assumptions about the evils of Western culture and the goodness of pagan spirituality. How can public schools promote Native American rituals but censure Christianity? she wondered.”

What’s wrong with these seemingly innocuous classes, aside from the issue of separation of religion and schools? The kids were having fun as they learned, so what could be wrong? Plenty. By teaching religious mysticism, public schools throughout the country are filling impressionable young minds with group think, multiculturalism, paganism, Earth worship, astrology, polytheism (belief in many gods), and pantheism (belief in spirit gods that exist in trees, rocks, and water). The God of Moses is out in our public schools, and Earth worship is in.

Many teachers in public schools across the country now stress feelings and mystical experiences, not facts and reason, much less critical reading and thinking. Their behavior modification techniques indoctrinate children with emotion-driven group think and anti-Western, anti-Judeo-Christian values.

In classrooms throughout the country, Judeo-Christian beliefs are cast aside or ridiculed. Multicultural studies, environmental propaganda, and arts-education classes now indoctrinate children with New Age religious beliefs, often without parents’ knowledge. Public schools sometimes try to sneak offensive spirit or new age religions into their curriculum without parents’ knowledge.

In January, 2003, a group of parents sued a Sacramento Unified School District because certain teachers at their local elementary school were aggressively, and secretly, teaching anthroposophy, a religion that combines traditional Western religion with astrology and New Age religion. Pacific Justice Institute lawyers representing the parents indicated that many other public schools in California are now adding New Age and Eastern religions, including Islam, to their curricula.

What follows is only a small sample of the flood of “spiritual” sessions taking place in classrooms throughout the country (from Berit Kjos’s brilliant book, “Brave New Schools”) :

1. “Altered states of consciousness: Teaching students to alter their consciousness through centering exercises, guided imagery, and visualizations has become standard practice in self-esteem, multicultural, and arts programs. They often encourage contact with spirit guides.”

2. “Dreams and visions: After studying a pagan myth, students are often asked to imagine or visualize a dream or vision, then describe it in a journal or lesson assignment”

3. “Astrology: Countless teachers across the country require students to document their daily horoscopes. Others help students discover their powers and personalities through Aztec calendars and Chinese.”

4. “Other forms of divination: Through palmistry, I Ching, tarot cards and horoscopes, students learn to experience other cultures and tap into secret sources of wisdom. Students in Texas were told to create a vision in their minds and “describe in your best soothsayer tones the details of your vision.”

5. “Spiritism: While pagan myths and crafts show students how to contact ancestral, nature, and other spirits, classroom rituals actually invoke their presence. California third-graders had to alter their consciousness through guided imagery, invoke or “see” their personal animal spirits, write about their experience . . . and create their own magical medicine shields to represent their spirit helper.”

6. “Magic, spells, and sorcery: Many parents consider magic and spell-casting too bizarre and alien to pose a threat, yet gullible students from coast to coast are learning the ancient formulas and occult techniques.”

7. “Occult charms and symbols: Dreamcatchers, Zuni fetishes, crystals, and power signs like the quartered circle and Hindu mandala are only a few of the empowering charms and symbols fascinating students today.”

8. “Solstice rites: After seating themselves “according to their astrological signs,” Oregon students who traded Christmas for a Winter Solstice celebration watched the “sun god” and “moon goddess” enter the auditorium to the beating of drums and chanting. “Animal spirits” . . . . followed.”

9. “Human sacrifice: Students are given lessons on death education with assignments like the “Fallout Shelter.” Other lessons advocate the cultural endorsement of abortion and euthanasia as a way to prepare the new generation to accept many new forms of human sacrifice, such as the notion of sacrificing oneself for the “common good.”

10. “Sacred sex: Students get lessons about pagan societies’ appreciation for the “unifying power of promiscuity.” By studying these pagan notions on sexuality, children get the idea that promiscuity is normal and acceptable.”

11. “Serpent worship: Many ancient or primitive cultures throughout history have worshipped snakes, which have symbolized occult power, wisdom, and rebirth. Public school multicultural history classes that celebrate these primitive societies can idealize cultures that worshipped serpents.”

Dreams, visions, magic, spells, sorcery, astrology, spirit worship, divination, solstice rites, human sacrifice, sacred sex, and altered states of consciousness? Is this what our children should be learning? Should schools turn children into Earth-and spirit-worshipers? Should parents pay property taxes for public schools that promote pagan religions that can affect their children’s ability to tell facts from spirit dreams?

Teaching pagan beliefs and religions can harm children. Author Aldus Huxley wrote about ‘new-think’ indoctrination in Brave New World, his frightening novel about a future totalitarian society. In his book, school authorities molded children’s minds so that as adults, they lost their ability to think critically or judge the policies of their leaders.

Indoctrinating children with pagan beliefs in our public schools could have a similar effect. If a child believes he or she can turn into a bird or pass a math test by rubbing a voodoo necklace, then facts, reason, hard work, and dedication go out the window.

Pagan mysticism can warp a child’s ability to think critically and to grasp and deal with reality. Are state-controlled public schools deliberately trying to cripple children’s ability to reason and deal with facts? School authorities would say that they are simply trying to get children to appreciate other cultures and religions. What they are really doing is to indoctrinate children with the notion that all cultures and religions are “equal” and “harmless,” when they are not.

Parents, I can think of no better way to corrupt your children’s mind’s than by keeping them in government-controlled, public-school indoctrination centers. When was the last time you visited your children’s classrooms and heard what they are really teaching your children?

© 2007 Joel Turtel – All Rights Reserved

“There is an enormous amount of interest in using meditation as a form of therapy to cope with a variety of modern-day health problems, especially hypertension, stress and chronic pain, but the majority of evidence that seems to support this notion is anecdotal, or it comes from poor quality studies,” concluded researchers Maria Ospina and Kenneth Bond of the University of Alberta/Capital Health Evidence-based Practice Centre, in Edmonton.

They analyzed 813 studies focused on the impact of meditation on various conditions, including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and substance abuse.
Released Monday, the report looked at studies on five types of meditation practices: mantra meditation; mindfulness meditation; yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gong.

Some of the studies suggested that certain types of meditation could help reduce blood pressure and stress and that yoga and other practices increased verbal creativity and reduced heart rate, blood pressure and cholesterol in healthy people.

However, the report authors said it isn’t possible to draw any firm conclusions about the effects of meditation on health, because the existing studies are characterized by poor methodologies and other problems.

“Future research on meditation practices must be more rigorous in the design and execution of studies and in the analysis and reporting of results,” Ospina said in a prepared statement.

Bond added that the new report doesn’t prove that meditation has no therapeutic value, but it can inform medical practitioners that the “evidence is inconclusive regarding its effectiveness.”

For the general public, the report “highlights that choosing to practice a particular meditation technique continues to rely solely on individual experiences and personal preferences, until more conclusive scientific evidence is produced,” Ospina said.
The study was funded by the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Bethesda, Md., part of the National Institutes of Health.