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Tuesday, March 17, 2020

CHINA "RATCHETING UP THREATS" TO CUT OFF U.S. DRUG SUPPLY~CLINTON & OBAMA ADMINISTRATIONS ALLOWED CHINA TO MONOPOLIZE THE DRUG MARKET

CHINA "RATCHETING UP THREATS" 
TO CUT OFF U.S. DRUG SUPPLY 
Gillian Turner reports China is threatening to plunge America 'into the mighty sea of the coronavirus' by imposing controls on the export of pharmaceuticals to America.

China Threatens to Cut Off Medicine, Throw America into ‘Mighty Sea of Coronavirus’

BY JOHN HAYWARD
SEE: https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/13/hayward-china-threatens-to-cut-off-medicine-throw-america-into-mighty-sea-of-coronavirus/republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
An article in China’s state-run Xinhua news service last week threatened to impose restrictions on medical exports so the United States will be “plunged into the mighty sea of coronavirus.”
The Xinhua piece, published on March 4 and entitled “Be Bold: The World Owes China a Thank You,” was largely composed of standard Chinese Communist Party propaganda about how the world stands in awe of China’s amazing response to the coronavirus outbreak. Naturally, it neglected to mention how the virus ran wild in the first place because of Chinese bureaucratic incompetence and cover-ups.
The Chinese have become as determined to wipe the first months of the coronavirus from the pages of history as they are to keep anyone from remembering Tiananmen Square. The Xinhua article made a point of noting that China has leverage over the U.S. and Europe because it can restrict the supply of medicines that were unwisely outsourced to China in the heyday of globalism. 
The Chinese paper explicitly threatened to do so if Americans and Europeans continue criticizing its response to the coronavirus or act too slowly to lift travel bans and other restrictions the Chinese government dislikes, but then cushioned the threat in the Communist Party’s usual creepy way by insisting China is filled with so much “love” for the world that it would never harm the people of other countries, or even “insult” them the way China has been “insulted” during the coronavirus epidemic. 
One of the insults harped on by Xinhua was Walter Russell Mead’s February 3 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal entitled “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” a piece that prompted Beijing to expel Wall Street Journal reporters and begin complaining incessantly that Mead’s piece was insulting and racist. According to Xinhua’s March 4 editorial, Mead, his column, and the entire Wall Street Journal publication are now “infamous.”
Although most commentary has focused on the “mighty sea of coronavirus” threat, the Xinhua piece is also interesting as an early example of the Chinese Communist propaganda crusade to portray the coronavirus as originating in the United States and claim it was brought to Wuhan by the U.S. Army. Xinhua muttered darkly on March 4 about Americans “returning from Wuhan, China” right before the outbreak exploded and complained it was therefore hypocritical and insulting for the U.S. to impose travel bans on China.
The article was noticed and partially translated by Fox News on Friday in light of the Food and Drug Administration’s announcement that at least one unspecified drug useful for treating coronavirus patients is currently in short supply because the components for the drug cannot be obtained readily enough from China.
“In other words, they threatened to kill us, and we’re all sort of standing back like, ‘Oh, you know it’s not a big deal.’ It’s a terrifying situation,” Tucker Carlson of Fox News said on Wednesday.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) warned in a Fox News interview on Thursday that “about 80 percent of the active ingredients” in some vital drugs come from abroad, “and the overwhelming majority of that 80 percent are manufactured in China.”
Rubio and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich elaborated on China’s leverage over the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, and other sectors of the American economy, in an op-ed for Fox:
For years, China has enticed American multinational corporations with access to its markets in exchange for off-shoring and sharing intellectual property. Americans watched as Beijing captured critical portions of global supply chains, including in pharmaceutical drugs and medical equipment. Today, up to 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in American drugs are sourced abroad.
Now, in the face of a pandemic, the absence of domestic capacity in critical medical sectors has critically endangered both the U.S. public health system and our economy. The inability to quickly increase the production of key supplies, such as surgical masks, medical gowns, respirators and pharmaceutical drugs limits our ability to mitigate the worst effects of the disease in this emerging crisis and in any future pandemic.
It is unacceptable that China holds this much leverage over America’s public health and economy, both essential components of our national security. For this reason, we propose that the U.S. take action to expand our production capacity while global supply chains are in flux and the global economy teeters on the edge of recession.
Rubio and Gingrich suggested encouraging and incentivizing American corporations to bring manufacturing capacity back from overseas, especially from hostile areas like China, taking advantage of the current chaos in global markets to implement measures that might have seemed unacceptably risky or painful in calmer times.
“America must make rebuilding our domestic supply chain a priority of its own,” they wrote, comparing their recommendations to Beijing’s deliberate strategy for capturing the biomedical industry.
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SEE ALSO:
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:
The country that brought Wuhan Virus into the world is now threatening us with it. It’s time to reverse the leftist sellout of America that has put Beijing in charge of our drug supply chain.

CHINA THREATENS TO THROW AMERICA ‘INTO THE MIGHTY SEA OF THE CORONAVIRUS.’

China is threatening to wreak havoc on America’s drug supply amid the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. Thanks to our globalist elite and especially missteps during the Obama-Biden administration, Beijing has the power to do just that.
By Christian Whiton, National Interest
China is threatening to wreak havoc on America’s drug supply amid the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. Thanks to our globalist elite and especially missteps during the Obama-Biden administration, Beijing has the power to do just that.

IN AN ARTICLE IN XINHUA, ONE OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY’S MOUTHPIECES, BEIJING THREATENED THAT IT CAN IMPOSE PHARMACEUTICAL EXPORT CONTROLS AFTER WHICH AMERICA WILL BE “PLUNGED INTO THE MIGHTY SEA OF CORONAVIRUS.”

Unfortunately, Beijing isn’t bluffing about this capability.
As Rosemary Gibson, co-author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine,” testified to a congressional commission last summer, China has a dominant role in the manufacture of the generic drugs that comprise 90 percent of what Americans take.
The critical vulnerability isn’t just in finished drugs, but what are called active pharmaceutical ingredients, some 80 percent of which America now imports. Most of these come from Red China.
Even finished drugs from other sources are dependent on China. Another major source of generic drugs is India, and 80 percent of that country’s drug ingredients come from China.
There are many culprits behind this betrayal, but some deserve special mention.
Foremost is the globalist cabal that exported our industries to China in the name of “free trade.” As Gibson also reports, within four years of passage of the Clinton-era law giving China unfettered access to U.S. markets and WTO membership, “the last penicillin fermentation plant in the U.S. closed; China’s vitamin C cartel forced the closure of the last U.S. production facility, and the last aspirin manufacturing facility ceased business because of predatory pricing by Chinese firms.”
The Chinese government has used its favorite playbook to make the world dependent on its drugs: protecting and subsidizing domestic manufacturers to undersell American competitors, aided by Chinese industrial espionage. Indeed, biotechnology is one of ten categories of Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” industrial strategy which has driven so much of its theft of intellectual property and dumping of goods at below-market prices to kill U.S. businesses.
Among the globalists, the former Obama-Biden administration is particularly culpable for putting America at risk. During the eight years of that administration, then-Vice President Biden was often the frontman for responding to the increasing number of foreign outbreaks to which America has been exposed.
During the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic in 2009, Biden incorrectly addressed the public about the outbreak, “I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now… It’s that you are in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft.”
Speaking about the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, Biden recently said, “I was part of making sure that pandemic did not get to the United States, saved millions of lives.” In fact, the Obama administration admitted people known to have the disease to America.
Are we to believe that amid all of this attention to outbreak that Biden and his globalist colleagues didn’t know of America’s growing inability to make even the most basic pharmaceuticals? Throughout the Obama-Biden administration, our dependence on China got much worse.
Last month, Biden criticized the Trump administration’s response to Wuhan coronavirus. Initially, he slammed the president’s unprecedented decision to stop flights from China: “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia–hysterical xenophobia–and fearmongering.”
Later he flip-flopped to accusing Trump of not doing enough, imagining if he were president that, “I would be on the phone with China making it clear we are going to need to be in your country. You have to be open. You have to be clear. We have to know what’s going on.”
Of course, Beijing’s unwillingness to allow anything of the sort is a reason their coronavirus has spread far and wide. Oddly, Biden and his fellow globalists remain sanguine about China and their ability to influence its communist government. Last year, he said of China, “they’re not bad folks,” and “they’re not competition for us.”
Of course Biden was not alone, and neither were the Democrats. The House of Bush was always fond of the myth that economic engagement of China, evidently on terms favorable to Beijing, would turn an adversary into an ally. The myth lives on. Bob Zoellick, who was George W. Bush’s trade kingpin, has been an outspoken opponent of Trump’s effort to end U.S. dependence on China, lamely claiming, “You can’t contain China.”
To fix this medical vulnerability, Trump should apply gradually increasing, permanent tariffs on Chinese drugs and ingredients. He should also establish a strategic reserve of drugs by requiring the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs to buy only drugs that are 100 percent made in America. This domestic demand would create domestic supply.
Trump should also press drug companies to start a crash program to achieve supply chain independence from China. If would be great if he could achieve this through an appeal to patriotism. If not, he should use the Defense Production Act of 1950 to force the issue.
It’s time to reverse the globalist sellout of America that has put Beijing in charge of our drug supply chain.
Christian Whiton, a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest, is the author of Smart Power: Between Diplomacy and War. He was a State Department senior advisor during the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.
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SEE ALSO:
https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/arming-china-its-bill
-clintons-fault-michael-ledeen 

NORTH CAROLINA: AMID CORONAVIRUS, GOING TO CHURCH IS A MISDEMEANOR, WHILE RESTAURANTS, LIBRARIES STILL ALLOWED

NORTH CAROLINA: AMID CORONAVIRUS, GOING TO CHURCH IS A MISDEMEANOR, WHILE RESTAURANTS, LIBRARIES  STILL ALLOWED
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:
Governor Roy Cooper issued an executive order in North Carolina today limiting mass gatherings to no more than 100 people while also closing public schools.
Executive order 117 states that “to help protect the health and well-being of North Carolinians, I [Governor Roy Cooper] hereby prohibit mass gatherings in the State of North Carolina.”
However, according to the executive order, “a mass gathering does not include normal operations at airports, bus and train stations, medical facilities, libraries, shopping malls and centers, or other spaces where more than one hundred persons are gathered. It also does not include office environments, restaurants, factories, grocery stores or other retail establishments.”
While it is understandable that medical facilities and airports would be exempt, but one can only wonder why restaurants and libraries would be exempt from the mandate, but not churches.
Hundreds of churches across North Carolina meet regularly on Sunday mornings with more than 100 people and, according to the executive order, violations “may be subject to prosecution” and “punishable as a Class 2 misdemeanor.”
The full text of the executive order is below:

CALIFORNIA: DESPITE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, ORGANIZERS VOW TO BRING A GAY PRIDE FLESH FESTIVAL TO LOS ANGELES IN 2020

CALIFORNIA: DESPITE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, ORGANIZERS VOW TO BRING  A GAY PRIDE FLESH FESTIVAL TO LOS ANGELES IN 2020
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:
While the recent pandemic of the coronavirus is shutting down churches and other organized events around the globe, gays are promising that despite the outbreak, to bring a gay pride march to Los Angeles at some point in 2020.
Sane people would look at the crisis and, at the behest of medical experts, avoid unnecessary contact with the public until the pandemic has eased — and that isn’t expected to happen for a while. However, organizers of Los Angeles annual gay pride festival — a flesh festival where infectious diseases are already far more prevalent than in the general population — are promising that even though it may be delayed, there will be a gay pride march in 2020.
The LA Pride event is one of the largest in the nation and was scheduled for June 12-14 for 2020. However, they are already looking at other dates.
“In the coming weeks and months, we will make sure that the spirit of Pride is not forgotten,” the organizers said in a letter to Los Angeles homosexuals. “We are still working out all the details, but we can guarantee that LA’s LGBTQ+ community — and the entire world — will not get through 2020 without a Pride celebration to remember.”
It should be noted that a “community” that is already at a much higher risk for infectious diseases is unscathed by the outbreak but churches, Christians, and others who are taking precautions to stay clean and avoid the outbreak are the ones being affected the most. This is seriously a world that is under the judgment of God as so many are under a delusion of false security.

INSTEAD OF FIGHTING INFECTIOUS DISEASE, CDC WASTES $ MILLIONS ON TRANSGENDER BEAUTY PAGEANTS & GUN CONTROL

CDC BURNS THROUGH TAX DOLLARS
In 2007, Sen. Tom Coburn’s fiscal audit of the agency discovered vulgar expenditures including CDC syphilis prevention funds spent to host a “safe-sex” event with a porn star, CDC HIV/AIDS prevention funds spent on a transgender beauty pageant, and $45 million in CDC funding spent on conferences featuring prostitutes, protests and beach parties.

INSTEAD OF FIGHTING INFECTIOUS DISEASE, CDC WASTES $ MILLIONS ON TRANSGENDER BEAUTY PAGEANTS & GUN CONTROL
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:
As Americans, as a freedom-loving society, it’s difficult to fathom and comprehend the current health crisis we’re facing right now. With Americans on lockdown, barely able to leave our homes, we’ve trusted our government to protect our freedoms — after all, that’s what our government was designed to do.
Instead, our government has failed us — time and time again, demonstrably so. Our government which should be using our tax dollars for no other purpose but to protect our freedoms and uphold our constitutional rights, has, instead, been wasting our tax money on frivolous pet causes for special interest groups.
Chief among those, LGBTQ activist groups.
It has been revealed in a recent report released at Real Clear Politics that the United States Center for Diseased Control (CDC) has, instead of studying and fighting infectious diseases, been wasting money on transgender beauty pageants, safe-sex events featuring a sex-video star, and pushing gun control. Real Clear Politics reports,
At nearly $7 billion, CDC’s annual budget is more than 200% larger than it was two decades ago. On top of that, a shady big business lobbying group called Corporate Friends of CDC has raised hundreds of millions of supplemental dollars — which raises serious conflict-of-interest issues. In 2007, Sen. Tom Coburn’s fiscal audit of the agency discovered vulgar expenditures including CDC syphilis prevention funds spent to host a “safe-sex” event with a porn star, CDC HIV/AIDS prevention funds spent on a transgender beauty pageant, and $45 million in CDC funding spent on conferences featuring prostitutes, protests and beach parties.
Despite the flood of money, the agency been caught flat-footed on outbreak after outbreak. They squander untold millions on other health threats in favor of pushing gun control and nanny state hobby horses (TV violence, helmet laws, video games, anti-bullying campaigns and explicit sex education, for example). CDC has one primary job — disease control — but has managed to botch it without ever learning from past failures.
As Americans, we should be outraged by this. But sadly, we’re not — and likely, we’re numb to this kind of wasteful and frivolous spending. But right now, we’re feeling the effects of our government’s unconstitutional actions, activism, and wasteful spending like never before.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t a problem that Donald Trump or any other president is going to fix. This is how our society now operates. This is considered “normal” among rank-and-file Americans who pay outrageous taxes to big government operations to fund the nanny-state we now live in. We, as a society, have come way too far in our dependence on government. And while we still consider ourselves a free nation, the truth is, we’re not. And we’re finally getting a taste of what socialism will look like if we keep going in this direction.
Hopefully, Americans will wake up — but this is the time that Christians should be proclaiming the sovereignty of God over all things and learn to trust in Him instead. This is not to say we shouldn’t be active in government — we should. But let’s remember that Jesus’ Kingdom is not of this world. Let’s long for His return.

THE AMERICAN LEGION GIVES BIG PUSH FOR VETERANS TO PRACTICE TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION

EDITOR JEFF STOFFER:
IMG_5349
THE AMERICAN LEGION GIVES BIG PUSH 
FOR VETERANS TO PRACTICE TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION 
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:
In a 2020 three-part series titled “Mysteries of the Mind,” The American Legion magazine tells veterans they should practice transcendental meditation if they feel stressed, saying that TM “can help veterans confronting PTSD.” Writer of the article, American Legion magazine editor Jeff Stoffer, enthusiastically adds:
Those who practice TM say the key to unlocking clear thought and function, no matter the situation, is to spend 20 minutes twice a day deliberately thinking about nothing, allowing the brain to essentially have a mind of its own. . . . Transcendental meditation, as a treatment for veterans diagnosed with PTSD, is not a New Age fad.
The American Legion has a strong influence throughout the world. According toThe American Legion magazine website,
The American Legion was chartered by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic veterans organization. Focusing on service to veterans, servicemembers and communities, the Legion evolved from a group of war-weary veterans of World War I into one of the most influential nonprofit groups in the United States. . . . Today, membership stands at nearly 2 million in more than 13,000 posts worldwide.
Stoffer’s article does nothing but offer praise and accolades for meditation and downplays those who have concerns about it:
TM should not be ruled out because of any stereotypes or cultural biases. . . . Some skepticism is based on a perception that TM is a religious activity or has a specific spiritual or ideological bent. “To the contrary, we have found people becoming more understanding of their religion, more at peace with their god,” [brain-scientist Tony] Nader says. “We used to say that if religion is to invite God to your home, TM can be like cleaning your home.” . . .
“You’re not changing how you think. You’re not changing politics. You can be a Republican. You can be a Democrat. You can be Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim – it doesn’t change you. You’re still who you are. Your mind is just in a better place. It doesn’t change you. It changes your physiology. It changes your mind. It changes how you deal with everything else.”
It is most unfortunate that Stoffer’s article gives no warning of the potential dangers in practicing meditation. His one-sided, biased view will no doubt convince many American Legion readers (veterans) to give it a try. And if they take Stoffer’s word for it, they’ll probably never research the matter and discover the real dynamics behind meditation. Stoffer’s article claims that meditation “doesn’t change you,” but admits it “changes your mind.” What a contradiction! If something changes your mind, it does change you. And as we have witnessed within Christianity with contemplative prayer (a “Christianized” eastern-meditation practice), meditation alters the way one thinks about God, sin, salvation, and just about everything in life itself—and, biblically speaking, not for the good.
The American Legion magazine’s motto is “For God and Country Since 1919,” but we do not believe the God of the Bible would agree with its efforts to turn veterans into eastern-religion meditators.
If you know a veteran, perhaps you might consider giving them a copy of Ray Yungen’s booklet, Meditation! Pathway to Wellness or Doorway to the Occult?. If you want to give a copy of this booklet to a veteran and cannot afford to purchase the booklet, e-mail us at editors@lighthousetrails.com, and we will send you a free copy to give to your veteran friend or relative.
The following list of the possible results from meditating is derived from the various sources we used to compile our booklet on mindfulness meditation:
insomnia fear hypersensitivity to light and sound anxiety difficulty eating panic and paranoia psychosis seizures mania visual hallucinations unable to function or work a loss of sense of identity psychotic depression elevated mood and grandiose delusions unrestrained behaviors (sexual and violence) pain confusion and disorientation feelings of emptiness and ennui (listlessness, dissatisfaction) depersonalization impairment of social relationships cognitive, perceptual and sensory aberrations disempowering causes passiveness and compliance (even when those are negative responses to certain situations)
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SEE:
AUDIO: https://www.legion.org/sites/legion.org/files/legion/audio/
06%20-%20Mysteries%20Of%20The%20Mind%2C%20Wanted%20-
%20Your%20Brain.mp3
https://www.legion.org/magazine/247895/mysteries-mind-part-1-
wanted-your-brain
https://www.legion.org/magazine/248103/mysteries-mind-part-2-
journey-inward
https://www.legion.org/magazine/248353/mysteries-mind-part-3-
truth-about-tbi

EMERGENT MANIFESTO OF HOPE (DESPAIR) REVISITED~HOW IT HAS AFFECTED TODAY'S CHURCH~"CRITICAL RACE THEORY", A MARXIST, COLLECTIVIST CONCEPT THAT REMOVES INDIVIDUAL SIN, REPLACED BY OPPRESSED/OPPRESSOR GROUPS

EMERGENT MANIFESTO OF HOPE (DESPAIR) REVISITED~HOW IT HAS AFFECTED TODAY'S CHURCH 
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 
purposes:
In 2007, Lighthouse Trails wrote a book review on a book titled Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Today, thirteen years later, we are seeing the “fruit” of the emergent church (that, incidentally, was spawned by leaders like Rick Warren, Bob Buford, and Bill Hybels as is documented in Faith Undone by Roger Oakland). The so-called fruit of this well-planned, well-financed emergent manifesto has ripened within the church exalting corrupt and anti-biblical ideologies such as a social justice-gospel, spiritual formation (i.e., contemplative spirituality), interspirituality, homosexual and transgender lifestyle acceptance, communistic socialism, evolution, convoluted eschatology (which rejects Bible prophecy and Christ’s return), panentheism, and more recently, as seen in the SBC, critical race theory—all of which are anything but a theology of hope. On the contrary, this emergent manifesto has created despair, confusion, and an exit from biblical faith by countless young people.
At the Lighthouse Trails office, we hear from so many anguished parents and grandparents who are trying to figure out why their now-grown children and grandchildren have turned away from the biblical faith of their youth to an unrecognizable belief system. We are convinced that many many of these young people were drawn into an emergent view via Christian colleges, youth groups, mission societies, books, and organizations. Below is a repost of our 2007 article, which describes this manifesto of doubt over faith.

Emergent Manifesto: Emerging Church Coming Out of the Closet”

Emergent Manifesto of Hope is the new release from Emersion, a publishing partnership between Baker Books and Emergent Village. The book, edited and compiled by emergent leaders Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt, is a collection of essays by various emerging church leaders. Pagitt says the book “provides a rare glimpse inside the emerging church.” This “rare glimpse” actually lays out the agenda of the movement, and in essence Emergent Manifesto is the emerging church’s coming out of the closet tribute.
The back cover of Emergent Manifesto describes it as a “front-row” look at this “influential international movement” and promises readers that they will come away with “a deeper understanding of the hopeful imagination that drives the emerging church.” Readers are also told that they will “appreciate the beauty of a conversation that is continually being formed.” However, the book fails to deliver any “beauty.”
A more accurate title for this book would be Emergent Manifesto of False Hope, and a subtitle (albeit a lengthy one) that would describe it perfectly would go something like this:
The Kingdom of God is already here on earth, includes all people, all faiths, and in fact is in all people and all of creation and can be felt or realized through mysticism which connects everything together as ONE.
This new collective spirituality leads people into a socialistic community where rituals, practices, and social justice become a means of salvation, but not the salvation you think of in a personal sense of being born-again through Jesus Christ. This is a collective salvation that includes whole cultures and communities who follow the way of someone referred to as Jesus.
Tony Jones lays the ground work for the book by referring to the “highest good” (for humanity) and explains that when Emergent began (in 1998) the group was “engaging in some sort of ‘socially established cooperative human activity’”(p. 14). “Cooperative” is a theme that runs through the book. Doug Pagitt says Emergent is a “call to friendship … with the world” and this “friendship” is a “dangerous leap” in which many ways have been created to connect (p. 19). Throughout the book, these ways to connect become quite obvious. While often called other terms in the book, the concepts behind them are interspirituality (all religions coming together), panentheism (God is in all creation), universalism (all are saved), and mysticism (the means by which this connecting takes place).
In this “sense of interconnection,” the book states:
[R]enewed popularity of the “kingdom” language is related to the emerging global narrative of the deep ecology movement – a consciousness and awareness that everything matters and is somehow interdependent (p. 27).
Emergent leader (and New Age sympathizer), Leonard Sweet (in his book Quantum Spirituality) calls this the Theory of Everything. This theory not only says that all creation is connected but that it is all inhabited with Divinity (God).
The Manifesto describes “themes” of “integrative theology” as: Interest in monastic practices, contemplative and bodily spiritual formation disciplines, celebrating earth, humanity, cultures, and the sensuous (p. 28). In a chapter titled “Meeting Jesus at Bars” the Manifesto favorably includes visiting monasteries, practicing yoga, engaging in silent retreats, and chanting with monks (p. 38). One writer in the book has this to say:
I am a Christian today because of a Hindu meditation master. She taught me some things that Christians had not. She taught me to meditate, to sit in silence and openness in the presence of God…. I believe that all people are children of God. (p.45)
While the book does list praying and reading Scripture as one of the practices to engage in, it offers a disclaimer that this is not what is most spiritually nourishing but rather “our relationship with others give us the most insight into who God is and where God is leading us” (p. 38). And this is really the essence of the book. Harmless, some may say. No, anything but. The Emergent Manifesto belittles personal, one-on-one relationship with the Lord and insists it is a collective salvation that really matters. The goal of this cooperative movement is to participate in “the healing of our world” and to “collaborate with our Maker in the fulfillment of God’s reign on Earth” (p. 30).
The Manifesto makes clear that followers of this new, collective religion should not be concerned about saving “people from the jaws of hell,” but should rather be “motivated … to be in relationship with people who in many ways are different” (p. 35). The focus should not be on conversion as much as “cultivation of relationships.” The lofty language used in the Manifesto, reminiscent of legal or medical language, makes the writers seem highly intellectual but the reading difficult to comprehend. However, while the language in the book is often obscure and metaphorical, the ideologies are evident. To describe interspirituality, the book says:
If the Emergent conversation is to have a “next chapter,” it will need to learn from other sketches outside of Western Christendom (p. 68). [Translation: incorporate the belief systems of other religions.]
Or this one:
[T]he environment that Emergent seeks to create – a studio for sketching, a place of freedom and divergence … [Emergent Village] is more committed to equipping any and all for the process of emergence (p. 70).
Manifesto talks significantly about those who refuse to change and bend with this “process of emergence.” Pagitt states:
While immovability may be a fine role for religion, it may not serve the story of God’s action in the world very well … I don’t think it is possible to tell the story of faith from the posture of sameness and stability …. Ours is a story of the expanding life of God generating new creation … of collective faith. (pp. 75-76)
When Pagitt speaks of “expanding life of God” and “new creation,” he means that we cannot contain truth or reality within the confines of the written Word of God but that truth is always changing and being created.
Universalism is a pronounced theme in the book as well. Manifesto calls salvation “a collective experience.” A Manifesto poem illustrates this:
Not only soul, whole body! Not only whole body, all of the faithful community! Not only all of the faithful community, all of humanity! Not only all of humanity, all of God’s creation! (pp. 82-83)
And panentheism (God is in all) is exhibited through statements like the following, which talks about the “holiness of humanity”:
[W]e are agents for change in the world (salvation, redemption, and reconciliation … it is a celebration of the holiness of humanity in which the fullness of God was pleased to dwell … it is our holy fleshiness. (p. 88)
What do the emerging church leaders hope to accomplish? Well, they tell us. They want you … they want the church to join up with them. Listen to this explanation:
The existing church/emerging church matrix can dissolve into missional collaboration and generative friendship. (p. 107)
And hearing that, we must ask, Is that what Josh McDowell is doing by endorsing Dan Kimball’s book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church,2 and is that what David Jeremiah is doing by consistently promoting Erwin McManus? Are Christian leaders helping to bring about this dream of the emerging church by dissolving into it? Unfortunately, the answer to that seems to be yes. But how can we as believers follow them into this dark abyss?
In regard to biblical descriptions of last days apostasy, how does the Manifesto relate? It doesn’t. In speaking of the days that the Book of Revelation describes, the Manifesto states:
[F]olks who hang around the emerging church tend to see goodness and light in God’s future, not darkness and gnashing of teeth … [some] take the view that we’re in a downward spiral, and when things “down here” become bad enough, Jesus will return in glory…. We’re caught in the tractor beam of redemption and re-creation, and there’s no sense fighting it, so we might as well cooperate. (p. 130)
There is another underlying theme that is permeating the pages of this book and many of the other emerging church books in print, including Dan Kimball’s. There is a continual hammering away and chiseling down of the image of Christians (the kind who take the Bible literally and stand by its authority). This effort to villainize Christians is reminiscent of Germany in the 30s when artists would draw distorted pictures of Jews with certain facial features making them look weird, and when rumors and stories would run amuck even suggesting that Jews would rape your daughters, so don’t trust them. This all-out effort to get society to hate and mistrust the Jews worked. It was a campaign, not based on fact, but based on a demonic kingdom that hates anything that has to do with Jesus Christ. In the Manifesto, Brian McLaren boils down the world’s evils to the fault of Western Christians and suggests that these resisting Christians might even become militant against people one day. (Hitler was able to persuade people that the Jews were a threat so they better take them out before the Jews got them.) McLaren states:
What are we in the so-called emerging churches seeking to emerge from? I asked myself. We are seeking to emerge from modern Western Christianity, from colonial Christianity, from Christianity as a “white man’s religion … into a faith of collaborative mission … It is immediately clear that this kind of emergence must lead to a convergence — in the West, across denominations and across current polarizations, a convergence of postconservatives and postliberals into what Hans Frei and Stanley Grenz termed a new “generous orthodoxy.” (p. 150)
[M]any will react and oppose this emergence, seeking to maintain the hegemony of the West … perhaps even seeking a revival of crusading Christendom. (151)
In Ray Yungen’s book, For Many Shall Come in My Name, he discusses this very thing and shows how New Age leaders have been framing a social mindset that will eventually become hostile to Bible-believing Christians. Yungen explains how it will all be justified as doing humanity a favor by getting rid of them, and when he quotes the words of New Ager Neale Donald Walsch as saying that God believes Hitler did the Jews a favor by killing them, it sends chills up the spine. And whether they realize what they are doing or not, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren and other emergent leaders are framing a similar mindset for people to climb into.
While it is sad to think about persecution that may be coming upon believers, it is even more tragic to realize how many unsaved people will never hear the Gospel because so many Christian leaders have given the emerging church a thumbs up. The publishers and editors at Baker Books should be ashamed of themselves for exalting such anti-Christ teachings or at the very least stop calling themselves a Christian publisher.
For those who are still skeptical about the Emergent Manifesto’s message, pick up a used copy sometime of Alice Bailey’s The Externalization of the Hierarchy, or Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. And when you read those words by those “change agents,” see if you notice that the message is the same, just dressed in a different outfit called Emergent.
Emergent Manifesto does indeed “provide a rare glimpse,” but not one of hope. Rather it is a look into the near future of a world that is racing toward spiritual destruction through severe deception as the Bible predicts when it says that Satan will someday deceive the whole world (Revelation 12:9).
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Letter to the Editor: “Critical Race Theory”—A Political Tactic That Results in Cultural/Marxist Segregation
SEE: https://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletters/2020/newsletter20200316.htmrepublished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
LTRP Note: The following letter is written in response to a recent LT post regarding the SBC and Critical Race Theory.
Dear Editors:
“Critical Theory” and “Critical Race Theory” (CT/CRT) stratagem originated with the Frankfurt School where some Marxists came up with the more subtle scheme of “Cultural Marxism”—it is a political tactic which is all about gaining power over society (as is Marxism). In other words, CT/CRT is used to deceive people and increase the number of Marxist-minded individuals in order to undermine existing power so that Marxism can take over.
This overthrow will first be achieved “culturally,” and then complete economic, political, and societal control will follow. This is all done under the guise of things like: releasing the Oppressed; “setting the captives free;” social justice; helping the downtrodden; overthrowing “white supremacy” [which is committed by all with white skin according to CRT advocates]”; “smashing the patriarchy;” and a prevailing “us verses them” mentality. Religion and politics are often melded into one.
As a result, Alt-Left politics overtakes an individual’s religion, and that person’s religion becomes Leftist politics. (Note: It is common for a few verses to be used and perverted in order to sway Christ-followers into Marxist ideology (e.g. “seeking the peace of the city”; e.g. Jer 29:7; Lk 4:18; 2 Pet 3:16; 2 Tim 2:15-18).)
CRT/CT also includes being “Woke,” politically speaking.
The main approach in CRT/CT is to cause division, bitterness, envy, and strife by perpetually pitting classes against each other, particularly through false accusations. This is chiefly done by segregating everyone into the Oppressors or the Oppressed—and to then persistently demonize and seek to destroy those falsely judged to be Oppressors.
M.
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Letter to the Editor: Please Further Explain “Cultural Marxism” and “Critical Race Theory”
SEE: https://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletters/2020/newsletter20200316.htmrepublished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Dear Lighthouse Trails:
Your article about SBC adopting CRT was well-written and quite interesting. I hope you continue to talk about this and keep informing us of the vast changes going on in most of today’s denominations. Your comments about Calvinism overtaking SB churches is true, too. I’m a member of a Baptist church here in the South and see their doctrine is basically Calvinistic. They also have a “Trunk or Treat” activity around Halloween, which bothers me greatly.
I rarely go to church now, due to both health issues and biblical disagreement with the leaders.
The problem with articles like yours is, rarely does a Christian even know what “Cultural Marxism” or Critical Race Theory are or even the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Please, in the future, take time to define, clearly and easily with simple wording, what all of these things are. It’s imperative for Christians to get out of their worldliness and foggy thinking. Remember most people are “dumbed down” effectively by the gadgets and gods of this world, so in the future, when you write excellent articles dealing with subjects like this, remind yourself who you’re probably talking to, and go from there.
I do agree with your article and was nodding my head in agreement when you said “if SBC does have a racist problem, then they have a salvation problem with too many of it’s members.” AMEN. Keep telling the absolute, un-sugar-coated truth.
N.B.
Hamilton
[Critical Race Theory] doesn’t depend on your personal feeling, sentiment, [or] heart condition—it’s based on the group that you’re born into. . . . It completely eliminates individual responsibility, individual sin and expands it to corporate sin. And based on how you’re born, you are immediately ascribed into an “oppressor” or “oppressed” group. . . . Jesus articulated the primary commandments: love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself . . . We don’t need these anti-Christ, unbiblical tools to teach us how to love our neighbors as ourselves—the scripture is sufficient for that.Abraham Hamilton III
LTRP Comment: Lighthouse Trails plans to do further reporting on this issue in 2020.
Below is the documentary on Critical Race Theory that the December 2019 Lighthouse Trails article referred to.
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