Category: discernment

Posted in discernment, Uncategorized

Introducing AutoBibleCorrect, the killer app of tomorrow

Posted on by elizabethprata

I know most of us are familiar with AutoCorrect. This is an application installed on cellular phones which automatically corrects misspelled words when the user sends a text. The AutoCorrect application takes it upon itself to correct items it believes are wrong, removing the user as thinking mediator.

Well now there is a new app! AutoBibleCorrect! Yes, all one needs to do is overlay the app on their online version of their Bible, whether it is on your phone or on your favorite website like BibleHub or BibleGateway, or on your tablet or even Kindle. AutoBibleCorrect works for all digital versions of the Bible.

Continue reading “Introducing AutoBibleCorrect, the killer app of tomorrow” →

Posted in discernment, Uncategorized

False teachers dishonor the mighty name of God

Posted on by elizabethprata

“The early church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.” Leonard Ravenhill.

We are living in a plague now. It is a plague of false teachers. False teachers bring a different Gospel, or meld the true Gospel with a false one, and they try to make the people forget the True and Living God. Jeremiah had complained to God about the false prophets and their message.

“But I said, “Alas, Sovereign LORD! The prophets keep telling them, ‘You will not see the sword or suffer famine. Indeed, I will give you lasting peace in this place.’” (Jeremiah 14:13)

He was concerned that the falsely positive messages would dampen their fervor and alertness of the people. Any message that a person accepts that is not from God is inherently damaging. Paul referred to this process as gangrene. (2 Timothy 1:7). This is why we must insist on proper interpretation of biblical messages from our pulpits, read books that have proper representations of the Gospel and God, it is why we must study for ourselves so when a TRUE message of peace does come, we can rely on it.

Later, God answered Jeremiah, Continue reading “False teachers dishonor the mighty name of God” →

Posted in discernment, Uncategorized

VBS season, Child Conversion, and Baptisms

Posted on by elizabethprata

The visible church today is seeing a flood of false Christian adults. They profess Christ, but either by lack of fruit, a sinful walk, or outright eventual repudiation, in many sad cases it becomes obvious they never possessed Him.

One place that false conversions caneasily happen is with children. And VBS is the most dangerous season of all. Wikipedia gives a history of VBS, known as Vacation Bible School:

Vacation Bible School (VBS) is a specialized form of religious education which focuses on children. Churches usually hold the week-long events during the summer, though the lengths of such programs may vary, and they are sometimes held during other times of the year. he origins of Vacation Bible School can be traced back to Hopedale, Illinois in 1894. Sunday school teacher D. T. Miles, who also was a public school teacher, felt she was limited by time constraints in teaching the Bible to children. So, she started a daily Bible school to teach children during the summer. The first Bible school enrolled forty students and lasted four weeks. …

Today, many churches run their own Vacation Bible School programs without being under the umbrella of a national organization. Some churches opt to use themed curriculum programs from their respective denominations or independent publishing houses which provide easy preparation and include marketing tools. Modern programs usually consist of a week-long program of religious education which may employ Bible stories, religious song, arts and crafts, skits, or puppet shows which cater toward elementary school-aged children.

However either in sincere love for Christ and a desire to see people saved, or due to outright deception due to worldly church growth strategies, some churches are quick to accept a child’s profession in Christ and they quickly baptize them thereafter- declaring them saved. Many VBS volunteers, without knowing the devastating consequences of a false profession, at the end of a VBS session with children, simply ask a few superficial questions such as “Do you want to go to heaven when you die?” or “Do you accept Jesus into your heart?” and then declare the child converted and even write the date into the Bible. Baptisms quickly follow, with pastors trumpeting the “success” on social media such as Facebook with lots of Woo-hoos, PTL’s, and exclamation marks.

These children grow up believing they are truly saved, yet by the time they are adults, have not borne fruit, aren’t growing in knowledge of the grace of Jesus Christ, have no godly sorrow over sin, care not for personal holiness etc. Some of them go away from the faith when they become teens or young adults, only to come back in their late 20s or early 30s to “rededicate their lives to Christ.” As Peters says in his new teaching, he believes for most of these people, the rededication is actually the conversion.

Here is a wonderful teaching from Justin Peters on the “A Biblical and Theological Understanding of Childhood Conversion”. He admits that the teaching goes against the grain of common practice. However, when he shows from scripture why it’s wise to wait in declaring a person saved, especially children, the clarity of the teaching becomes apparent and foundationally attractive.

Many of you have sent me messages and emails concerning your children, asking questions about baptism, home devotionals, and VBS. I’m grateful that the Lord led me to this wonderful resource and I happily pass it along to you.

Do Not Hinder Them: A Biblical and Theological Understanding of Childhood Conversion

The link is the first time Pastor Peters delivered this teaching, he said, and he has since honed it into a book, upcoming for publication. Be on the lookout for the book. The link brings you to an hour and 21 minutes’ teaching, but the first few minutes are recommendations of other books and the end is a Q&A. Peters as always is humble, kind, and delivers his teaching in a quiet but scripturally persuasive manner. If you as a parent have questions about the credibility of your child’s conversion, especially during this energetic VBS season when child conversion is at the forefront of church activity, then by all means please check it out.

 

Posted in discernment, Uncategorized

#memeHeresies on Facebook, how to spot them and how to refute them

Posted on by elizabethprata

We’re visual creatures. We love the beautiful. I don’t think there is any person who says they prefer ugliness to beauty. Beauty has allure. Satan knew that in the garden, when he incited Eve to take another look at the fruit. (Genesis 3:6). Beauty can be used to exalt God, for He made everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Unfortunately, beauty can also be used as a mask for the corruption within. (Matthew 23:27).

We all know what heresy/false doctrine is. It’s a teaching about Jesus that varies with what the Bible teaches about Jesus. The Nicolaitans and the Judaizers were two groups mentioned in the Bible for going around teaching false doctrine. Alexander and Hymaneus were two named teachers in the New Testament who were teaching falsely and were rebuked by Paul. In the OT, Micaiah rebuked Zedekiah the false prophet. False teaching has been around as long as humans have been around. (Genesis 3:1)

For millennia, to hear a teaching, one went to a public venue like the Areopagus or Solomon’s Porch, and listened to the teacher like Paul, then went home and compared to scripture as the Bereans did. (Acts 17:11). Nowadays, false messages disseminated more widely and more instantly than ever before. Just think of “TBN” AKA Trinity Broadcasting Network, founded in 1973. TBN is a place called “Unholy Trinity” by John MacArthur, where “religious quacks are actually multiplying at a frightening pace.” And with the multiplying quacks comes their quackery, AKA false teaching.

Add to that, satan targets women to send his false doctrines through (Genesis 3:4), because we are weaker (1 Peter 3:7), and more vulnerable (2 Timothy 3:6) and this dissemination includes social media. I’m on Facebook a lot, I administer a page there (The End Time) as well as my personal FB page. Facebook is used mostly by women. This is an amazing statistic by Pew Research from 2015,

Fully 72% of online American adults use Facebook, a proportion unchanged from September 2014. Usage continues to be especially popular among online women, 77% of whom are users.

What this boils down to is that Facebook is a place where satan has a wonderful time propagating his lies to the faith’s most vulnerable who are rarely given oversight by husbands while she surfs among the Facebook walls and statuses riddled with beautiful false teaching. These are the meme pictures.

Many of these memes going around are satanic. When I say satanic, don’t think of a black background and a red faced man with horns and fangs in the foreground. Satan is God’s most beautiful angel, an angel of light, and his work is flowers and a cute saying and pretty colors and a Christian-y saying all aimed to seduce women. Like this:

Jessica Pickowicz ( @Jess_Pickowicz , @BeauThing146 http://beautifulthing146.com/) has created a hashtag called #memeHeresies . The above photo is a #memeHeresy. I asked her if I could write about memeheresies and use that term in this essay and she said yes.

HOW TO MAKE A #MEMEHERESY

Satan enjoys deluding women, so flowers are usually a go-to graphic. Women like those. I don’t see many #memeheresies containing golf clubs, fishing tackle, or neckties.

So the first rule when a false teacher makes a false graphic of some kind of inspirational quote, it’s to choose something beautiful as the background. Of course, that’s a no-brainer. I mentioned above that beauty carries false teaching very well. Genesis 3:6a tells us that the lust of the eyes is a major part of sin.

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes,…

The second criteria for a false inspirational picture is to choose something that is human-focused but mentions God. This is tricky, but then again, Joel Osteen has made a gazillion dollar industry out of treading that thin line. The quote below usually attributed to Roman Catholic friar St. Francis, but probably did not originate with the medieval monk, is the kind I’m talking about:

“Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.”

The quote mentions the gospel, and preaching, so it must be good, right? Wrong. The Gospel is Good News, and we are to proclaim it. With words. We can’t BE the message. Only Jesus was ever the message. And in addition to living that perfect life, He used lots of words. That’s because He IS the Word. (John 1:1). And besides, isn’t preaching a form of using words aloud? You see the ridiculousness once you begin to think about the quote. Also, note the sly turning away from Jesus onto ourselves with that one quote? Suddenly Jesus and His Gospel isn’t the message, human beings are the message.

In that exact same vein is the picture above, attributed to Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic nun who hated the gospel of Jesus Christ, and lived under the delusion that her Catholic dogma was going to save her. Nonetheless, she allegedly said “I’m a pencil in the Hand of God”, which is set on a beautiful flower graphic.

The reason that #memeHeresy seems scriptural and inspirational is because it mentions God. On first look, it also seems to put the person in a humble position. You think, ‘awww, I’m just a meager tool in the hand of God.’

This would be a wrong interpretation of that meme.

The Apostles were pencils in the hand of God. The result was inspired Holy Scripture. If we put ourselves in that place, we are elevating ourselves beyond our position. Today no one is writing anything inspired by the Holy Spirit. Though, plenty of women are writing things inspired by satan. The most popular books of our day have been inspired directly by satan through the means of channeling. (For ex., When Godly People do Ungodly Things, Jesus Calling, &etc.)

If “Mother” Teresa meant that the metaphorical pencil is writing a metaphorical message through the the outward seeming goodness of our lives, then we have the same problem that we had in the St Francis quote. WE are not the message. We are ambassadors OF the message. (2 Corinthians 5:20). The message was proclaimed by Jesus. And by the way, we’re not good.

Finally, if we are but helpless tools in the Hand of God, then we are excusing our part in our own sanctification. We must press on, slay sin, submit, obey…all those are active verbs showing that we have a responsibility to Jesus while here on hearth. We’re not passive pencils, being used. We’re to be active participants in our life of obedience and usefulness.

Sometimes a meme will quote a scripture, and the scripture isn’t totally ripped from context as this one below shows. Did you know that a lot of times when you see a pretty photo with a verse over it, the verse address and the verse being quoted don’t match up? This one quoted blow is the tail end of a verse and it’s not twisted. So what’s the problem? The organization or person spreading it. The verse is OK, but She Reads Truth is not. Passing along a meme in which the verse is accurate but is promoted by a false teacher is just as bad. Double check the verse, the address, AND the teacher or organization publishing it.You don’t want to put a stumbling block in front of a sister and send her directly to a false teacher by your tacit recommendation of re-posting a good verse.

Same goes for this one below. The quote is not scripture but it’s an accurate saying. It is something I say myself. I am not familiar with the person mentioned at the bottom, but I am certainly familiar with the IF:gathering and its women. Again- avoid. Re-posting an accurate quote but from a false bunch of teachers will only confuse those less discerning sisters. Every re-post you do is tacitly giving your stamp of approval not only to the quote but to the author and organization, in this case, Mabuni and IF:gathering.

HOW TO REFUTE A #memeHeresy

I liked what Jessica did with the side by side refutation here. The stamp of the word “FALSE” across the left side states the situation in no uncertain terms, and the correct verse which refutes the false one is placed on the right. The left side is the man-oriented one and the right side is what God actually said about man.

By Jessica Pickowicz

Here is another one from Jessica. Do you see on the left, it’s man-oriented again? The scripture-y quote is supposed to makes us think, “Wow! I’m strong!” Yet the truth stated in real scripture is, “Wow, God’s gives grace!”

By Jessica Pickowicz

In sum, how to spot the false memes is to check, think, wait. Before passing it along,

1. Double check the address on the verse (if there is one).
2. Double check that the verse isn’t ripped from its context to say something it wasn’t intended to mean.
3. Check the person or organization publishing the quote.
4. STOP. THINK. Does this quote that sounds so Bible-y really reflect a true teaching of God?

To refute them you can always do what Jessica did and create a side-by-side refutation. If you’re not graphically skilled then simply post the scripture picture with a verse that refutes it and maybe a short explanation showing how one is man-oriented and the other is Jesus-oriented.

Well, some might say, doing all that checking, double checking, and investigating, at is a lot of work,. Yes. It’s work. You remember I mentioned the Bereans at the top? They heard Paul then went back and checked that these things were so. They worked, and were commended for it! Just because we’re living in a fast time doesn’t mean we have to quickly press “Post” or “Publish”. Stop. Think.

We handle the Bible’s message with care, because it is the most important message in life. You don’t toss a carton of eggs into the back seat of your car like you do your son’s soccer ball. You handle with care. We don’t toss around Bible-y sayings either. We take care, for the Word is precious. The false teachers toss around the Word carelessly, we believers don’t need to toss it around as well.

Posted in discernment, emotionalism, love, panentheism, theology

The idol of emotionalism

Posted on by elizabethprata
To the women who claim to have cuddled with Jesus, heard His whisper, sat on His lap, felt His ‘caress’, had their fondest dreams validated, (and I’m speaking of Beth Moore, Ann Voskamp, Kim Walker Smith, Joanna Gaines, and all the rest), hark to this paraphrase from Revelation 1:12 by John MacArthur,

He [John] turns when he hears this booming voice that sounds like a trumpet, and the voice is speaking, and he turns and sees that this voice belongs to a person in his vision moving among seven golden lampstands. Verse 20 says the seven golden lampstands are symbolic of the seven churches; they’re lights in that sense. And he looks into the middle of the lampstands and must be with some hope for comfort and encouragement, and instead he sees a warrior; he sees a frightening warrior, “one like a son of man – ” a term from Daniel expressing God in form, manifesting blazing glory, who has authority and power and dominion, as it says of the Son of Man in Daniel “ – clothed in a robe reaching to the feed and girded across His chest with a golden sash. His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. And His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength. 

There is nothing cozy and cuddly about that vision of Christ. In fact, it is so terrifying that in chapter 1, verse 17 says, “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man.” It literally, it literally took away his breath.

Ladies, reject the romantic panentheism. Don’t succumb to the idol of emotionalism, as explained here-

Beware of substituting the love of feelings and drama and emotion for the love of God. Some of us come to Him in tears; others in quiet surrender. Some come running, others walk, others are led by another, but the end result is the same. The bottom line is this: God is sovereign, and He will do it His way. It’s not about how we feel—it’s about who He is. more here

See Jesus for who He is: not the hand-wringing needy Jesus who begs for attention from us, but the Warrior in charge of His church, having ‘things against us’ when we do not obey His commands and threatening retribution. (Revelation 2:4, 2:20).

And for a laugh that hurts a little because it’s so true, read this from the Babylon Bee:

Powerful Time Of Worship Draws Woman Closer To Her Own Emotions Than She’s Been In A Long Time

RAPID CITY, SD—Sources are reporting that local woman Britney Mollison experienced the presence of her own emotions more powerfully than she has in a long time during a time of worship Wednesday night. According to Mollison’s own testimony, about three-quarters of the way through the set of dramatic songs blasting from the band onstage out to the worshipers, she was finally able to surrender all to her feelings.
“In that moment, when the bridge to ‘Oceans’ reached its crescendo and the keyboardist masterfully applied the wah pedal, my emotions were more real to me than I can remember,” Mollison sobbed to sources. “It was just me and and my personal relationship to the chemicals in my brain responding to stimuli. Nothing else mattered.”

More at link.

Be theological. It’s the best way to love Jesus, because it is the way He revealed Himself to us.

Posted in discernment, personal revelation, whisper

I’m doing everything I can to listen for that whisper…

Posted on by elizabethprata
Doing a scan of Twitter of the liberal women you will find a plethora of references to listening to the Holy Spirit’s whisper. And of course these liberal ladies have all sorts of advice on how to catch that breeze whisper so that you can hear it and obey it. This lady says we have to be still to hear it.

Oh, no! I might miss it!

Ann Voskamp is kind of gross about the whisper madness.

Just…ew. That gal got some fetishes for sure.

Beth Moore says,

So Jesus tells us ‘now’. Now what, I’m not sure. But we must stay close because He might say it. And according to Moore, it’s better if He only has to whisper.

Lysa TerKeurst gives advice on how to make prayers powerful,

Listening for the slightest whisper … sounds … fleeting. I’ll just take my Bible, thank you. It’s solid.

So, IS the Holy Spirit whispering to us? Must we sit, or be still, or listen hard, or stay close, or press scars, or DO any other particular thing in order to receive this revelation all the other women seem to be receiving?

No.

First, the Spirit is now whispering to you. Ladies, you can relax from worry that you’re not doing something particular to tune in to the frequency that you fear you’re missing. There is no frequency that only a select few know and has to be tuned in just right. Remember those finicky rabbit ears before cable? With tin foil on the tips for that extra boost? It’s not like that. The reason the Spirit is not whispering things to you is that the revelation from Jesus Christ about Jesus Christ is complete.

From the Strange Fire Question and Answer page. You do not have to worry about missing Holy Spirit whispers because the canon is closed and revelation is done

What does it mean that the revelation of God is completed in Christ according to Hebrews 1:1–2?Regarding the revelation we received in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1), Dr. Lawson said there is nothing left to be said. Could you please expand on this and comment on the revelation the authors of the New Testament received from the Holy Spirit and the necessity of writing the epistles? 

Hebrews 1:1–2 looks at the big picture of God’s revelation throughout human history. Just as the Old Testament looked forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, the New Testament is the revelation of Him. This is what the author of Hebrews meant in the opening verses of that book. He was gathering up the new revelation that had been given through the apostles and their associates and referred to it as that which God “has spoken to us in His Son” (Hebrews 1:2). 

In his commentary on Hebrews, John MacArthur writes this helpful explanation:
We must, of course, clearly understand that the Old Testament was not in any way erroneous. But there was in it a development, of spiritual light and of moral standards, until God’s truth was refined and finalized in the New Testament. The distinction is not in the validity of the revelation—its rightness or wrongness—but in the completeness of it and the time of it. Just as children are first taught letters, then words, and then sentences, so God gave His revelation. It began with the “picture book” of types and ceremonies and prophecies and progressed to final completion in Jesus Christ and His New Testament (p. 5). 

The New Testament revelation given through the apostles was the fulfillment of the Lord Jesus’ promise to His disciples recorded in John 16:13–15: “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” 

Thus, when Dr. Lawson commented that there is nothing left to be said, he referred to the fact that no further revelation will be added to the Bible (cf. Revelation 22:18–19). For further study on this point, please listen to John’s introduction to Hebrews and his two-part series from Revelation 22:13–21.

Posted in buffer, discernment, social media

Buffer and Newspaper Exegesis

Posted on by elizabethprata

I mentioned yesterday that I’m slow to adopt new social media or technology fads, so as to maintain a streamlined focus on the main online ministry I have set before me, which is make Christ known, and offer credible and solid resources to women and new Christians for growth enhancement.

I mentioned this because I saw a new gizmo on my blog’s “Add This” button. It’s called Buffer. I looked into it. Basically, it is a one stop shop whereupon for free (or more, for a fee) one can blast a set of self-selected material onto your chosen social media pages throughout a 24-hour staggered period.

I signed up.

Now, to load content. As a blogger at The End Time, I’d been in the mindset all along of a journalist. “Fresh content only on the blog”. So I write every day. Only a handful of times have I re-posted something. But then I thought, I’ve blogged daily since 2009 and I’ve published over 3,600 essays. It might be good to offer the older ones to a new ‘generation’ of blog readers. Because as we all know, a new generation is born on the internet every two to three minutes. LOL, not really, but attention spans are short. 2009 was 7 years ago, an ancient lifetime ago in internet years.

The Holy Spirit in His grace has dispensed to me His gifts of prophecy, discernment, and encouragement. I love prophecy. I love all of it. As a newbie Christian I cut my teeth eagerly on Jeremiah, Nahum, Obadiah. The OT prophets were the books I read first. Genesis, and all the OT prophets, before even turning to the New Testament and John. When I did turn to the NT, it was to Revelation.

As a child born in 1960, my first memory was of the Beatles in February 1964 (I had turned three years old just about 7 weeks before) and all the screaming. I was annoyed with the screaming. I thought it was nonsense that the screaming went on so long that one could not hear the actual music. I was precocious perhaps, autistic children usually are, and sometimes have advanced thought processes early. But the point is, my very first memory is of out of control girls screaming wildly. It was a chaotic scene.

My home was filled with aware and engaged parents observing current events on the newly invented television. They often discussed them as I listened. I often watched Viet Nam casualties loaded onto helicopters with newsman Walter Cronkite’s mournful intonation recounting the deaths and injuries. I always wondered why the injuries far outstripped the casualties. Real-time war reporting was fairly new, and the living technicolor also showed the color of the blood. As a child watching constant war during my formative decade it made an impression.

In addition to war, was strife. Civil Rights riots, Race Riots, marches in the streets for gay rights and feminist rights, protests, and the 1968 Democratic Convention carnage all passed before my observant eyes. My active but immature brain attempted to process all that I was seeing. Remember, as an autistic kid, what was on the TV was more real to me than what I was actually experiencing in life. It always has been.

In my formative years it seemed that things were out of control. As I grew to teenager years, I became aware that war and famine and chaos and strife has always been part of the human experience. I wondered why. I wondered why a LOT. I often thought that there had to be a reason. See, if war had always been present, and humans have always been present, there must be a reason why we have such a proclivity to war. And hate. And chaos. It just seemed obvious to me.

Every night for nearly 20 years, we would hear newsman Walter Cronkite sign off on his famous tagline, “And that’s the way it is, tonight, May 24, 1967.”

No! No, that’s NOT the way it is! It can’t be! There has to be a reason!

Autistic kids often attempt to find the secret pattern that they know is underlying everything. They look for an underlying order, a mathematical equation, a musical beat, a chronology, something, that will make everything make sense. It was agonizing not to know. But when the Light burst through my dead heart to regenerate it, and I learned that the underlying pattern to everything is Jesus, I lit up like a Roman candle.

I loved the notion that there was order, and purpose and a Controller in charge of it all. I loved that since the beginning God was in charge and for all the perplexing things that happen and have happened in the scope of perhaps 7000 years of human history in the world, there has been a reason. Because, you see, I’ve always looked for a reason. When I learned why things were the way they were, I went A-HA!! in a big way.

A haqrd copy collage I did which I scanned and digitally manipulated.
This is “Peace that Passeth” and shows how calm I feel now with the world news
still being chaotic but what a difference the biblical worldview has made.

Suddenly seeing all the news through a Godly worldview and not a confusing, incomprehensible, human world view made everything burst with color and light. There was a reason! There was order!

When I looked at the news I now knew why peace in the middle east was so elusive. I’d lived through the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur, The Camp David Accord. I’d lived through assassination after assassination. I’d lived through Iran’s rise and the Soviet Union’s Fall, and rise again. Looking at the paper made me understand what God was doing because i understood not only about sin, but His long-term plan and humankind’s redemption

Having a new worldview to see things though was fun so at the beginning of the blog’s life I did a lot of newspaper exegesis. I was thrilled. I’m not unhappy nor am I embarrassed. One can go too far in it, and come up with crackpot ideas, to be sure. I hope I didn’t do that. But I did enjoy flexing the boundaries of my newly grace-given worldview. Suddenly that order and pattern was there and I shared my perspective of it.

I’m still entranced with how things are moving in the news. I’m still vastly grateful the LORD gave me, through His Son and His Spirit, a perspective framework through which I can know, and I DO know. I’m also pleased to see even in the first month of life on this blog, essays which were of prophecy, discernment, and encouragement and which were not newspaper exegesis. Those are the ones I’m Buffering out.

As I send out 2009 and beyond The End Time stories through Buffer, and if you choose to explore here, have fun, don’t think too ill of me, and enjoy.

Posted in color run, discernment, hindu, holi, pagans

Of Church Color Runs and Hindu Holi Festivals

Posted on by elizabethprata

This week I’ve been writing about rituals and practices that Christianity has imported from pagan religions, specifically, coloring mandalas. Here is a list of these practices I’ve mentioned or written in the past months–

—Prayer beads (Catholic, Buddhist)
—Coloring mandalas (Buddhist, Hindu)
—Bible art journaling, (Celtic, Islamic Illumination)
—Labyrinths  (Catholic, goddess religions)
—Circle making (Wicca, earth religions)
—Contemplative prayer (Eastern religions, New Age cults)
—Lectio Divina (Mystic Religions, Catholic)
—Yoga (Hindu)

A freiend made me aware of another Hindu practice that is popping up in Christian activity schedules. It’s “The Color Run.” Many churches sponsor a 5K run for fun, health, or fundraising. This is great. These runs are a lot of fun and bring the community together. However, The Color Run has a specific feature added to it specifically ripped from a Hindu festival.

In “The Color Run, The Happiest 5K on the Planet”, as it dubs itself, runners are doused with colored powder at various locations during the run. The US Company describes The Color Run-

WHAT IS THE COLOR RUN?

The Color Run, also known as the Happiest 5k on the Planet, is a unique paint race that celebrates healthiness, happiness, and individuality. Now the single largest event series in the world, The Color Run has exploded since our debut event. We have more than tripled our growth, hosting more than 225 events in 35+ countries in 2015.

The Color Run, Tempe Arizona

Is The Color Run terrible in and of itself? Of course not. However, churches are now doing The Color Run and they should know that the Paint Race is certainly NOT “unique” as they stated. It is actually a Hindu festival and has been performed as a ritualistic celebration of victory of good over evil for two thousand years. Named Holi, the festival is

a spring celebration of love, frolic, and colours.

Holi celebrations start on the night before Holi with a Holika bonfire where people gather, do religious rituals in front of the bonfire, and pray that their internal evil should be destroyed as the bonfire starts. The next morning is celebrated as Rangwali Holi – a free-for-all carnival of colours. where participants play, chase and colour each other with dry powder and coloured water, with some carrying water guns and coloured water-filled balloons for their water fight.

Holi celebration at Sri Radha Krishna Temple, Utah, US. Wikipedia

Here is the explanation of why colors are used in the Holi celebration. It’s convoluted, but it gives a sense of the deep pagan origins of this ritual. In sum, Holi is short for “Holika”, the evil sister of the demon king Hiranyakashipu. The demon king began to grow arrogant, thought he was God, and ordered everyone to worship only him. There was battle between those who were loyal to demon king Hiranyakashipu and those loyal to Lord Vishnu. Hiranyakashipu’s own son was loyal to Vishnu and as a result he was cruelly tortured by Hiranyakashipu. Hiranyakashipu’s evil sister Holika tricked her nephew Prahlada into sitting on a pyre, while she was encased in a cloak that made her immune to the flames. But the cloak flew off her and onto Prahlada, and thus Holi was burned and Prahlada survived. Some other Lords and gods arrived to finish the deal and vanquish the usurper Hiranyakashipu. The next day, when the fire had cooled down, people applied ash to their foreheads. Eventually, coloured powder instead of ash came to be used to celebrate Holi.

The problem comes when churches mindlessly adopt this activity without knowing it is actually an important Hindu spring ritual. First Christian Church of Dyersburd wrote in their promotion of their “Color Run,”

How does a color run work?

All runners start out squeaky clean, decked out in white garb. During the run, color stations will be set up periodically throughout the course. At each color station, our “highly skilled” and “highly trained” paint throwers will toss paint powder on the runners going by. Note: do not slow down or stop in the color stations, as this causes a bottleneck for the runners behind you. Throughout the race, you’ll be painted several times in several colors, resulting in a highly hued, highly energized runner. Once the race is over, all participants will gather for a mass paint throwing (think Lebron James meets Rainbow Bright). Afterwards, stick around for a celebration including food & drink, music, and hundreds upon hundreds of selfies.

I am not judging anyone who has participated in a Color Run. I would hope that Churches would not adopt the Hindu celebration of Holi as a Western version of a celebration/festival/5K run. However most of the church sites that I have looked at do conclude the Color Run afterwards with food, music, dancing, and other frolics, making the Hindu Holi Fest and the Church 5K virtually indistinguishable. Please refer to the photos above of the Hindu Fest and the Church Color Run if you disagree.

I’m not against fun, but adopting a Hindu practice to have that fun is allowing the world to enter the Church. We can have our own fun as Christians, without the unnecessary layer of a pagan festival. My personal opinion is that churches should not adopt this ritual, and if they do, they should let their people know its origins so their people can make informed decisions as to whether or not to participate.

Do not worship the Lord your God in the way the pagan people worship their gods (Deuteronomy 12:4).

Thoppu Karanam in India
AKA ‘Super Brain Yoga’ in US

As for the practice of ripping off another culture’s practices, that is another discussion entirely. Last year when the Hindu Practice of Thoppu Karanam was ripped from Hindu Prayer Practices and re-made into American Super Brain Yoga, one Hindu man opined,

The legend behind “Thoppu Karanam” is that Lord Vishnu performed this “Thoppu Karanam” in front of Lord Ganapathi to recover his “Sudarshan Chakra” which was snatched by Ganapathi. Thus, Thoppu Karanam is performed as a prayer before Lord Ganesha by holding the hands crosswise across the chest with the fingers holding the earlobes and bending down and then getting up. 

Interestingly, the “Thoppu Karanam” has now attained international status thanks to fellow Americans who now call this as “Super Brain Yoga”. They have found through medical research that doing these special kind of sit ups while holding the opposite earlobes stimulates the brain power and increases the memory power. I hope they will not charge us while we perform Thoppu Karanam.

Satan is the most cunning and subtle animal in the Garden. (Genesis 3:1), His wiles are legendary. Ephesians 6:11 says “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” Should t we be doing our utmost not to mirror the world? Shouldn’t we be working hard to be a distinct people, and not engage in even what seems like a pagan ritual, never mind an actual pagan ritual? How many times were the Israelites warned not to delve into the pagan practices in Egypt? (Lev 18:3). Idol worship was a powerful temptation, and it still is.

The Expository Files explain:

Our English word ‘wiles’ is generally used to express deception through trickery and includes all the methods that would be part of that. It has to do with cunning or skill applied to no good purpose. The word ruse is a synonym with stress on the creation of a false impression.

Ephesians 4:14 says “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”

Gills reminds us of how stealthily satan brings his wiles to bear in “cunning craftiness”,

which not only suggests that their principal end in view is to deceive, but their insidious, private, and secret way of deceiving, and their expertness in it, which they have from the devil; and now the ministration of the Gospel is the best and surest guard and antidote against such fluctuations and deceptions. 

Please read the rest of the Bible.org essay above to learn more fully just how satan uses his wiles to trick us – and be sure that importing pagan rituals into Christianity is one such wile – and read how we can stand against such an enemy.

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Further Reading:

Should a Christian participate in a ‘Color Run?’

Which is the Holi Celebration and Which is the Color Run?

© Western New Mexico University

Mumbai, India
Church Color Run

Posted in coloring, discernment, mandalas

Adult Christian Coloring Books: Put away childish things

Posted on by elizabethprata

I first warned about “Adult Christian Coloring” in November 2015 in an essay that also covered Bible Art Journaling. I’d written–

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People, Mandalas are HINDU. They are not, nor will they ever be Christian. They represent something sacred to the unsaved. Something sacred to the unsaved is an IDOL. We are back to the Second Commandment I opened this essay with. Don’t believe me? See mandalas defined-

Definition of mandala: Mandala (Sanskrit Maṇḍala, ‘circle’) is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Indian religions, representing the universe. The basic form of most mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. In Hinduism, a mandala (yantra) is a two- or three-dimensional geometric composition used in sadhanas, puja or meditative rituals. It is considered to represent the abode of the deity. Each yantra is unique and calls the deity into the presence of the practitioner through the elaborate symbolic geometric designs. According to one scholar, “Yantras function as revelatory symbols of cosmic truths and as instructional charts of the spiritual aspect of human experience”. (source)

Do you really think it’s innocent to color a mandala just because some money-grubbing, undiscerning author re-packaged a pagan activity by pasting a line from a beloved hymn over the top of it and adding “Christian” to the title?

That is where Bible art journaling leads. It’s a diversion. Just as Catholic labyrinths were re-branded as Protestant prayer walking, just as occult channeling was re-branded as “hearing from God”, just as mystical “contemplative prayer” was re-branded as “Protestant contemplative prayer”, just as Hindu Yoga was re-branded as ‘Christian Yoga’, just as Wiccan pentagrams were re-branded as “circle making”…”. Remember enneagrams? Those have Sufi roots. Prayer beads emerged into Christianity from pagan roots. Bible art journaling is already melding with Hindu Mandala coloring.

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In June 2013 I’d also warned about mandalas, that time, in the form of prayer circles.

Here is Todd Friel from Wretched.tv on Adult Coloring Books, a 7-minute summation concisely explaining why Christians should not engage in that activity.

Christianity is meant to be distinct, and contain set apart people. (Deuteronomy 7:6-11). The Levitical Laws were to visibly demonstrate this, and nowadays in New Testament times our pursuit should be toward holiness and purity in individual lives and in corporate church lives. We are set apart. (1 Peter 2:9, Psalm 4:3, 1 John 4:4-5).

However with lack of discernment, so many Christians are allowing rituals from pagan religions to filter in. Labyrinthes, prayer beads, Mandalas, Yoga, Contemplative Prayer, Circle Making- it boggles the mind. Yet the acceptance of these non-Christian practices causes one to say- Why ‘Christian’ No Longer Means What It Used To, as Sunny Shell wrote last month–

As I consider how the Bride of Christ is shamefully defiling herself with vain and worldly philosophies, rather than cleansing and strengthening herself with the Word of God, these words from our heavenly Father come to mind, “Folly is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov 22:15), “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Cor 13:11),

Dear precious sister, give up childish ways. As Todd Friel said, adult coloring books are a child’s activity, where we learned motor skills and how to color within the lines.

As we grow, we move to adult activities such as killing the flesh, carrying our cross, and persevering in prayer. Put away childish things, and “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (2 Peter 3:18)

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Further Reading from The End Time
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Further Reading/Listening from others