Donald
Trump has surrounded himself with some untrustworthy figures.
Among
other people one could mention, his administration is full of globalists:
two
of whom (McMaster and Ross) attended one of the premiere globalist confabs, the
Bilderberg meeting:
http://bilderbergmeetings.org/participants.html, via http://anotherdayintheempire.com/mcmaster-does-bilderberg/
His
main ‘spiritual advisor’, Pentecostal megachurch pastor Paula White, seems to
be as interested in showing off her body as she is in selling her version of
the heretical cotton-candy prosperity gospel:
And
now we have another controversial Charismatic megachurch pastor, Rodney Howard-Browne,
laying hands on Donald Trump and praying for him, together with a host of other
Evangelical pastors and leaders (so much for the good sense of the ‘reliable
Evangelical’ VP Mike Pence, who is joining right in with the rest of crowd):
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4688194/Evangelical-pastor-prays-Donald-Trump-Oval-Office.html, opened 11 July 2017
One
might ask, What is so bad about that?
The answer is that ‘Pastor’ Rodney is a major figure behind the ‘holy laughter’
movement:
WASHINGTON
—
A
South African-born televangelist based in Florida has brought his ministry to
Washington for a three-week event he is calling “Celebrate America.” Rodney
Howard-Browne is calling for a religious revival in the United States. His
preaching style, though, is far from mainstream.
All
it takes is a touch from Howard-Browne for his followers to collapse and roll
in the aisles with laughter. He is a pioneer of what is known as the "Holy
Laughter" movement, which began in the 1990s in New York state and across
the border in Canada.
Now
based in Florida, the self-described patriot has brought his ministry to
Washington for a three-week event called “Celebrate America.”
Howard-Browne
wants to lead a religious revival in the United States. But laughter worship,
though it has spread, is far from mainstream -- even in Charismatic and
Pentecostal churches, which account for about a fifth of American Protestants.
In
an interview, Howard-Browne said the chortles, chuckles and guffaws are the
work of the Holy Spirit.
“When
Jesus touched people they went walking and leaping and praising God,” he said.
“If your life has been touched and changed, then you’re not going to be quiet
about it. So that’s the whole thing of the fervor of the Christian faith. ‘Joy
to the World, the Lord is come.’
“So
joy has a voice,” he added. “And it is laughter.”
. . .
The
preacher says his aim is to bring about a new "Great Awakening." That
was the name given to the Christian revivals that swept the young republic in
the 18th and 19th centuries.
“That
is the only thing that is going to help America. Without a "Great Awakening,"
it’s over, it’s finished,” he said.
In
the mornings, teams of volunteers from his church - Revival Ministries International - fan out across the city, to pray with
people and invite them to the event.
For
those who do come, the laughter is contagious. Jennifer Reed said she just
can’t contain herself.
“If
something’s funny, you just laugh, right? So this is like the Holy Spirit
laughter," she said. "The Holy Spirit puts joy in my belly. And one
of the fruits of the Spirit is joy. Isn’t that awesome? It’s supernatural joy!”
Laughter,
the saying goes, is the best medicine, and some doctors even prescribe it to
relieve stress. After the hoots and howls subside, some people at the revival
lie on the floor motionless with their eyes closed. Others dance and shout with
glee.
. . .
Source: Jerome Socolovsky, https://www.voanews.com/a/african-born-pastor-brings-holy-laughter-revival-to-washington/1954365.html, opened 12 July 2017
More
on the background of the ‘holy laughter’ movement:
. . .
The Toronto Blessing
(or TB, as it is now often called) is a worldwide spiritual movement within
Pentecostal and charismatic churches. It is named after the Toronto Airport
Vineyard Church in Toronto, Canada, where the movement first hit the headlines
in January 1994. Its advocates claim that the Blessing is a "sovereign move
of God", a new and glorious work of the Holy Spirit. Many of them call it
a "revival." However, others, conscious that scarcely any unbelievers
are being converted through this movement, do not call it a revival, but a
"renewal" of the Church. Many of them add that this renewal of the
Church is being done by God as a prelude to a revival. Others claim that this
is more than a mere renewal of the Church; it is God bringing to birth a new
super-Church for the end times—a view which fits in with the doctrine known as
"Latter-Rain Restorationism," which has been around in Pentecostal
and charismatic circles for some time. The claim is also made by many advocates
of the TB that those who resist this great move of God will, if they persevere
in their resistance, be guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and
various dreadful things will happen to them. What exactly will happen is often
left rather vague; the language used is that opposers will be "swept
aside," "crushed," that sort of thing. On his video, The Coming
Revival, Rodney Howard-Browne warns that opposers will be struck
dumb and blind.
What then is this
great blessing that God is allegedly pouring out on His Church at this time?
According to its advocates, it is a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit which
can be compared with the day of Pentecost. This outpouring happens when a
leader, who has already received the blessing himself, then passes it on to
others, usually in a meeting of a church or in a larger gathering of believers
from various churches. These leaders, especially the more well-known ones, are
often referred to as "anointed men," and the blessing itself is also
often called the "anointing," or a "fresh anointing."
Sometimes the anointed leader will simply call down the blessing on the entire
gathering; more usually, people will be asked to walk to the front, where the
leader and his team will lay hands on them, and transmit the blessing to them
physically. A few of the leaders have stranger and more dramatic methods of
passing on the blessing, e.g. blowing on people, hurling the blessing at
people by dramatic hand gestures, or even transmitting the blessing into a
tea-towel and then throwing the tea-towel at someone.
TB advocates claim
that the blessing or anointing has two main effects on believers: (i) It brings
them a fresh and overwhelming sense of God's love, which leads to wonderful
joy; (ii) It lifts people up to new heights of spiritual life, so that they
begin to walk much closer to God, praying more, reading the Bible more,
evangelising more, etc.
If we look at what
actually happens when people receive the blessing the immediate observable
effects—we see the following:
(i) Almost without
exception, people fall over onto their backs, sometimes gently, sometimes as if
struck by a bolt of electricity. Those who fall sometimes black out. This
phenomenon has of course been around for a long time in Pentecostal and
charismatic circles, and is referred to as being "slain in the
Spirit."
(ii) Often those
affected are seized by a spirit of uncontrollable laughter. This laughter can
last literally for days. On The Coming Revival video, Rodney
Howard-Browne reports a man who (to use his language) got drunk on the Holy
Spirit and laughed uncontrollably for 3 days. This particular phenomenon is
referred to as "holy laughter," and it has been so widespread in the
TB that it has sometimes been called "the laughing revival."
(iii) Often, but by
no means always, when the blessing is imparted in a meeting, some will respond
by making noises and bodily movements like various animals. In the early days
of the TB, the most common of these animal manifestations was "roaring
like a lion." However, this is in fact only one of many animal
manifestations which have been observed. I myself have witnessed people
gibbering like monkeys, barking like dogs, howling like wolves, and screeching
like cats. Here is a description by a person who is in favour of the TB:
That room sounded
like it was a cross between a jungle and a farmyard. There were many lions
roaring, there were bulls bellowing, there were donkeys, there was a cockerel
near me, there were sort of bird songs ... Everything you could possibly
imagine, every animal you could conceivably imagine you could hear. [1]
There are other
physical phenomena, such as holy drunkenness (staggering about as though
drunk), dancing in the Spirit (tap-dancing, ballet dancing), running on the
spot, and bouncing up and down like a grasshopper. However, these three—falling
over, hysterical laughter and animal manifestations—these are the main physical
manifestations of the blessing or anointing.
. . .
Source: Dr Nick Needham, http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/toronto.aspx, opened 12 July 2017
All this is quite out of line with the teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church. Blessed Fr Seraphim Rose of Platina writes in Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future:
ONE OF THE COMMONEST
RESPONSES to the experience of the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" is laughter.
One Catholic testifies: "I was so joyful that all I could do was laugh as
I lay on the floor" (Ranaghan, p. 28). Another Catholic: "The sense
of the presence and love of God was so strong that I can remember sitting in
the chapel for a half hour just laughing out of joy over the love of God"
(Ranaghan, p. 64). A Protestant testifies that at his Baptism, "I
started laughing... I just wanted to laugh and laugh the way you do when you
feel so good you just can't talk about it. I held my sides and laughed until I
doubled over" (Sherrill, p. 113). Another Protestant: "The new tongue
I was given was intermingled with waves of mirth in which every fear I had just
seemed to roll away. It was a tongue of laughter" (Sherrill, p. 115). An
Orthodox priest, Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, writes: "I could not conceal the
broad smile on my face that any minute could have broken out into laughter - a
laughter of the Holy Spirit stirring in me a refreshing release" (Logos,
April, 1972, p. 4).
Many, many examples
could be collected of this truly strange reaction to a "spiritual"
experience, and some "charismatic" apologists have a whole philosophy
of "spiritual joy" and "God's foolishness" to explain it.
But this philosophy is not in the least Christian; such a concept as the
"laughter of the Holy Spirit" is unheard of in the whole history of
Christian thought and experience. Here perhaps more clearly than anywhere else
the "charismatic revival" reveals itself as not at all Christian in
religious orientation; this experience is purely worldly and pagan, and where
it cannot be explained in terms of emotional hysteria (for Fr. Eusebius,
indeed, laughter provided "relief" and "release" from
"an intense feeling of self-consciousness and embarrassment" and "emotional
devastation"), it can only be due to some degree of "possession"
by one or more of the pagan gods, which the Orthodox church calls demons. Here,
for example, is a comparable "initiation" experience of a pagan
Eskimo shaman: Not finding initiation, "I would sometimes fall to weeping
and feel unhappy without knowing why. Then for no reason all would suddenly be
changed, and I felt a great, inexplicable joy, a joy so powerful that I could
not restrain it, but had to break into song, a mighty song, with room for only
one word: joy, joy! And I had to use the full strength of my voice. And then in
the midst of such a fit of mysterious and overwhelming delight I became a
shaman...I could see and hear in a totally different way. I had gained my
enlightenment...and it was not only I who could see through the darkness of
life, but the same bright light also shone out of me... and all the spirits of
earth and sky and sea now came to me and became my helping spirits"
(Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, p. 37).
It is not surprising
that unsuspecting "Christians," having deliberately laid themselves
open to a similar pagan experience, would still interpret it as a
"Christian" experience; psychologically they are still Christians,
although spiritually they have entered the realm of distinctly non-Christian
attitudes and practices. What is the judgment of the Orthodox ascetic tradition
concerning such a thing as a "laughter of the Holy Spirit"?
Sts. Barsanuphius and John, the 6th-century ascetics, give the unequivocal
Orthodox answer in reply to an Orthodox monk who was plagued by this problem
(Answer 451): "In the fear of God there is no laughter. The Scripture says
of the foolish, that they raise their voice in laughter (Sirach 21:23);
and the word of the foolish is always disturbed and deprived of grace."
St. Ephraim the Syrian just as clearly teaches: "Laughter and familiarity
are the beginning of a soul's corruption. If you see these in yourself, know
that you have come to the depths of evils. Do not cease to pray God that He
will deliver you from this death...Laughter removes from us that blessing which
is promised to those who mourn (Matt. 5:4) and destroys what has been built up.
Laughter offends the Holy Spirit, gives no benefit to the soul, dishonors the
body. Laughter drives out virtues, has no remembrance of death or thought of
tortures" (Philokalia, Russian edition, Moscow, 1913: vol. 2, p.
448). Is it not evident how far astray ignorance of basic Christianity can lead
one?
At least as common as
laughter as a response to charismatic "Baptism" is its
psychologically close relative, tears. These occur to individuals and,
quite often, to whole groups at once (in this case quite apart from the
experience of "Baptism"), spreading infectiously for no apparent reason
at all (see Sherrill, pp. 109, 117). "Charismatic" writers do not
find the reason for this in the "conviction of sin" that produces
such results at Protestant revivals; they give no reason at all, and there
seems to be none, except that this experience simply comes upon one who is
exposed to the "charismatic" atmosphere. The Orthodox Fathers, as
Bishop Ignatius notes, teach that tears often accompany the second form of
spiritual deception. St. John of the Ladder, telling of the many different
causes of tears, some good and some bad, warns: "Do not trust your
fountains of tears before your soul has been perfectly purified" (Step
7:35); and of one kind of tears he states definitely: "Tears without
thought are proper only to an irrational nature and not to a rational one"
(7:17).
Besides laughter and
tears, and often together with them, there are a number of other physical
reactions to the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit," including warmth, many
kinds of trembling and contortions, and falling to the floor. All the examples
given here, it should be emphasized, are those of ordinary Protestants and
Catholics, and not at all those of any Pentecostal extremists, whose
experiences are much more spectacular and unrestrained.
. . .
According to Bishop
Ignatius, the deception known as "fancy" is satisfied with the
invention of counterfeit feelings and states of grace, from which there is born
a false, wrong conception of the whole spiritual undertaking... It constantly
invents pseudo-spiritual states, an intimate companionship with Jesus, an
inward conversation with him, mystical revelations, voices, enjoyments... From
this activity the blood receives a sinful, deceiving movement, which presents
itself as a grace-given delight... It clothes itself in the mask of humility,
piety, wisdom." Unlike the more spectacular form of spiritual deception, fancy,
while "bringing the mind into the most frightful error, does not however
lead it to delirium," so that the state may continue for many years or a
whole lifetime and not be easily detected. One who falls into this warm,
comfortable, fevered state of deception virtually commits spiritual suicide,
blinding himself to his own true spiritual state. Writes Bishop Ignatius:
"Fancying of himself... that he is filled with grace, he will never
receive grace... He who ascribes to himself gifts of grace fences off from
himself by this 'fancy' the entrance into himself of Divine grace, and opens
wide the door to the infection of sin and to demons." "Thou
sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and
knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and
naked" (Apoc. 3:17)
Those infected with
the "charismatic" deception are not only themselves
"spirit-filled"; they also see around them the beginning of a
"new age" of the "out-pouring of the Holy Spirit,"
believing, as does Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, that "the world is on the
threshold of a great spiritual awakening" (Logos, Feb., 1972, p.
18); and the words of the Prophet Joel are constantly on their lips: "I
will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh" (Joel 2:28). The Orthodox
Christian knows that this prophecy refers in general to the last age that began
with the coming of our Lord, and more specifically to Pentecost (Acts 2), and
to every Orthodox Saint who truly possesses in abundance the gifts of the Holy
Spirit - such as St. John of Kronstadt and St. Nectarios of Pentapolis, who
have worked thousands of miracles even in this corrupt 20th century. But to
today's "charismatics," miraculous gifts are for everyone; almost
everyone who wants to can and does speak in tongues, and there are manuals
telling you how to do it.
But what do the Holy
Fathers of the Orthodox Church teach us? According to Bishop Ignatius, the
gifts of the Holy Spirit "exist only in Orthodox Christians who have
attained Christian perfection, purified and prepared beforehand by
repentance." They "are given to Saints of God solely at God's good
will and God's action, and not by the will of men and not by one's own power.
They are given unexpectedly, extremely rarely, in cases of extreme need, by
God's wondrous providence, and not just at random' (St. Isaac the Syrian).
"It should be noted that at the present time spiritual gifts are granted
in great moderation, corresponding to the enfeeblement that has enveloped
Christianity in general. These gifts serve entirely the needs of salvation. On
the contrary, 'fancy' lavishes its gifts in boundless abundance and with the
greatest speed."
In a word, the
"spirit" that suddenly lavishes its "gifts" upon this
adulterous generation which, corrupted and deceived by centuries of false
belief and pseudo-piety, seeks only a "sign" - is not the Holy Spirit
of God. These people have never known the Holy Spirit and never worshipped Him.
True spirituality is so far beyond them that, to the sober observer, they only
mock it by their psychic and emotional - and sometimes demonic - phenomena and
blasphemous utterances. Of true spiritual feelings, writes Bishop Ignatius,
"the fleshly man cannot form any conception: because a conception of
feeling is always based on those feelings already known to the heart, while
spiritual feelings are entirely foreign to the heart that knows only fleshly
and emotional feelings. Such a heart does not so much as know of the existence
of spiritual feelings."
Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/frseraphim_charismatics.aspx, opened 12 July 2017
Furthermore,
RH-B is quoted as saying,
“I’d rather be in a church
where the devil and the flesh are manifesting,” he stated, “than in a church
where nothing is happening because people are too afraid to manifest anything.
. . . And if a devil manifests, don’t
worry about that either. Rejoice, because
at least something is happening” (quoted by Hieromonk Damascene, ‘Epilogue to
the Fifth Edition’, Fr Seraphim Rose, Orthodoxy
and the Religion of the Future, 5th ed., Platina, Ca., Saint
Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2013, pgs. 214-5).
Again,
hardly a Christian attitude toward good and evil. And yet, what has the reaction been to this
meeting of RH-B and Trump? A lot of it
has been very positive:
Thousands
of people are sharing online a photo of a group of pastors laying their hands
on President Donald Trump and praying over him Monday in the Oval Office.
Florida
televangelist and megachurch Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne posted the photo to his Facebook page and his Instagram on Tuesday.
It
shows the president, head bowed, surrounded by more than a half dozen people,
including Vice President Mike Pence, their heads bowed, as well. A photographer
is taking a picture of the moment.
. . .
The photo of the
pastors praying over the president has been shared more than 5,000 times and
sparked more than 1,000 comments on the preacher’s Facebook page. Many of them
are prayers for the president.
“This picture made me
cry as the Spirit touched my heart,” wrote one man. “The Lord's hand is upon
this man, even though the world does not realize it and cannot realize it due
to their spiritual blindness. A very special sight to behold God be welcomed in
the White House once more.”
. . .
Source: Lisa Gutierrez, http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/article160904779.html, opened 12 July 2017
The ‘spiritual blindness’ of those in the
South and the other States has indeed gotten quite bad, but not in the way the
man just quoted thinks. Those who see
God at work in this event at the White House with Howard-Browne are the ones
who have fallen into spiritual delusion.
And with RH-B and others building anticipation for another Great
Awakening,
“Yesterday I was asked by Pastor Paula
White-Cain to pray over our 45th President - what a humbling moment standing in
the Oval Office - laying hands and praying for our President - Supernatural
Wisdom, Guidance and Protection - who could ever even imagine - wow - we are going to see another great spiritual
awakening #ovaloffice #westwing #whitehouse #washingtondc.” [bolding added--W.G.]
Source: Ibid. [remember the quotes above in the VoA story
as well--W.G.]
the
delusion is likely to go from bad to worse in the short run.
If
there is repentance, however, a flowering of Orthodox Christianity will be seen
in the world once more, as St Seraphim of Vyritsa (+1949) and others have
prophesied:
But
if Southerners and the other peoples of the world remain stiff-necked and
hard-hearted, then they will perish in their delusion and their sin. Again from Fr Seraphim Rose’s Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future:
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
and Orthodox Fathers clearly tell us that the character of the last times will
not at all be one of a great spiritual "revival," of an
"outpouring of the Holy Spirit," but rather one of almost universal
apostasy, of spiritual deception so subtle that the very elect, if that were
possible, will be deceived, of the virtual disappearance of Christianity from
the face of the earth. "When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith
on the earth?" (Luke 18:8) It is precisely in the last times that
satan is to be loosed (Apoc. 20:3) in order to produce the final and greatest
outpouring of evil upon the earth.
The "charismatic
revival," the product of a world without sacraments, without grace, a
world thirsting for spiritual "signs" without being able to discern the
spirits that give the signs, is itself a "sign" of these apostate
times. The ecumenical movement itself remains always a movement of "good
intentions" and feeble humanitarian "good deeds"; but when it is
joined by a movement with "power," indeed "with all power and
signs and lying wonders" (2 Thess. 2:9), then who will be able to stop
it? The "charismatic revival" comes to the rescue of a floundering
ecumenism, and pushes it on to its goal. And this goal, as we have seen, is
not merely "Christian" in nature - the "refounding of the Church
of Christ," to use the blasphemous utterance of Patriarch Athenagoras of
Constantinople - that is only the first step to a larger goal which lies
entirely outside of Christianity: the establishment of the "spiritual unity"
of all religions, of all mankind.
However, the
followers of the "charismatic revival" believe their experience is
"Christian"; they will have nothing to do with occultism and Eastern
religions; and they doubtless reject outright the whole comparison in the
preceding pages of the "charismatic revival" with spiritism. Now it
is quite true that religiously the "charismatic revival" is on a
higher level than spiritism, which is a product of quite gross credulity and
superstition; that its techniques are more refined and its phenomena more
plentiful and more easily obtained; and that its whole ideology gives the
appearance of being "Christian" - not Orthodox, but something
that is not far from Protestant fundamentalism with an added
"ecumenical" coloring.
Those who bring
Christian ideas to the experience assume that the "Baptism in the
Holy Spirit" is a Christian experience. But if it can be given to those
who merely seek a cheap, easy status experience - then there is no necessary
connection whatever between this experience and Christ. The very possibility of
an experience of a "Pentecost without Christ" means that the
experience in itself is not Christian at all; "Christians," often
sincere and well-meaning, are reading into the experience a Christian content
which in itself it does not have.
Do we not have here
the common denominator of "spiritual experience" which is needed for
a new world religion? Is this not perhaps the key to the "spiritual
unity" of mankind which the ecumenical movement has sought in vain?
Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/frseraphim_charismatics.aspx, 12 July 2017
The
next Great Awakening could well be either another great flourishing of the
Orthodox Faith, the Faith of the Holy Apostles and all the Holy Fathers, or a
further initiation of mankind into communion with the devil and the demons,
though, of course, this initiation will be presented as something very much the
opposite.
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð!
Anathema
to the Union!
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