Charisma News Promotes New “Illuminati” Conspiracy Theorist

From Charisma News:

Former New Age blogger Steven Bancarz says the new world order Daniel predicted is alive—in the occult realm.

And quoting the source, Bancarz’s Facebook page:

There are many people who don’t mess with New Age beliefs because they know that it’s the exact same stuff the Illuminati (Illuminated ones) and Masons believe. The New Age is the religion of the New World order, it’s the religion of the Illuminati, the religion of the Masons. It starts with ancient Egypt, then Babylon, then up through the ages with mysticism and theosophy, and it gets mishmashed together and diluted a little bit to give us the religion of the New Age.

And the irony is that as those who began to dabble in the occult are conditioned to view themselves as “awake,” they are actually stepping deeper into the beliefs and values of the very NWO they believe they are opposed to.

In his Facebook post, Bancarz also delves into topics such as “Luciferian elites” and the occult significance of the “eye found on the dollar bill”. Charisma News previously highlighted him last month, in an article on “the Occult Themes Hidden in the Super Bowl”, in which he was quoted as referring to “a class of Satanic/occultic elites” and to “ritual sacrifice”, and in which he addressed himself to “non-Christian truthers and political activists” who he believes may be open to understanding the “spiritual nature of Illuminati rituals”.

Bancarz (who is 23 years old) formerly ran a website called Spirit Science and Metaphysics, where he promoted flim-flam under titles such as “Sea Salt & Baking Soda, Best All Natural Remedy For Curing Radiation Exposure And Cancer” and published click-bait articles such as “5 Mind-Blowing Alternative Theories About the Universe”. It’s not clear how much of the content on the site was original and how much was derivative, but by his own account it brought him “$40,000 per month in ad revenue alone”. However, he rejected it all in 2015, after converting back the religion of his childhood, Christianity.

According to his story in the Christian Post:

In an inspiring video testimony posted on Facebook back in April that has since been viewed over 750,000 times — over 1 million times if you aggregate all of social media — Bancarz shares how Jesus Christ liberated him from the snares of the occult.

…”I can pinpoint it from having started when I was exposed to a program on the History Channel called “Ancient Aliens.”

“It teaches ancient astronaut theory that mythologies and fables from the ancient world are really of ancient man being visited by extraterrestrial beings from outer space who they then describe as being gods.”

…In the 11th grade he began studying and researching the subject obsessively, noting that once one starts exploring aliens you can’t help but get into other New Age topics, like the non-locality of consciousness and other spooky information involving ley lines and ancient wisdom.

However, a personal crisis led him seek deliverance at a Pentecostal church, and he now runs an apologetics website called Reasons for Jesus.

This is not a particularly exceptional or interesting conversion narrative, but Bancarz appears to have caught the attention of Christian media due to the idea that he supposedly has some kind of special insight into the baneful attractions of the New Age. And from there, he is now being promoted as someone who has special knowledge about dark forces operating in the world. We’re invited to see a radical rupture between his past New Ageism and his present Pentecostalism – but all I can make out is a consistent conspiricism. The teenager who had the misfortune to take a TV show called Ancient Aliens too seriously is now a man who obsesses over the Illuminati and the New World Order.

Charisma News is a significant news source for evangelical Christians in the USA, particularly within the Pentecostal tradition. The site promotes many conspiracy theories, often as articulated by the likes of Jim Bakker. It’s a process I’ve referred to as the David Ickeization of Christianity – and despite denouncing the New Age, Bancarz fits the bill perfectly.