{"id":1093,"date":"1996-08-29T06:46:48","date_gmt":"1996-08-29T06:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/august-qthe-trojan-horse-in-atlantaq\/"},"modified":"2014-01-31T21:20:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T21:20:45","slug":"august-qthe-trojan-horse-in-atlantaq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/august-qthe-trojan-horse-in-atlantaq\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trojan Horse In Atlanta"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Nobody has written a real moral history of the Greeks. . .\u00a0 The wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did.\u00a0 The immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence. . .\u00a0 It would seem simple enough for the people whose poets had conceived Helen of Troy, whose sculptors had carved the Venus of Milo, to remain healthy on that point.\u00a0 The truth is that people who worship health cannot remain healthy. . . The early church called the gods of paganism devils; and the early church was perfectly right.<\/span><\/p>\n

G.K. Chesterton1<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have loved sports all of my life both as a participant and as a spectator.\u00a0 I have even learned to a certain degree not to get too upset when I hear of another moral failure of an athlete.\u00a0 Should I have expected any different?\u00a0 But I experienced a whole new disappointment last Friday night when I watched the opening of the Olympic Games in Atlanta.\u00a0 If there were any doubt about this being a post-Christian America, that visual demonstration of pagan worship has erased all skepticism.\u00a0 Seeing the spirits of the continents called upon to protect and watch over the games and their visual representation lauded, hearing the announcers worship “sport” and “health,” with the obvious absence of God’s name or any reference to Christian belief, my heart sank to a new low.\u00a0 Should I have expected any different?\u00a0 Perhaps not.\u00a0 But this is the nation which has held Christian principles above the pagan principles of the world and has sent missionaries to convert the pagans to Christianity.\u00a0 Without our knowing, the pagans were converting us much faster than we were converting them.<\/p>\n

Erwin Lutzer wrote of Nazi Germany, “This national obsession with occultism prepared the way for Hitler’s meteoric rise to world prominence. . . and in no country were so many miracles performed, so many ghosts conjured, so many illnesses cured by magnetism, so many horoscopes read.\u00a0 There were telepathy, seances, and spiritual experiences of every sort, which camouflaged Hitler’s deceptions.\u00a0 Just as the New Age movement today might well be preparing the world to accept the miracles of Antichrist, so the occultism of Germany made mass deception much more difficult to detect.”2<\/sup><\/p>\n

I don’t know if the Lord will return in my life time or a hundred years from now.\u00a0 But I realize that I can no longer expect the average American to be part of “Christendom.”\u00a0 I will have to begin with him at a much lower level of moral understanding and general knowledge of God and Christ.<\/p>\n

Consider his everyday world!\u00a0 My small file on Mysticism and Metaphysics reminded me of the coach of the world champion Bulls calling himself a “Zen Christian” while employing “aspects of Eastern and American Indian spirituality;”3<\/sup> an Eckankar conference in a major American city combining “Religion of the Light and Sound of God, also called the Holy Spirit,” combined with the ancient wisdom of the east; a metaphysics conference in my city that teaches ways to use tarot cards, crystals, psychic hotlines, astrology, numerology, biorhythms and even internet divination; and a Kansas woman who started a new business called “Magical Moments” in which she communicates with your pet “on the level of the soul;” and besides these, I have some really bizarre ones!<\/p>\n

In a decent report, I read that Christian groups are receiving thousands of letters from Muslims who claim to have had a vision of Jesus appearing to them and saying “I am the way” and are therefore ready “to freely respond to the gospel message.”\u00a0 This is said to be a response to AG missionary Gordon Barnett’s “prayer initiatives.”4<\/sup> In other words, there are many Christians out there willing to take the opportunity of today’s spiritual ignorance to put a few feathers in their evangelistic cap.<\/p>\n

I have to rather agree with Douglas Groothuis when he writes, “Spiritual deception is far from rare.\u00a0 If we do not discern and reject deceptive claims to the truth, we will become ensnared in error and mistake darkness for light.\u00a0 It is only by knowing and adhering to the truth of God’s Word that we can discern when the demonic is inducing or influencing spiritual experiences.”5<\/sup><\/p>\n

Is America becoming more civilized?\u00a0 No!\u00a0 We are believing what other generations scorned.\u00a0 In the late fourteenth century, Christopher Marlowe wrote a story about a man who insolently made a pact with the Devil to grant his wishes in exchange for his soul.\u00a0 In the last hour of his life, Dr. Faustus is wishing against hope that God’s hell were not literal and eternal but metaphysical, as Pythagoras taught.\u00a0 His wish for pagan reality is vain.<\/p>\n

\n

Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,<\/p>\n

A hundred thousand, and at last be saved!<\/p>\n

O, no end is limited to damned souls.<\/p>\n

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?<\/p>\n

Or why is this immortal that thou hast?<\/p>\n

Ah, Pythagoras’ metemphychosis-were that true<\/p>\n

This soul should fly from me and I be changed<\/p>\n

Unto some brutish beast.6<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Marlowe reminds us that in the hour of death, no wish for some ethereal existence without judgment is possible.\u00a0 Our gospel ministry to this generation is serious business!<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/address>\n
1. G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis Of Assisi\u00a0 (New York:\u00a0 Doubleday, 1990) 28.<\/address>\n
2. Erwin Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross (Chicago: Moody, 1995) 67.<\/address>\n
3. “Bullish On Faith” Dayton Daily News, 6\/1\/96.<\/address>\n
4. National & International Religion Report, 1\/8\/96, p. 1.<\/address>\n
5. Douglas Groothuis, Deceived by the Light (Eugene:\u00a0 Harvest House, 1995) 154.<\/address>\n
6. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (New York:\u00a0 Washington Square Press, 1968) 77.<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobody has written a real moral history of the Greeks. . .\u00a0 The wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did.\u00a0 The immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[149,160],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-evangelism-outreach","tag-sports"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Trojan Horse In Atlanta - Aletheia Baptist Ministries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/august-qthe-trojan-horse-in-atlantaq\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Trojan Horse In Atlanta - 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