Linda Kimball
Nihilism and Satanic inversion: godless America's 'new' reality of non-self and madness
By Linda Kimball
In the wake of the insurrection against the living, personal God of Revelation that began during the Renaissance eventuating in the proclamation of the death of God and cataclysmic eruptions of fire, brimstone and rivers of blood during the 20th century, ex-atheist Alexander Solzhenitsyn said the world had never before known,
"...godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot." (goodreads.com)
In his analysis of Marxist Communism and its' alter ego, scientific materialism, Frank Meyers, an early conservative intellectual concluded that Communism is the state form,
"....taken by a materialist faith determined to rule the world." Godless Communism is the "final synthesis of all heretical tendencies that have pervaded Western civilization for many centuries." It is materialist scientism of which, "Communism is the culminating hubris of the Promethean man who reaches out for the world and means to remake creation. It is scientism gone political." (The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash, pp. 251-252)
Both scientific evolutionary materialism and its new age evolutionary pantheist counterpart belong to the family of 'new' pagan or modern naturalism. Modern naturalism refers to a one-dimensional view of reality grounded in a monist pagan philosophy holding that only void, matter and evolutionary (developmental and change-making) energies exist. Therefore void, matter and energy are the Ultimate One Substance of which the universe consists and with which all life is in continuity, thus "all is one" and "everything is perpetually evolving and ascending."
The main difference between these two views resides in whether matter is thought to be physical (i.e., Greek Atomism) or spiritual (Hinduism). However, both views share in common the following:
"...you took God away (and) your espousal of an absence of self is the most unique and fearsome claim you made." (The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha, Ravi Zacharias, pp. 59, 67)
Life is only with the living God of Revelation, the creator and upholder of the life and being (soul/spirit) of men. But if He does not exist, it logically follows that there is no ultimate source for life, conscious being, meaning and purpose; or for the sanctity of human life, worth, dignity, individual liberty and personal property. Without God the Father Almighty unalienable (God given) human rights are as meaningless as America's founding documents have become in our Godless pagan society.
If man is not God's spiritual image-bearer then he is less than nothing, a conclusion Buddha reached long before Jesus Christ God Incarnate walked this earth:
"Six centuries before Jesus Christ, the Buddha already knew that if God does not exist, then the human self cannot exist either...Therefore, he deconstructed the Hindu idea of the soul. When one starts peeling the onion skin of one's psyche, he discovers that there is no solid core at the center of one's being." Thus your sense of self becomes illusion, "Reality is nonself...You don't exist. Liberation, the Buddha taught, is realizing the unreality of your existence." (The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, Vishal Mangalwadi, p. 6)
Naturalism: the Antithesis
Modern naturalism is in every way the antithesis of God's Revelations and Christianity, the spiritual and moral foundation of Western civilization. For fifteen hundred years, Christendom and then later Protestant America had affirmed the biblical view of total reality. In this historically unique view total reality consists of two interfacing, interactive halves: the seen (natural) and the unseen (supernatural).
According to this view, man faces both unseen and seen and interprets truth against these two interfacing halves of reality. Thus Paul declares that as men live out their lives they are spectacles, "unto the world, and to angels and men." (1 Cor. 4:9)
In opposition to modern naturalism's one dimensional view, Paul affirms that total reality consists of two halves, hence this earth (the seen) is really a theater and men are actors on its stage observed not only by other men (the seen) but by the Spirit of God and angels (the unseen).
Though men cannot see the Spirit of God and very rarely see angels they can see, hear and interact with men. The Spirit of God opens our eyes to understanding (Ps. 118: 34, 125, 144), tests our hearts, knows out secrets, motives, and thoughts (Psa. 17:3; 44:21; 139:1-4).
Both holy and unholy angels are all around us, watching, listening, helping and protecting if holy, if unholy then binding the disobedient to their power. Just as the Lord of Hosts gives His Holy Spirit to those who love and obey Him, He can send evil spirits upon those who are rebellious, live in persistent sin, practice occult arts or men who in their pride, covetousness and envy reject and hate Him as was the case with Karl Marx and Nietzsche, the apostate Christian philosopher who proclaimed the death of God. Unto these men the Lord of Hosts sent evil spirits just as He sent one to King Saul (1 Sam. 16:14). The evil spirit influenced and disordered Saul's thinking, afflicted him with obsessions and paranoia, befouled his conscience, and inflated his disordered passions thereby, "filling him with unrest, anger, fear and murderous intent." (Occult Bondage and Deliverance, Kurt E. Koch, p. 137)
Dr. Kurt Koch (1913-1987) was a highly respected German minister who pastored, counseled and delivered in excess of twenty thousand people suffering from demonic subjection. According to Koch, demonic subjection is an increasingly common occurrence in post-Christian Western and American society. Most people have little or no clue that they are in fact demonically subjected while some people, such as Marx, Nietzsche, Hitler and Stalin seem to possess a limitless supply of demonic energy, especially when engaged in imposing their will over the wills of others.
There are many underlying causes of demonic subjection. Koch delineates some of the leading ones common to apostatizing America:
"If a person blatantly lives a life of sin and persistently resists the Spirit of God and remains completely unrepentant, or...carries the sin of murder or abortion on his conscience, or has committed perjury or practical incest, if he has cursed his fellow men or blasphemed against the cross or against Christ, the Holy Spirit, or God, then he will have laid himself open to the devil's attacks. Every curse is in fact a cry to the devil, and can...lead a person into bondage." (Koch, p. 138)
"....God created man in his own image.....male and female created he them." Gen. 1:27
According to the uniquely Christian view of total reality, the essence of the human is not the body and brain (the seen) but the unseen...the soul/spirit:
"It is the soul alone that God made in his own image and the soul that he loves...For the sake of the soul...the Son of God came into the world..." (Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 25, Ancient Christian Devotional, Oden and Crosby, p. 153)
Building off of the view of man as embodied spirit, St. Augustine (AD 354-430) affirmed that as all men are the spiritual image bearers of the supernatural Triune God in three Persons, then it logically follows that each man is a person; a trinity of being comprised of soul/spirit (unseen), and body, brain (seen).
The citadel of the soul is spirit (heart). Spirit is immortal and self-aware. It can will and think and is responsible for what it wills, thinks, speaks, and acts on while in this world.
Spirit is the unique property that distinguishes soul from the material body in which it is fully embedded. In Biblical thought, spirit allows man to spiritually transcend the natural dimension in order to access the third Heaven. By way of prayer and petitions the spirit of man's mind allows him to enter into a personal relationship with the Spirit of God. Through this relationship, spirit is renewed over time, thus enabling man to more perfectly orient the manner of his thoughts, passions, words and actions in this world in preparation for eternity in Paradise.
In Christian thought, a person is a spirit (self) and personality is the total individuality of the spirit. Without spirit there is no 'self,' hence no person.
The key to personal liberty in the natural or sensory half of reality is man's spiritual liberty contrasted against a genetically pre-programmed animal-like orientation. Animals have souls but not spirits, the basis of intelligence, sensitivity, imagination, self-consciousness, reflection back and forward into time, and the capacity for truth and moral goodness.
A person is uniquely free because he can spiritually transcend his material brain to access the Spirit of the Lord as Paul affirms:
"Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (2 Cor. 3:17)
Vishal Mangalwadi, India's foremost Christian intellectual observes that this historically unique concept of man as God's spiritual image-bearer gave birth to the "belief in the unique dignity of human beings," and this is the force,
"...that created Western civilization, where citizens do not exist for the state but the state exists for the individual. Even kings, presidents, prime ministers, and army generals cannot be allowed to trample upon an individual and his or her rights." (Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations, Mangalwadi, pp. 12-13)
One-Dimensional Godless Naturalism: the Reality of Non-Self
Modern naturalism, whether of materialist or pantheist permutation positing a non-existent immanent conception of deity (i.e. Omega, Gaia) is at bottom Godless, and said Ravi Zacharias, absolutely nothing,
"... has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God." Key issues of the day "whether it be...sexual orientation and practice, or life in the fetal stage, sooner or later filter down to whether there is a God, and if so, has he spoken?" (The Real Face of Atheism, Zacharias, p. 21)
In "The Gnostic Religion," Hans Jonas provides a full-scale study of the heretical world of pre-Christian and Christian era pagan Gnostic nihilism together with its modern variants: materialist and pantheist naturalism.
Jonas writes that while ancient Gnostic pagan man was thrown,
"...into an antagonistic, anti-divine, and therefore anti-human nature, modern man (is thrown) into an indifferent one." (p. 338)
The ancient gnostic conception was still anthropomorphic despite the nihilism, hostility and demonic. But its' modern counterpart with its' indifferent nature, its' completely godless, soulless, anti-human, demonic nature, represents the "absolute vacuum, the really bottomless pit."
At least the ancient Gnostic dualism, as fantastic as it was, was at least self-consistent, as there was the illusion of a source for 'self' (being). Not so for its' modern counterpart:
"So radically has anthropomorphism been banned from....nature that even man must cease to be conceived anthropomorphically if he is just an accident of nature. As the product of the indifferent, his being, too, must be indifferent. Then the facing of his mortality would simply warrant the reaction, 'Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." (ibid, p. 339)
In conclusion:
"...modern nihilism (is) infinitely more radical and more desperate than gnostic nihilism ever could be for all its panic terror of the world and its defiant contempt of its laws. That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss. That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with....the objective meaninglessness of his projected meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation." (Jonas, p. 339)
In other words, the death of the living God of Revelation means there is neither source for life and 'self' (soul/spirit) nor for higher truth and morality, purpose, meaning, salvation and eternity. For depersonalized man, the evolved ape or bag of chemicals, there is nothing – no heaven above, no hell below and no,
".... vast mind behind the framing of the world; no transcending voice giving counsel to this world...no light at the end of the tunnel (hence only) the loneliness of existence in its most desolate form." (Zacharias, p. 27)
The determined assault against the living Holy God that began during the Renaissance gained speed and force with the materialist implications of Darwin's neo-pagan theory. The idea that humans evolved by chance and natural selection from non-life bearing chemicals lay the axe at the very foundation of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. On the heels of Darwin's theory Christianity came under forceful attack allowing a one-dimensional worldview draining into nihilism to be declared a scientifically supported reality.
Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859 and instantly and uncritically accepted by people such as Karl Marx, T.H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel in Germany and large numbers of clergy more eager to be thought scientific and modern than to defend the faith once given.
For materialist and pantheist alike, Darwin's theory was a wish come true and so became the center of their respective one-dimensional worldviews.
The demonized Karl Marx hated the God of Revelation and his exuberance for Darwin's idea prompted him to consider dedicating his Das Kapital to Darwin, an honor which he declined. Since Marx favored scientific materialism the rationale behind his invitation to Darwin was that he saw how Darwin's materialist theory provided a scientific framework to support the economic infrastructure on which Marx could build his godless communist utopia.
Darwin's materialist theory and Marxist materialist presuppositions (economic theory based on envy and hatred of God) together with Freud's materialist-based analysis of religion and human sexuality threw faith in God and Christianity "over the wall of civilization,' said Zacharias:
"With such abusive attacks directed at religious belief coming from so many directions, it was left for someone to cast this creature called theism completely out, and exorcise the world of all such influence. The one who did that was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche." (p. 25)
By the time of Nietzsche, perceptive thinkers had already been expressing apprehension at the prospect of multitudes of unsuspecting Westerners who would eventually be cruelly exploited by anti-human haters of God. With Nietzsche, dreadful apprehension deepened into certainty, for Nietzsche despised religion in general, but upon Christianity he poured his unbridled fury:
"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhanded, too underground, and too petty." (Nietzsche in "The Life of Nietzsche," Faru Forster Nietzsche, 1921, p. 656)
However, rather than mindless infatuation for Darwin's idea, Nietzsche (1844–1900) harshly criticized it:
"What surprises me most when I survey the broad destinies of man is that I always see before me the opposite of that which Darwin and his school see or want to see today: selection in favor of the stronger, better-constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the opposite is palpable ... I incline to the prejudice that the school of Darwin has been deluded everywhere..." (Nietzsche: The evolutionist who was anti-God and anti-Darwin, Russell Grigg, creation.com)
Nietzsche was not anti-evolution but rather had his own evolutionary conception which he called "the will to power."
While Darwin received his idea from his pantheist grandfather Erasmus Darwin, Nietzsche's conception was preceded by mystical ecstasy. Nietzsche experienced two mystical encounters with the first one taking place in August, 1881.
Charles Andler writes that previous to his scientific reasoning, Nietzsche received revelations during mystical encounters just as Spinoza did. The pantheistic state of Spinoza's sentiments,
"... preceded his system and his geometric form, thus, with Nietzsche mystical ecstasy preceded his scientific reasoning." (Charles Andler cited by Henri De Lubac, "The Drama of Atheist Humanism," p. 481)
According to Henri De Lubac, secret knowledge was revealed to Nietzsche that he was "....the first of men to know.' The shock of it was sudden and profound. Though no direct document relates his experience sure evidence is found in an agitated page of Ecce Homo where Nietzsche wrote:
"Suddenly, with sureness, with indescribable delicacy, a thing makes itself seen, makes itself heard. It shakes you, it overwhelms you right to your innermost depths. You hear it...You let it fill you....A thought blazes forth like a flash of lightening...It imposes itself as a necessity...I never had to choose it. It is an ecstasy....You are enraptured, taken outside of yourself...All of this...is accompanied by a tumultuous feeling of liberty, of independence, of divinity...There you have my experience of the inspiration." (Lubac, p. 472)
In the months that followed he remained silent about the knowledge he received. But in August of 1882 he discussed his experience with Lou Salome. Salome writes that Nietzsche spoke of his encounter only in obscure words and with hushed voice. Giving "every indication of the most profound horror" Nietzsche described the terrible and marvelous revelation he had received with two words: Eternal Return. (ibid, p. 473)
In the autumn of 1882 he experienced his second encounter which he described in the poem Sils Maria:
"I was sitting and waiting, without waiting for anything/Beyond good and evil, tasting Light sometimes and sometimes shade/Absorbed by this brew...When suddenly...what was one became two, And Zarathustra passed before me..." (ibid, p. 475)
It was a vision without a doubt, precise and sudden:
"I could tell you the day and the hour....Zarathustra has fallen on me, he assaults me.." (ibid)
Zarathustra was an evil spirit who confirmed to Nietzsche the 'truth' of the revelations already received, which included man's evolution from worms:
"You [mankind] have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now the human being is still more of an ape than any ape is." (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra's Prologue section 3, trans. by G. Parkes, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, p. 11)
Henceforth, Nietzsche is an inspired prophet who knows for certain that the God of Revelation is dead, that man's evolution from worms is absolutely true, and that he is Jesus Christ's successor, the 'new' Christ. Within ten days he drafted by way of automatic writing the whole first book of his prophecy. He called his finished work Zarathustra, the new Bible of scientific evolutionary naturalism, and told the world to throw away all other books, for now you have my Zarathustra, "a new Holy Book."
It was Nietzsche, the 'new' Christ, who saw that the death of the personal God had already begun to cast its first dark shadows over Europe, and though,
"the event itself is far too great, too remote, too much beyond most people's power of apprehension, for one to suppose that so much as the report of it could have reached them," still its advent was certain, and it was men like Nietzsche, the 'new' Christ who were "the firstlings and premature children of the coming century," the century of the "triumph of Nihilism." (Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Eugene Rose, p. 44)
Nietzsche was the first apostate Christian to gaze fully upon man's loss of faith and its terrifying consequences. With no living God 'up there' to obstruct his vision, the nihilism he saw was agonizing. As there was no longer any Light from God above, there was only darkness in the hermetically sealed world below. The paralyzing darkness that overtook the mind of the 'new' Christ was spiritual. It was not so much,
"....an exterior phenomenon crowding inward but rather an inner blinding that spread outward." (Ravi Zacharias, p. 27)
This was precisely Nietzsche's point. With the death of the personal God of Revelation the darkness of objective meaninglessness would penetrate every avenue of thought and life, making life itself unbearable with the consequence of hedonism, abortion, euthanasia, sodomy, suicide, drugs, crime and murder becoming virtues.
Speaking through the writings of the 'new' Christ, Zarathustra went on to say that because God had died in the 19th century there would follow two terrible consequences beginning in the 20th century. (Romans 1:18)
First, the 20th century would become one of the most evil century's in history, and second, a universal madness (Romans 1:21, 22) would break out and turn the once glorious W. Europe and America upside-down.
Though apostates and the apostatizing professed themselves wise, their cognitive thought processes would become darkened (vain) and with their conscience dead to sin they would become fools, meaning they would accept and publicly profess incredibly stupid conceptions of themselves (i.e., man is an evolved worm, ape or robot; man is evolving into god).
"And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them." Isaiah 3:4
In turning away from the Spirit of God and the truth He has given, 'wise' males will become effeminate cowards and females mannish. They will be adolescent emotional-tyrants in adult-size bodies: sinister, greedy, spiteful, vindictive, treacherous, back-stabbing sophists. They will celebrate Lucifer (the devil) and in their madness actively seek the way of Luciferian initiation because they will be spiritually blind in regard to total reality. Like demons they will flee from the cross of Jesus but exalt the devil as the first free thinker, the genetic creator of man, the seething energy and angel of evolution. Truth will be lies, evil will be good, unfaithfulness will be faith and the 'wise' will preach and blaspheme from pulpits, exercise political power, enact legislation, and wield broken law to plunder, punish, and ruin.
Zarathustra has been right on both counts. First, apostatizing W. Europe and America, though dotted here and there by small islands of Light, decency and sanity, are becoming darkened, satanically inverted places ruled by the 'wise,' hence boiling over with madness, particularly Hollywood, academia, mainstream media and the highest, most powerful political offices in the land. Second, Nietzsche was made to show the 'wise' what is in store for them by spending the last eleven years of his life insane.
© Linda Kimball
October 8, 2013
In the wake of the insurrection against the living, personal God of Revelation that began during the Renaissance eventuating in the proclamation of the death of God and cataclysmic eruptions of fire, brimstone and rivers of blood during the 20th century, ex-atheist Alexander Solzhenitsyn said the world had never before known,
"...godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot." (goodreads.com)
In his analysis of Marxist Communism and its' alter ego, scientific materialism, Frank Meyers, an early conservative intellectual concluded that Communism is the state form,
"....taken by a materialist faith determined to rule the world." Godless Communism is the "final synthesis of all heretical tendencies that have pervaded Western civilization for many centuries." It is materialist scientism of which, "Communism is the culminating hubris of the Promethean man who reaches out for the world and means to remake creation. It is scientism gone political." (The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash, pp. 251-252)
Both scientific evolutionary materialism and its new age evolutionary pantheist counterpart belong to the family of 'new' pagan or modern naturalism. Modern naturalism refers to a one-dimensional view of reality grounded in a monist pagan philosophy holding that only void, matter and evolutionary (developmental and change-making) energies exist. Therefore void, matter and energy are the Ultimate One Substance of which the universe consists and with which all life is in continuity, thus "all is one" and "everything is perpetually evolving and ascending."
The main difference between these two views resides in whether matter is thought to be physical (i.e., Greek Atomism) or spiritual (Hinduism). However, both views share in common the following:
- Hatred of the supernatural God of Revelation and of man as His spiritual image-bearer
- One dimensional views of reality
- An inverted account of origins and history lending itself to the notion that since there was no fall then Lucifer is not the devil and men are not sinful but rather evolving into gods
- Scientific materialism or its' New Age spiritual science counterpart
- Evolutionary conceptions. These serve two main functions. First, as a mechanical process of development and second, as a mechanism for purification of matter
- The nihilism of Buddha
"...you took God away (and) your espousal of an absence of self is the most unique and fearsome claim you made." (The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha, Ravi Zacharias, pp. 59, 67)
Life is only with the living God of Revelation, the creator and upholder of the life and being (soul/spirit) of men. But if He does not exist, it logically follows that there is no ultimate source for life, conscious being, meaning and purpose; or for the sanctity of human life, worth, dignity, individual liberty and personal property. Without God the Father Almighty unalienable (God given) human rights are as meaningless as America's founding documents have become in our Godless pagan society.
If man is not God's spiritual image-bearer then he is less than nothing, a conclusion Buddha reached long before Jesus Christ God Incarnate walked this earth:
"Six centuries before Jesus Christ, the Buddha already knew that if God does not exist, then the human self cannot exist either...Therefore, he deconstructed the Hindu idea of the soul. When one starts peeling the onion skin of one's psyche, he discovers that there is no solid core at the center of one's being." Thus your sense of self becomes illusion, "Reality is nonself...You don't exist. Liberation, the Buddha taught, is realizing the unreality of your existence." (The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, Vishal Mangalwadi, p. 6)
Naturalism: the Antithesis
Modern naturalism is in every way the antithesis of God's Revelations and Christianity, the spiritual and moral foundation of Western civilization. For fifteen hundred years, Christendom and then later Protestant America had affirmed the biblical view of total reality. In this historically unique view total reality consists of two interfacing, interactive halves: the seen (natural) and the unseen (supernatural).
According to this view, man faces both unseen and seen and interprets truth against these two interfacing halves of reality. Thus Paul declares that as men live out their lives they are spectacles, "unto the world, and to angels and men." (1 Cor. 4:9)
In opposition to modern naturalism's one dimensional view, Paul affirms that total reality consists of two halves, hence this earth (the seen) is really a theater and men are actors on its stage observed not only by other men (the seen) but by the Spirit of God and angels (the unseen).
Though men cannot see the Spirit of God and very rarely see angels they can see, hear and interact with men. The Spirit of God opens our eyes to understanding (Ps. 118: 34, 125, 144), tests our hearts, knows out secrets, motives, and thoughts (Psa. 17:3; 44:21; 139:1-4).
Both holy and unholy angels are all around us, watching, listening, helping and protecting if holy, if unholy then binding the disobedient to their power. Just as the Lord of Hosts gives His Holy Spirit to those who love and obey Him, He can send evil spirits upon those who are rebellious, live in persistent sin, practice occult arts or men who in their pride, covetousness and envy reject and hate Him as was the case with Karl Marx and Nietzsche, the apostate Christian philosopher who proclaimed the death of God. Unto these men the Lord of Hosts sent evil spirits just as He sent one to King Saul (1 Sam. 16:14). The evil spirit influenced and disordered Saul's thinking, afflicted him with obsessions and paranoia, befouled his conscience, and inflated his disordered passions thereby, "filling him with unrest, anger, fear and murderous intent." (Occult Bondage and Deliverance, Kurt E. Koch, p. 137)
Dr. Kurt Koch (1913-1987) was a highly respected German minister who pastored, counseled and delivered in excess of twenty thousand people suffering from demonic subjection. According to Koch, demonic subjection is an increasingly common occurrence in post-Christian Western and American society. Most people have little or no clue that they are in fact demonically subjected while some people, such as Marx, Nietzsche, Hitler and Stalin seem to possess a limitless supply of demonic energy, especially when engaged in imposing their will over the wills of others.
There are many underlying causes of demonic subjection. Koch delineates some of the leading ones common to apostatizing America:
"If a person blatantly lives a life of sin and persistently resists the Spirit of God and remains completely unrepentant, or...carries the sin of murder or abortion on his conscience, or has committed perjury or practical incest, if he has cursed his fellow men or blasphemed against the cross or against Christ, the Holy Spirit, or God, then he will have laid himself open to the devil's attacks. Every curse is in fact a cry to the devil, and can...lead a person into bondage." (Koch, p. 138)
"....God created man in his own image.....male and female created he them." Gen. 1:27
According to the uniquely Christian view of total reality, the essence of the human is not the body and brain (the seen) but the unseen...the soul/spirit:
"It is the soul alone that God made in his own image and the soul that he loves...For the sake of the soul...the Son of God came into the world..." (Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 25, Ancient Christian Devotional, Oden and Crosby, p. 153)
Building off of the view of man as embodied spirit, St. Augustine (AD 354-430) affirmed that as all men are the spiritual image bearers of the supernatural Triune God in three Persons, then it logically follows that each man is a person; a trinity of being comprised of soul/spirit (unseen), and body, brain (seen).
The citadel of the soul is spirit (heart). Spirit is immortal and self-aware. It can will and think and is responsible for what it wills, thinks, speaks, and acts on while in this world.
Spirit is the unique property that distinguishes soul from the material body in which it is fully embedded. In Biblical thought, spirit allows man to spiritually transcend the natural dimension in order to access the third Heaven. By way of prayer and petitions the spirit of man's mind allows him to enter into a personal relationship with the Spirit of God. Through this relationship, spirit is renewed over time, thus enabling man to more perfectly orient the manner of his thoughts, passions, words and actions in this world in preparation for eternity in Paradise.
In Christian thought, a person is a spirit (self) and personality is the total individuality of the spirit. Without spirit there is no 'self,' hence no person.
The key to personal liberty in the natural or sensory half of reality is man's spiritual liberty contrasted against a genetically pre-programmed animal-like orientation. Animals have souls but not spirits, the basis of intelligence, sensitivity, imagination, self-consciousness, reflection back and forward into time, and the capacity for truth and moral goodness.
A person is uniquely free because he can spiritually transcend his material brain to access the Spirit of the Lord as Paul affirms:
"Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (2 Cor. 3:17)
Vishal Mangalwadi, India's foremost Christian intellectual observes that this historically unique concept of man as God's spiritual image-bearer gave birth to the "belief in the unique dignity of human beings," and this is the force,
"...that created Western civilization, where citizens do not exist for the state but the state exists for the individual. Even kings, presidents, prime ministers, and army generals cannot be allowed to trample upon an individual and his or her rights." (Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations, Mangalwadi, pp. 12-13)
One-Dimensional Godless Naturalism: the Reality of Non-Self
Modern naturalism, whether of materialist or pantheist permutation positing a non-existent immanent conception of deity (i.e. Omega, Gaia) is at bottom Godless, and said Ravi Zacharias, absolutely nothing,
"... has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God." Key issues of the day "whether it be...sexual orientation and practice, or life in the fetal stage, sooner or later filter down to whether there is a God, and if so, has he spoken?" (The Real Face of Atheism, Zacharias, p. 21)
In "The Gnostic Religion," Hans Jonas provides a full-scale study of the heretical world of pre-Christian and Christian era pagan Gnostic nihilism together with its modern variants: materialist and pantheist naturalism.
Jonas writes that while ancient Gnostic pagan man was thrown,
"...into an antagonistic, anti-divine, and therefore anti-human nature, modern man (is thrown) into an indifferent one." (p. 338)
The ancient gnostic conception was still anthropomorphic despite the nihilism, hostility and demonic. But its' modern counterpart with its' indifferent nature, its' completely godless, soulless, anti-human, demonic nature, represents the "absolute vacuum, the really bottomless pit."
At least the ancient Gnostic dualism, as fantastic as it was, was at least self-consistent, as there was the illusion of a source for 'self' (being). Not so for its' modern counterpart:
"So radically has anthropomorphism been banned from....nature that even man must cease to be conceived anthropomorphically if he is just an accident of nature. As the product of the indifferent, his being, too, must be indifferent. Then the facing of his mortality would simply warrant the reaction, 'Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." (ibid, p. 339)
In conclusion:
"...modern nihilism (is) infinitely more radical and more desperate than gnostic nihilism ever could be for all its panic terror of the world and its defiant contempt of its laws. That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss. That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with....the objective meaninglessness of his projected meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation." (Jonas, p. 339)
In other words, the death of the living God of Revelation means there is neither source for life and 'self' (soul/spirit) nor for higher truth and morality, purpose, meaning, salvation and eternity. For depersonalized man, the evolved ape or bag of chemicals, there is nothing – no heaven above, no hell below and no,
".... vast mind behind the framing of the world; no transcending voice giving counsel to this world...no light at the end of the tunnel (hence only) the loneliness of existence in its most desolate form." (Zacharias, p. 27)
The determined assault against the living Holy God that began during the Renaissance gained speed and force with the materialist implications of Darwin's neo-pagan theory. The idea that humans evolved by chance and natural selection from non-life bearing chemicals lay the axe at the very foundation of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. On the heels of Darwin's theory Christianity came under forceful attack allowing a one-dimensional worldview draining into nihilism to be declared a scientifically supported reality.
Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859 and instantly and uncritically accepted by people such as Karl Marx, T.H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel in Germany and large numbers of clergy more eager to be thought scientific and modern than to defend the faith once given.
For materialist and pantheist alike, Darwin's theory was a wish come true and so became the center of their respective one-dimensional worldviews.
The demonized Karl Marx hated the God of Revelation and his exuberance for Darwin's idea prompted him to consider dedicating his Das Kapital to Darwin, an honor which he declined. Since Marx favored scientific materialism the rationale behind his invitation to Darwin was that he saw how Darwin's materialist theory provided a scientific framework to support the economic infrastructure on which Marx could build his godless communist utopia.
Darwin's materialist theory and Marxist materialist presuppositions (economic theory based on envy and hatred of God) together with Freud's materialist-based analysis of religion and human sexuality threw faith in God and Christianity "over the wall of civilization,' said Zacharias:
"With such abusive attacks directed at religious belief coming from so many directions, it was left for someone to cast this creature called theism completely out, and exorcise the world of all such influence. The one who did that was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche." (p. 25)
By the time of Nietzsche, perceptive thinkers had already been expressing apprehension at the prospect of multitudes of unsuspecting Westerners who would eventually be cruelly exploited by anti-human haters of God. With Nietzsche, dreadful apprehension deepened into certainty, for Nietzsche despised religion in general, but upon Christianity he poured his unbridled fury:
"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhanded, too underground, and too petty." (Nietzsche in "The Life of Nietzsche," Faru Forster Nietzsche, 1921, p. 656)
However, rather than mindless infatuation for Darwin's idea, Nietzsche (1844–1900) harshly criticized it:
"What surprises me most when I survey the broad destinies of man is that I always see before me the opposite of that which Darwin and his school see or want to see today: selection in favor of the stronger, better-constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the opposite is palpable ... I incline to the prejudice that the school of Darwin has been deluded everywhere..." (Nietzsche: The evolutionist who was anti-God and anti-Darwin, Russell Grigg, creation.com)
Nietzsche was not anti-evolution but rather had his own evolutionary conception which he called "the will to power."
While Darwin received his idea from his pantheist grandfather Erasmus Darwin, Nietzsche's conception was preceded by mystical ecstasy. Nietzsche experienced two mystical encounters with the first one taking place in August, 1881.
Charles Andler writes that previous to his scientific reasoning, Nietzsche received revelations during mystical encounters just as Spinoza did. The pantheistic state of Spinoza's sentiments,
"... preceded his system and his geometric form, thus, with Nietzsche mystical ecstasy preceded his scientific reasoning." (Charles Andler cited by Henri De Lubac, "The Drama of Atheist Humanism," p. 481)
According to Henri De Lubac, secret knowledge was revealed to Nietzsche that he was "....the first of men to know.' The shock of it was sudden and profound. Though no direct document relates his experience sure evidence is found in an agitated page of Ecce Homo where Nietzsche wrote:
"Suddenly, with sureness, with indescribable delicacy, a thing makes itself seen, makes itself heard. It shakes you, it overwhelms you right to your innermost depths. You hear it...You let it fill you....A thought blazes forth like a flash of lightening...It imposes itself as a necessity...I never had to choose it. It is an ecstasy....You are enraptured, taken outside of yourself...All of this...is accompanied by a tumultuous feeling of liberty, of independence, of divinity...There you have my experience of the inspiration." (Lubac, p. 472)
In the months that followed he remained silent about the knowledge he received. But in August of 1882 he discussed his experience with Lou Salome. Salome writes that Nietzsche spoke of his encounter only in obscure words and with hushed voice. Giving "every indication of the most profound horror" Nietzsche described the terrible and marvelous revelation he had received with two words: Eternal Return. (ibid, p. 473)
In the autumn of 1882 he experienced his second encounter which he described in the poem Sils Maria:
"I was sitting and waiting, without waiting for anything/Beyond good and evil, tasting Light sometimes and sometimes shade/Absorbed by this brew...When suddenly...what was one became two, And Zarathustra passed before me..." (ibid, p. 475)
It was a vision without a doubt, precise and sudden:
"I could tell you the day and the hour....Zarathustra has fallen on me, he assaults me.." (ibid)
Zarathustra was an evil spirit who confirmed to Nietzsche the 'truth' of the revelations already received, which included man's evolution from worms:
"You [mankind] have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now the human being is still more of an ape than any ape is." (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra's Prologue section 3, trans. by G. Parkes, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, p. 11)
Henceforth, Nietzsche is an inspired prophet who knows for certain that the God of Revelation is dead, that man's evolution from worms is absolutely true, and that he is Jesus Christ's successor, the 'new' Christ. Within ten days he drafted by way of automatic writing the whole first book of his prophecy. He called his finished work Zarathustra, the new Bible of scientific evolutionary naturalism, and told the world to throw away all other books, for now you have my Zarathustra, "a new Holy Book."
It was Nietzsche, the 'new' Christ, who saw that the death of the personal God had already begun to cast its first dark shadows over Europe, and though,
"the event itself is far too great, too remote, too much beyond most people's power of apprehension, for one to suppose that so much as the report of it could have reached them," still its advent was certain, and it was men like Nietzsche, the 'new' Christ who were "the firstlings and premature children of the coming century," the century of the "triumph of Nihilism." (Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Eugene Rose, p. 44)
Nietzsche was the first apostate Christian to gaze fully upon man's loss of faith and its terrifying consequences. With no living God 'up there' to obstruct his vision, the nihilism he saw was agonizing. As there was no longer any Light from God above, there was only darkness in the hermetically sealed world below. The paralyzing darkness that overtook the mind of the 'new' Christ was spiritual. It was not so much,
"....an exterior phenomenon crowding inward but rather an inner blinding that spread outward." (Ravi Zacharias, p. 27)
This was precisely Nietzsche's point. With the death of the personal God of Revelation the darkness of objective meaninglessness would penetrate every avenue of thought and life, making life itself unbearable with the consequence of hedonism, abortion, euthanasia, sodomy, suicide, drugs, crime and murder becoming virtues.
Speaking through the writings of the 'new' Christ, Zarathustra went on to say that because God had died in the 19th century there would follow two terrible consequences beginning in the 20th century. (Romans 1:18)
First, the 20th century would become one of the most evil century's in history, and second, a universal madness (Romans 1:21, 22) would break out and turn the once glorious W. Europe and America upside-down.
Though apostates and the apostatizing professed themselves wise, their cognitive thought processes would become darkened (vain) and with their conscience dead to sin they would become fools, meaning they would accept and publicly profess incredibly stupid conceptions of themselves (i.e., man is an evolved worm, ape or robot; man is evolving into god).
"And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them." Isaiah 3:4
In turning away from the Spirit of God and the truth He has given, 'wise' males will become effeminate cowards and females mannish. They will be adolescent emotional-tyrants in adult-size bodies: sinister, greedy, spiteful, vindictive, treacherous, back-stabbing sophists. They will celebrate Lucifer (the devil) and in their madness actively seek the way of Luciferian initiation because they will be spiritually blind in regard to total reality. Like demons they will flee from the cross of Jesus but exalt the devil as the first free thinker, the genetic creator of man, the seething energy and angel of evolution. Truth will be lies, evil will be good, unfaithfulness will be faith and the 'wise' will preach and blaspheme from pulpits, exercise political power, enact legislation, and wield broken law to plunder, punish, and ruin.
Zarathustra has been right on both counts. First, apostatizing W. Europe and America, though dotted here and there by small islands of Light, decency and sanity, are becoming darkened, satanically inverted places ruled by the 'wise,' hence boiling over with madness, particularly Hollywood, academia, mainstream media and the highest, most powerful political offices in the land. Second, Nietzsche was made to show the 'wise' what is in store for them by spending the last eleven years of his life insane.
© Linda Kimball
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