Paganism Gone Wild: Earth Worship - We Are The Watchmen Weekly REDUX - August 11, 2023
This Week, We Re-Visit One Of Our Most Popular Pieces On Paganism. Read, Share, Subscribe, & Support Our Tour - WeAreTheWatchmen.org
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In this week’s edition, we revisit one of our most popular pieces on “earth worship” and false idols.
All Hail Mother Earth - Time Magazine And Climate Worship - Satan’s “Side Door”
Last week we talked about Satan’s greatest trick… the ability to convince people he didn’t exist.
We use the word ‘didn’t’ because he feels like he’s done such a great job that he can drop the mask, be out in the open, and people will celebrate it.
On April 21, two Time Magazine contributors, Paul Greenberg and Carl Safina penned this piece. We’ll be breaking down the relevant parts into sections for you, with commentary and scripture as usual:
For context: Greenberg teaches in NYU’s Animal Studies Program and is the author most recently of The Climate Diet. Safina holds the Endowed Research Chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and is author of the forthcoming book Alfie and Me.
And, it doesn’t take them long to get to the agenda at hand.
Let’s dig into the article:
“For the two of us environmentalists—one of us nominally Jewish, the other a recovering Catholic—we find the ill-defined nature of the only day honoring the place that makes life itself possible more than a little sacrilegious. So, on this 53rd Earth Day we thought it useful to pose what a real Earth Day should represent and how it could form a central time for a new approach to worship.”
Commentary: Hard Stop.
Let’s set the environmentalist part of this to the side for a moment… it’s designed to distract from the biblical and spiritual issue at hand: Faith.
Notice that one of our writers is “nominally Jewish,” and the other a “recovering Catholic.”
This is a perfect mix for Satan… it checks all of his favorite boxes!
Lukewarm belief
Either you are extreme for the Lord, or you aren’t… period. The thing that He hates most is someone sitting on the fence. As He tells us in Revelation 3:15-16:
15. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!
16. So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
2. Mockery
When you’re lukewarm, it’s easy to mock the creator… seeing that you’re worshipping something else, it’s no big deal… except that it is. As we are told in Galatians 6:7:
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
Playing God
Once you’re lukewarm and open to mocking God, then it’s pretty easy for Satan to convince you that YOU are god. And that has eternal consequences, as we’re shown in 1 John 2:15-17:
15. Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.
16. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.
17. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
Now, Satan has his useful vessels.
Let’s continue with the article:
“So, what would an earth-reverent belief system look like with Earth Day at its center?
To begin with, let’s take a look at what established religions get right and where we might take a cue. Perhaps the first step might be, um, unearthing the nature-centered origins of our existing religious holidays.
Most of us know in the back of our minds that Christmas and Hanukkah fall around the time of the winter solstice; that Easter and Passover are celebrated in tandem with the arrival of spring; that Sukkot and Diwali mark harvest and summer’s last warmth, and Eid follows the path of the moon.
These holidays have origins in gratitude. Gratitude for the sun returning. Gratitude for the harvest that could avert the starvation winter might bring. Thanks for when it did avert it. We could conceivably reframe these holidays as days of thanks for what the natural world gives and reminders that our responsibility for what remains is an ongoing covenant.”
Commentary: Hard Stop.
If you are a believer: This is VERY IMPORTANT for your conversations with non-believers or those who are seeking.
The context for the section above is a slight of the hand from Satan - he’s trying to use logic, making the case for “you can SEE why they created those holidays right?” You MUST make a clear distinction for those who don’t understand this with SCRIPTURE, which we’ll get to in a moment.
If you are a non-believer, lost, or seeking: Welcome and God Bless You. As you’ll see in a moment, just because something sounds good doesn’t mean that it is good.
Friends, this is a textbook case of idolatry. These writers are trying to convince you, logically, that you should worship the creation and not the creator.
That is not good.
As we are told in Isaiah 1:14:
Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
And in Exodus 20:3-5:
3. “You shall have no other gods before me.
4. “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
5. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me
Before you think to yourself, “That’s the OLD Testament!” (Spoiler Alert: It still matters) Let’s take a look at Revelation 9:20 to see what happens when we worship creation:
20. The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk.
The reason that God warns us, sternly, about this is because he understands our sinful nature. If we are not in covenant, we’re alone in Satan’s dominion (that’s here on earth) and susceptible to his manipulation.
That’s where articles like this come from. Scripture shows us how in Colossians 2:18:
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.
Worship “mother earth,” pay the penalty.
Let’s continue with the article’s last paragraph:
“Are we proposing a whole new religion? We’re not quite sure. Maybe an old one.
The core of all religious feeling is the sense that we are part of something much larger in space and deeper in time than ourselves. The world is certainly that.
At any rate we do know that spiritual inquiry, just like scientific inquiry, is not static.
Likewise a whole new continent of scientific knowledge has been revealed to us since America’s first and second religious Great Awakenings.
It seems perfectly reasonable and spiritual to us that in a New Great Awakening this new knowledge-continent be incorporated into a progressive wisdom of life, death, and the universe.”
Commentary: Hard Stop.
While we could include additional scripture here, you may be better served to read (or listen) to this again.
When you do, you’ll see just how effective Satan is with useful idiots… and the end of the article, “perfect reasonable and spiritual” to them… will make sense to you.
Idolatry is alive and well.
It’s more important than ever before that we remain vigilant in the word of God. We’re seeing a “full scatter attack” from Satan where thing, after thing, after thing is being thrown at us in an effort to demoralize and confuse us.
DON’T LET HIM DO THIS. This means we’re closer than ever before to God’s glory and Satan knows this is his last chance.
Those who are lost or seeking need us to be able to talk about things like this and connect the dots to our, their current reality.
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