The Truth Which Sets Free - Chapter 16. Christian Books, Music, Film

An exposure of the false teaching of Christianity concerning the reason for evil and suffering. This is one of the most challenging and deepest areas in the Word of God.

The following four booklets are now also included in the Addendum of The Truth Which Sets Free.

Raising the Dead

Spirit of the Living God

Amazing Grace

Harlot Babylon

Acknowledgements and Sources

Chapter 16. Christian Books, Music, Film

It used to irk me to enter Christian bookstores looking for the few good writings (some there by mistake, the seller not knowing the contents) and see the plethora of freewill fodder and Pentecostal experiential rubbish, the unscriptural sugary wall platitudes, the sickly theology in the gospel of the bumper-sticker (Got Jesus?). Now I look at those shelves and think, "Yes, that’s Christian, and I don’t have to cringe or make excuses because that is not who I am. I was set apart from that by Another’s will." It simply does not equate with the Power and the Glory that I know, the Lord for whom the galaxies are but creatures within his will and being, the Almighty whose toned down semblance his servants still could not look upon, fearing the voice, falling on their faces. He was the One whose sacred pact to definitely and irrevocably save a people for himself meant the handing over of his most Beloved to ignorant and evil churchmen who would spit on him, taking him like trash outside the city with the criminals, driving him through with spikes. He actually hid his face from his only begotten Son, casting him away in isolated blackness and indescribable agony until payment was extracted in full, that the elect might be brought into the Light, so that our final state would be incalculably above the perfection of the first man before he failed in the garden. For the elect, God shook the universe off its hinges and made a change at the eternal throne, not only making the Word put on flesh but bringing it back in a Man with scars, now sitting at his Right Hand. Got Jesus? As though one could obtain a name in the eternal Book of Life as easily as buying a cheap grocery item. The Christians who coin such infantile sayings have no possible conception of the dread that is, and is to come.

Most Christian bookstores seek to be all things to all men, and end up standing for nothing. They do not have a unity of faith, only ecumenism. They will sell you a protestant book or a rosary, as long as it pays the rent. One look around will tell you that they are somehow all in the same boat, despite many opposing beliefs, from the Roman Mother of all cults to the numerous denominations or "isms," that they are somehow different parts of the same family. And so they are. When writing his well titled book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis first submitted the script to Catholic, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian opinion before publication, an excellent way to ensure that it was acceptable to all, the lowest common denominator that would offend no one, sales guaranteed. Perhaps the most damage inflicted by Lewis was through his fairy tales for children. Lewis was a close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, also a Christian, and together they debated that "eternal truth could best be conveyed through myth," the story of Christ being the "best myth" of all because it was "true myth." What evil subtlety. As though the apostles would have taught a Greek or Roman myth to illustrate Christ. The fables of Narnia or the Ring trilogy are no better than those pagan legends, tales of man saving the day without any turning from sin, nowhere near the reflection of the Son of God who raises the helpless dead to repentance. What Lewis and Tolkien rehashed was the age-old lucrative and popular formula, nothing like the stench of the real message which is an offence to the reprobate (literally those "passed by"), those Egyptians whom God disregards as He searches out His chosen people, those goats He discounts as He saves his sheep whose names are written in the Book. Their stories merely mixed the traditions of men with poor shadowy hints of the real Word, and that is why they are hugely popular with pagan and Christian (neo-pagan) alike. This has been the recipe from the very beginning, myth + truth = Christianity; paganism + scripture = church, and endless variations of that successful equation of death. Indeed, these would be apt names for Christian churches: First Chapel of True Myth, Our Lady of Orthodox Fantasy.

Christian bookstores fill their shelves to the brim with the gospel of the nice plan, promising indiscriminately to anyone that, "God has a wonderful plan for you," and the gospel of the personal testimony, stories and anecdotes about what God has done and is doing in Christians’ lives. God does not have a wonderful plan for anyone who does not repent and obey Christ. The goats can read every one of these books and promise each other anything they like, but if they do not obey and abide in Him their destiny is the eternal fire. He does not have a wonderful plan for anyone whose name is not written in the Book of Life, no matter how many times they have their names written in Christian wonderful life books. If there is anything the children of God should avoid like the plague it is Christian life. Wrong books, wrong life. He certainly has a plan for the goats, and it is indeed full of awesome wonder, but it will not be at all pleasant. To the sheep Christ promises an abundant life in which they will "be hated by all men," and "must suffer for his sake," especially at the persecuting hands of churchmen. (Matthew 10:22; 24:9; Acts 9:15,16) The message entrusted to them is not one of describing their own inner or personal experiences but rather pointing away from themselves to the only individual whose life is acceptable and satisfying to God, the one Lamb who has the right to open the Book of Life on the last day. "We preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as servants for your sake." (2 Corinthians 4:5) The true prophet considers his own works to be like "dirty rags," and at the end of the day the true apostle calls himself the "unworthy servant." (Luke 17:10; Isaiah 64:6) That is not what Christians want to hear. Their ears itch for the gospels of personal experience, classic eastern inward looking religion, navel gazing, enormously popular feel-good fuel for goats. The Book of Life reveals the elect, but these books just bring forth more and more churchmen. Some sell at an astonishing rate, hundreds per hour for Catherine Cookson, the world’s all time best selling author who supposedly escaped from the Church (but not to Christ) and then went back to die in its chains.

Christian publishers follow the footsteps of the world at every turn, writing increasingly farcical reviews of each other’s works, patting each other on the back to promote sales, with book cover references extolling Spirit-soaked, Bible-whopping, pew-uplifting, steeple-soaring inspiration. This is no different from the mutual gratification in secular literary and artistic circles where practically every publication is "the book of the decade" or each movie "the most important of the year." Even the publications themselves get accolades from the world, along the lines of the "best slick and glossy" magazine award; Tabletalk of Ligonier Ministries for instance, a classic church journal. It’s so inconceivable to imagine the apostles writing anything like this, but churchmen love it. Besides, they all claim to be "born again" or "Bible believing" so how can it be questioned? It must be good. Try to find one critical review of these doctrines of death, so enormously popular, esteemed by men. Does that not make you even a tiny bit suspicious? If you have ears to hear yet, it should make you, like the subject in Pilgrim’s Progress, run for your life. It would be almost impossible for a prophet today to be published and carried by those stores. Christian publishers are too ready to reject anything not written by a popular author. That statement alone tells you everything, a declaration of crass unbelief, a pathetic sellout to the world’s ways, the opinion of men. They want food for goats, about goats, by the most popular goats. I know the everlasting church argument, that the rent must be paid, and do not try to delude me that the apostles or early disciples talked like that, or would have set up a publication house on a worldly business plan. If you think that, then you belong to the church. God delights in raising up messengers from the nooks and crannies, choosing such for his purposes. It is possible, thank God, that on rare occasions in history the truth is bought, even if it has to be nailed on a church door by a Luther to first bring attention to it. Tyndale and Bunyan also started from almost nothing and were well received (Pilgrim’s Progress crept out from Bunyan’s jail cell to become the best-selling manmade book of his day). But that is conspicuously absent today. Why? Because the Spirit produced those men during a time of His awakening, not church revival, and they peeled the mask off Christianity. They did not write rave reviews for churchdom. The elect are awakened from the church and if permitted to speak out the church tries to shut them up, even hunts, imprisons and kills them. The church may claim them as its own after they are dead, but does not want them around when they are alive. They do not want what they are doing today to be exposed, so the unchecked church can forge ahead once more, sucking millions toward the wide gate. How far does it have to go before you wake up reader? There are Christian books out there justifying sodomy. What’s next on the God-loves-you agenda, call-girls for Christ?

This is not to say there are no good books at all, only that they are now very rare, and as time passes they are unlikely to be found in Christian bookstores. I’ve had several owners tell me that all copies of the book I was looking for were bought off the shelves by visiting clergy, and it was so obvious they did this to prevent anyone finding such works which exposed them or their church. This is the same tactic used by Eusebius or Augustine, concealing that which lays bare the disgrace of their religion. They will cling only to what suits them, even when it is shown to be wrong. I once tried to explain to a clergyman in Canada (because he was handing out those do-it-yourself salvation booklets to children) that man is dead and cannot cause himself to be born anew by a work of prayer, that no one can truly respond to God unless they are regenerated by His Spirit, that they have no will to exercise true faith unless they are raised from the dead. For a brief moment it seemed his heart was being opened. "They must respond with a will that is regenerated otherwise it is all false?" I said, "Yes, saving faith is a gift, a product of new birth, not the cause of it." Then he frowned and returned into the darkness, to the gospel of church authority, and said angrily that I had no right to teach anyone anything, not being a church member and therefore not having earned the right to speak. He then gave me two books by Charles Hodge and Charles Spurgeon and told me to read them and learn something. I knew the books well, opened them up and underlined the sentences where everything I had just been saying to him was even more clearly stated, and handed them back. He read the passages and was incensed. His rejection of me had nothing to do with my not having earned the right to speak. He could not bear to hear it, even from an authority he himself had unwittingly recommended. He was just another church goat, and his full house was suddenly under threat. If he had accepted the Word his self-salvation strategy would have been void, his church flock would have abandoned him, and he would have had to go out and make an honest living. I have no doubt he discarded those books immediately from his library. I’ve known countless Christian bookstores do exactly that, take the books off their shelves when they find that, in their rush to sell anything to anyone, they have accidentally stocked a title which exposes their whole game plan of popular appeal.

The music scene is just as bad, ever copying the world. I’ve listened to Christian rock bands like The Screaming Disciples in Australia wailing their banshee of noise and watched as excited youth piled out of the church to spray paint Christian graffiti slogans like "God Rulz" on the downtown walls and sidewalks. This was a charismatic assembly of course, but it’s coming soon to a church near you. The church may not have started out that crazy, but unchecked the spiral is ever downwards. The origin of the songs of the Church were false from the beginning, not grounded in truth like the Psalms of the Bible but instead spawning Roman dirges and Orthodox incantations. There are a few examples of scripturally correct lyrics throughout a grand tune, notably in early Protestant songs. Then came revival style Wesleyan hymns replanting the sham that "The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ." Soon the goats were singing those repetitive brain numbing mantras (God is awesome, awesome, awesome, over and over) and childish "happy-clapper" ditties so popular in church indoctrination today. Do not confuse this with the clapping of hands in the Psalms where great truths and works of God are extolled. I once tried to discuss these scriptural songs with a Pentecostal minister, whose eyes burned with hatred but who did not want his flock of goats to see that there could be any disagreement. He grinned in that moronic way that a person does when hiding a feeling that is anything but friendly, and said, "We believe in the doctrine of smiles!" And that is about the size of it. They want happy family songs that will offend no one, which stand for nothing and demand no repentance from sin. And in the end you have Christian Rock like Madonna or Christian "Country & Cistern" stars who will croon that world-loved experiential hymn "Amazing Grace that saved a wretch like me" in one breath and then the same wretches sing their favorite song about adultery in the next. Let them try the scriptural Psalms instead, where God is correctly praised, where his people cry in sorrow and vexation over sin (Psalm 51 and 77), where His mighty works are recounted. Let them sing the psalms where men implore God to save them from their enemies. (Psalm 55, 56 and 57) The church has no such songs, because it has few foes, seeking always to please all and offend none. Let them sing the psalms where His ways and precepts are extolled, and His enemies wished to death, the double dealers consumed in wrath yet not permitted to die. (e.g. Psalm 26, 58, 59, 79, and 119:53,104,113,128,163) The pathetic one-dimensional, feel-good Christian hymns will never touch or embrace both sides of the great and terrible message of God, the Light who hates the darkness of sin, especially man’s adultery with religion. The few good hymns that the sheep once managed to get into the church have almost all disappeared. There are so many songs for goats being produced today that a whole book could be written about them. It is not worth it. If you have ears to hear you will know what to sing and what to leave to the church. Songs for sheep must be in accord with Scripture, every verse, every word that proceeds from the mouth, or they are not acceptable praise.

Christian television and movies are no better, the same old religious message, and yes, you can have the world too. After all, Mel Gibson is a devout Christian and makes millions acting in kill-fest movies. He is no better off than a Scientologist like Tom Cruise or a Buddhist like Richard Gere producing adultery-fest films. No religious stance will offer any protection when the Day comes. Hollywood has ever been thus, promising you can have it all, or hiding the real agenda. The church has taken its cue many times from Disney and Hollywood. This is particularly true in Roman Catholic propaganda movies like The Robe, Quo Vadis or The Mission where history is conveniently rewritten to swindle viewers. The fantasy of Hollywood and Disney is just the same as the church gospel of make-believe where goats emulate sheep. Actors are people who pretend to be other people, and their lives are social catastrophe, the silage of supermarket tabloids. That is not an occupation for the elect, whose job is to be their real selves, not imposters. On one occasion I went to a big evangelical church in London where the congregation was fawning over a famous "born again" actor in the lobby, listening to his "wait on the Lord" and "go on with the Lord" drivel, those platitudes of Christian-spiel. His film roles were anything but godly. Of course, in their discussion they used the same excuse as the world, it’s only make-believe. Precisely, and the children of God are to handle the "word of truth." There is not a scripture anywhere in the Word that says you can lie, steal, murder and fornicate as long as it is in pretense. No apostle or prophet of God would ever have sanctioned anyone making a living that way. Let the goats praise such people, they aptly belong in church and to the world which worships them. After this "service," a successful "born again" business agent was talking in the basement lounge about life in commercial advertising. All sat enrapt as he discussed a TV commercial he had produced for cigars, showing mostly women in scant bikinis rolling in the surf. I think a certain president with a Bible under his arm would have liked it. Finally a young woman from the congregation said something like; "I don’t understand what you are all talking about. This is all false, with overt sexual suggestion, and your very job is based on breaking the tenth commandment, actually making people covet things they don’t need or want." Silence followed by embarrassed sputtering all round. I was not given the time to discover if she was a sheep, or if she escaped those goats, but she certainly knew the difference between reality and pretense.

The church is an enormously lucrative business sham, as fake as those "born again" professional wrestlers whom Christ will not excuse for their popular spectacle, even if it is make-believe. One may feign piety and the other bestiality; both will have the same destiny and it will be all too real. Do not be deceived by the bread and circus entertainment of Christians. The boxer who goes out to hit another in the face for money, quoting, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" will be smashed forever. Early disciples were called "Antisocials" precisely because they were uninterested in such brutish or mindless activities. Athletes publicly pray to God to score a point, and cry and fight when they fail, as do the audience! Ministers will hold tearful remembrances for those who die in a racing car or skydive. Wake up, couch potato, and may Christ grant you life. God is not the slightest bit interested in who gets a ball in a hoop, hole or net. These "skills" for which men are paid absurd sums of money have no value at all in the Way to eternal life. He has no time for those who worship the pagan flame of the Olympics, or people caught up in the wild stupor of crowd mania, or those who throw away precious life in pointless "death-defying" pursuits. They are not winners but "losers," what the scripture calls "the lost," and you do not want to end up where they are going. Forget the "testimonies" of these "Bible believing" creatures that fill the stores. Pay attention to the testimony of the one Man who matters or you will be sucked down into the morass of vainglorious selfishness which is being sprayed over the whole world through every channel available.

During the last century the developments in the various media of paper, radio and screens have enhanced the possibilities of transmission beyond the wildest dreams of those in the past, both in magnitude of appeal and speed of delivery. Now film and rock stars who say they want to "save the environment" can pollute the satellite airwaves with films and songs of killing and illicit sex all day long. Yes, sin is the greatest environmental pollution of all time, and because of it "the whole world is groaning" and will continue to corrode and degenerate until the Cleaner comes. (Romans 8:22) Celebrated artists claim their pornography is "art" when even little children know better. Homosexuals tell us that what happens in the bedroom should be private, but instead their searing guilt causes them to parade it down the streets with in-your-face exhibitions. Supermarket tabloid headlines inform our children, whether we like it or not, which stud Madonna or Princess Diana preferred. And they do belong together in the tabloids, these "stars" and "royalty," along with Billy Graham and the other "evangelists." Ozzy Osbourne and Elton John do belong in a Buckingham Palace Jubilee. Expert analysts tell us that the Bible-toting President’s tryst with a White House aide was not moral filth, and then advise that the details may not be suitable for young viewers. And the world stumbles on in blindness, inundated with make-believe from every side as never before. Radio and TV announcers and advertisers, taking their cue from the "holy voice" sham of Christians, now speak the gospel of the epic voice, that laughable tone used for almost everything, even selling a toilet roll, as though it were critically important. If you make it sound exciting enough, people will buy almost anything, especially those snared in ignorance. African men have rioted after seeing a violent Hollywood movie, and their women fed babies Coca-Cola rather than milk because of the advertisements beamed into their remote villages showing rich people drinking it. People in grass huts can know within hours which film star or royal family member is sleeping with yet another partner. This power has not been lost on the church; it sends its gospels unrelentingly into a myriad of countries, to isolated deserts and far off jungles, to conceive and suckle her young.

The church has always been the grand master of make-believe. Hitler even boasted that he based his SS on the Jesuits (some were Jesuits, a kind of second Inquisition, especially for Jews) and learned his propaganda techniques from the Church, as did Mussolini. The tyrant General Franco received from the Pope the Supreme Order of Christ, a "Defender of the Faith" title (similar to that given to Henry VIII and still held by British monarchs), for his efforts to meld Christianity and Nazism, claiming that the two systems "go hand in hand reforming the world." King Phillip II received similar Papal decorations for his attempts to get the gospel of the Holy Catholic Church back into power in England and "conquer the heretics for Rome," sending the Spanish Armada in 1588. The Jesuits almost succeeded with an attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605. Space does not permit here to cover this perpetual battle, there are other works which cover it copiously. (Hitler’s Pope, The Secret History of Pius XII, Cornwell, Viking 1999; Franco, A Biography, Paul Preston, Harper Collins 1994; The Secret History of the Jesuits, by Edmund Paris, Behind the Dictators by ex-priest L. H. Lehman, and countless online websites regarding similar material as well as the Armada and Gunpowder Plot).

The point is that instantaneous media has now made such overt warfare obsolete. Before such channels existed the clergy literally had to "cross the land and sea," sometimes taking months, in order "to proselytize" and make their "converts," as Jesus described them, "twice over the children of hell." (Matthew 23:15) Now they can do it instantly, with the turning of a dial or flick of a switch. On top of that Protestants have adopted exactly the same gospels as Mother Church, so there is no opposition to topple. Once these gospels for goats have gone out, the task of undoing them becomes gigantic, even hopeless. Yes, salvation is impossible, especially deliverance from the church, except for God’s intervention, with whom all things are possible. (Matthew 19:26) From all the oppressing suffocation of the world the Lord will save his own. Jesus asked, "And shall not God avenge his elect who cry out day and night to Him, though he bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man Comes, will he really find faith on earth?" (Luke 18:7,8) Well, will he? Christians think He will find faith in abundance. What a shock they have in store! Bear with me reader. If you are still reading you are not far from the kingdom of God.

17. Church Rapture?