Paganism in the Shadows: Only Two Religions with Peter Jones

Many people in our day are abandoning the teaching and influence of Christianity, claiming that it is time to embrace new ways of thinking. In this message, Peter Jones shows how our culture is actually returning to ancient pagan superstitions.

[Mamabear]

This is such important work. Jungian therapy is very popular. I went to a jungian therapy for years and God was so good to save me from that world.

[jessyjonas]

“By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises.”
2 Peter 1:3-8

[rhondae]

Amen! An excellent message presented by Peter Jones. Praise Christ. 🙂

[NarrowPathDoctrine]

It's amazing how many professing Christians don't know any of this and when you try to tell them about the evil all around them, they're not interested at all. We are supposed to be aware of all the evil and what can invade our walk with Christ. Glad this talk was posted. Hopefully more see it.

I should add, those same people you try to tell all of this to and point out things like Crowley on the Beatles album cover, will sort of listen, then go home and then play their Beatles album.

[GinaSiska]

The Bible verse that popped into my head was 2 Timothy 4:3
3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

[ericb]

I noticed this stuff going on about 8 or 9 years ago. I started researching it for two years and in the process I found Peter Jones’ book “One or Two”. I shared it with my pastor and he called me a conspiracy theorist.

[TaineLamour]

I am very touched by the presentation. I wished I were presented in conclusion to what the WORD of God says. This battle is about one's soul. Thanks very much!

[abaker]

How have you all not known about Baphonet, Crowley on the Beatles album or how it has infiltrated everything? I knew it and i just became a reborn Christian in the last few years. Heck, it is what brought me to Christ - knowing that evil dies exist.

Very good talk, regardless.

[Yesica]

I have learned of many of these names recently through the work of Dr. James Lindsay!

[briteness]

This was well done. It was interesting that early Gnostic Christianity put the "as above, so below" tradition into Jesus' mouth, with the quote, cited here, from the Gospel of Philip, "I came to make the things below like the things above." I couldn't help but notice the echo, though, in the Lord's Prayer itself: "Thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven." It seems almost certain that proponents of the "as above, so below" philosophies have noticed this. They might even claim the orthodox Jesus as one of their own. What do we think about this? Is Christianity yet another iteration of this perennial philosophy? If not, how do we explain this line in our most holy prayer, recommended to us by Our Lord Himself? What is the difference?

[Brymoe]

The church has slept on these issues far to long

[jessyjonas]

“For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.”
2 Corinthians 1:20-22

All God’s promises to us are fulfilled in JESUS CHRIST
JESUS CHRIST THE TRUE VINE
AND HIS FATHER THE HUSBANDMAN
Any branch in Him that bears no fruit is cut off and those that bear fruit are pruned to bring for more fruit

[matswinther]

Interesting critique of Jung and the Gnostics! See also this article: "An Assessment of the Theology of Carl Gustav Jung".

[teetx]

Basically, to me it boils down to not two religions, but two kingdoms, the kingdom of this world with Satan as the prince of this world, and the Kingdom of God with Christ as King, and King of kings. 1 John 2:15-17; Romans 12:2;
Colossians 3:2; James 4:4; Ephesians 2:2; Deuteronomy 12:30; 2 King 17:15

[daviddavis]

Jungian philosophy is the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs (in place of Christ). He has written portions of the Big Book (in place of the Bible). The co-founders of AA have documented spiritist experiences in other literature that includes seances.

[valeriejones]

Pray for our leaders. How scary it is that we have a king who follows such a dangerous path. Lord Jesus help us

[jessyjonas]

“But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:”
Philippians 3:7-9

[jessyjonas]

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. [6] If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
John 15

[Jesussavioursonofgod]

Beware those teachers in the church who also hold to perennial wisdom and teach contemplative prayer and spiritual formation.

[spiritualpolitics]

I don't really disagree with Dr. Jones' core argument that the depth psychology of Jung is ultimately in competition with Christianity. I indeed find his reading of Christianity more canonical than the liberal theologians who find a rapprochement with all these other modes and the austere inner truths of Christ indwelling.

That said, I make that comment as an intellectual observation and not a fellow believer. I agree there is a certain beauty in a Christological psyche that constantly re-centers Christ as the fulcrum of one's being -- I think there is something perhaps even liberatory in the best sense about this constraint.

But from another angle I find it an arbitrary self-undermining that goes to the core of why I am not a Christian. To even frame doubts or sincere questions about the epistemic foundations of Christianity is to stand a little bit outside it and look in -- and this utterly quotidian distance itself can become fraught with metaphysical peril, if one takes Christianity seriously from a certain angle.

I cannot see for example what relation Hamlet has to Christ, except they are very clearly in competition. Laying aside the debate about whether Shakespeare's cosmos was nihilistic or Christian, it strikes me that the sheer enticement of and engagement with a work of art at a visceral and cognitive level -- like Hamlet -- requires a traduction or at least a temporary suspension of a Christ-centered consciousness.

I cannot for the life of me see how one can enjoy the full range of Hamlet's rhetoric -- which can after all be quite blasphemous (he uses not caring about hell as a point of comparison) -- yet remain a canonical Christian. In one sense, to even read of the pagan philosophies -- to the degree one understands them, requires a constant re-centering of a Christ-centered consciousness lest one fall into error. This rigor has a certain appeal, but from another angle, a certain terror.

No doubt these are very old objections I am raising. I remain in full concord with the good professor that there can be no rapprochement between Jung and Christianity, but that one must finally choose one or the other. Speaking only for myself, I can never get over the fabulous symmetry Jung erects in his essay on Job around Jesus's crucifixion being a symmetrical expiation for both man's sin before God, and God's "sin" (permitting the suffering of innocents) before man.

I grasp immediately this is heretical in purely canonical terms. Yet it clearly strikes me as true from another vantage, which is why I must plight my troth with the Jungian side, retaining a warm fraternal affinity for Christianity, but finding only isomorphic resonances with other lattices of truth. (As Pope Francis likely heretically believes.)

So in this, alas, I remain a thoughtful pagan. I join Harold Bloom in saying on a desert island were I to be granted one book, it would be the complete works of Shakespeare -- and only the second, the King James bible. Both are incalculably rich, and both true, but in uncanonical senses of "true".