WND: Demons and Satanic Panic

WND reports:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. entertainment industry is entrenched with devil worshipers who are actively working to promote and normalize satanism in American culture, experts of the “spirit world” are warning.

Karl Payne, author of “Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization and Deliverance,” told WND the entertainment industry is largely to blame for a clear rise in demand for exorcisms.

Payne’s book was published by WND Books in 2011, and it looks like they still have a number of copies to shift. The author is based at the Antioch Bible Church in Seattle (founded by the late Ken Hutcherson, who was known for his anti-gay views and who officiated at Ruch Limbaugh’s fourth traditional marriage), and he is an ordained Baptist minister rather than a Charismatic or Neo-Pentecostal. There is also a an edition of the same book with a different cover for sale on Payne’s website, self-published under the name of his Transferable Cross Training. The book carries a number of endorsements, including C. Fred Dickason of the Moody Bible Institute, Mark Driscoll, Ergun Caner, and Mark I. Bubeck, an evangelical who founded a “spiritual warfare” ministry called Deeper Walk International and whose works are published by Moody Publishers.

According to Payne as quoted in WND:

…”We live in a culture that would make the satanic priest on TV look like a hero, and the Catholic preacher or Protestant preacher, they are always the geek, or they are always the homophobe,” he said. “They are always the serial killer hiding behind their collar.”

The culture, he said, is “dominated by secularism on one side of the coin, or Spiritism on the other – Satanists are part of one of those groups. They are simply groups that are part of an atheistic movement, or a theistic movement that says anything but Jesus or Moses,” he said.

Payne said the more secular America becomes, the more the public is susceptible to engaging in Spiritism and adopting satanic ideology.

However, this is more of a general complaint about the tone and direction of American culture rather than a conspiracy theory, and Satanists as “part of one of those groups” is vague and probably simply a reference to the Church of Satan rather than to a hidden network.

Thus the WND author  – one Alicia Powe – moves on to a second author, to complement Payne’s spiritual musings with some red-blooded conspiricism:

Christopher Everard, author of the book “Stone Age Psychedelia” and director of the documentary series “Spirit World,” warned that there has always been an anti-Christ thread running through Hollywood.

“There were movies being produced and made by satanic cults before talking films even existed – back in the silent era. Some of the very first films that were ever produced were produced by satanists,” Everard told WND… Everard, who began directing and producing documentaries about the occult in 2007, explained that satanists engage in bizarre rituals that involve using human blood and excrement to be “reborn in the empire of Satan.”

…”Network satanists deliberately expose themselves to excrement, filth, bad language, horrific experiences. They do this to ‘un-zip’ their upbringing and to become a ‘reborn’ person in the empire of Satan,” he explained. “Satanists are taught to have no respect whatsoever for the goodness in the spirit of people, no respect for gender roles and no respect for the actual body. Their end goal is total nihilistic destruction of the entire biosphere.

Everard is a British (Scottish) conspiracy theorist who specialises in fantastical interpretations of ancient monuments, in the manner of Eric Von Daniken (e.g. “STONEHENGE: is it a Giant Model of a HUMAN EGG?”). He also warns about “elite” Satanic cults, but he does not appear to have any association with evangelical or Christian groups. Some of his conspiracies revolve around Jews: he suggests that “many European royals actually have a Hebrew family background”, and warns that “Buckingham Palace is essentially making British law align with Jewish Talmudic law in which seemingly a Jewish person is treated preferentially and is also allowed to own as many as 2,800 slaves!” Given that WND is strongly Christian Zionist, this is a rather odd person for the site to promote.

Powe goes on to refer to John Podesta and “spirit cooking” (blogged by me here) and the Gotthard Tunnel opening ceremony (blogged by me here).

5 Responses

  1. How about some mainstream news, such as the need of the Church of England to repent of women’s ordination and the appeasement of the Homosexual lobby?

  2. @Revd Robert West. So you object to women’s ordination in Church of England, but you also object to homosexuals being involved in the Church. I would suggest that banning things has not worked for the Church in the past.

    • Dear David, I think it is God the Father who objects to those practising unnatural deeds having the Holy Communion, Church Membership or Pastoral Ordination: but obviously all sinners are bidden to the preaching ordinances or services of the Church to repent and believe the gospel.

  3. The Revd objects to all kinds of things, like non-christians having any civil rights or the State no longer having the power to burn heretics. Read his earlier comments. He”s a regular Fr. Coughlin.

    • You may be attempting to be a comedian. I am afraid that I am going to have to disappoint you: I do not believe in depriving non-Christians of their civic rights and certainly not burning heretics. I am against this idea of hate crimes too, the modern equivalent of Heresy, only touched up to sound new.

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