Since I just made a comment at the evolution blog about Scott Johnson's confusion of the scientific idea of Intelligent Design with the occultic idea that an alien race from another planet were the designers of life on Earth, I thought I should go and listen to his earlier talks on this subject which I hadn't heard before. So here's one of them, The “Ancient Astronaut” Lie: The Shocking Origin of the “Intelligent Design” Theory from December 2007.
It's quite an interesting talk and fits right into my end times blog. This is his coverage of the doctrine of the Raelian cult, about which I've known a little, but this information is good to have. They are very much a typical cult, and this particular talk brings out the commonalities of these cults in what seems to me to be an even more pointed way than I was already aware of.
That is, these cults ALWAYS attack, what? the BIBLE! They ALL have a fascination with Jesus Christ and put out a great deal of energy denying what the Bible says about Him and giving their own version of who he is and what his mission was. You can bet they take pains to insist it had nothing to do with saving humanity from sin by dying for us. No, that, along with everything else we learn from the Bible, is just some way we "misunderstood" the truth about him, OR it's the result of a "mistranslation" of the Bible. Both are common ways the Biblical revelation is debunked these days, by the cults, by "science" and increasingly from many other directions in these last days.
Anyway, the Raelian cult is very much like all the others. Someone was "chosen" to be the recipient of a revelation from "celestial beings" of one sort or another -- all demons under various guises. Sometimes the chosen one is actively possessed by the being/demon, sometimes spoken to -- usually dictated to, some bombastic lying message being imparted as if it were revealed truth from a much higher place. There's always a religious teaching that contradicts the Bible and substitutes some other way of understanding it. The cult of Urantia which got started in the early part of the 20th century, has this pattern. So does A Course in Miracles which captivated Oprah Winfrey. The Seth Books are also similar, although in this case there's more of an occultic general spiritual teaching. But it includes the idea of "Christ Consciousness" which in itself denies the truth about Jesus Christ.
The older cults have the same pattern. Mormonism was created the same way, through a visitation of a chosen one, Joseph Smith in this case, by, in his case supposedly an angel, called Moroni, who revealed to him that Christianity has everything all wrong and gave Smith the Book of Mormon. Islam too is the same sort of cult, having been inaugurated by the visitation of Mohammed by what he believed was the angel Gabriel, who supposedly came to correct Christian misunderstandings and give a revelation that was to transcend the Bible. It's perhaps worth mentioning that one of Mohammed's relatives thought he was demon-possessed, an astute observation I'd say.
Now the Raelian revelation, also given to a chosen one, Rael, by in this case a supposed alien from another planet, goes on at length about the supposed errors in the Bible and gives a very detailed reinterpretation of a great deal of it. It's very much worth listening to this to get a sense of how the disinformation of these cults operates. Apparently this is a video that is viewable at the Raelian website, though we only hear it as Johnson goes through it.
Of course all this is going to come together when the End Times start rolling in earnest, and all the similarities are only going to convince those who reject the true God that it must be the truth and they will fall for it and be destroyed by it. Unless they wake up in time!
As for Scott Johnson's confusion of the Ancient Astronaut doctrine with the scientific version of "intelligent design", as his own title to his talk clearly says, yes, he certainly does confuse these. Because the Raelians use the term to describe their demon-originated doctrine of how visitors from space are the creators of life on earth, Johnson jumps to the false conclusion that this is the "origin" of the concept. Well, I don't know who used the term first but it doesn't matter, it's a mistake to confuse them -- although it probably serves the purposes of those demonic entities to do so. There is quite definitely a scientific theory called Intelligent Design that has a scientific basis and has absolutely nothing to do with the vaporings of demons. [Here's Wikipedia on Intelligent Design, and Wikipedia on Michael Behe, intelligent design theorist.]
You Must Be Born Again
2 months ago
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