(For those of you who don’t care about the specifics of the SGM phenomena, give me a minute. This is going somewhere.)

 Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead.

Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!

Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.

Wake up – sleepy head

Rub your eyes, get out of bed.

Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead.

She’s gone where the goblins go,

Below – below – below. Yo-ho,

let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out.

Ding Dong’ the merry-oh,

sing it high,

sing it low.

Let them know

The Wicked Witch is dead! 

So some time has passed since Vicar Charles Joseph headed off to sit in the bad preacher doghouse. Rumor has it that the doghouse has traveled to other states and other countries south of the border where he is speaking in behalf of the very church he said he should not be leading.… Read the rest

For Audio click here

“We doubt you, why don’t you doubt yourself?” This gem of saint-equipping counsel was said by my favorite spiritual tyrant. On the surface it looks like he is trying to convey the general opinion of his partners in tyrannical pastor-ness about moi. I don’t remember the specific conversation, but I do remember this was a response to my confidence. But in actual fact, his words are really an implicit doctrinal statement. His words sum up many Christian leaders’ ministerial assumption:  the quest for Indoctrinated Self-Doubt.

Notice that my favorite spiritual tyrant’s pithy statement IS the logical conclusion of Augustine’s Pervasive Depravity. By Orthodox standard Humanity’s greatest transgression is self-will. Self-will is the sum of our corrupt appetites, desires, and aspirations that get lumped into the general category lusts. Corrupt human nature requires a sanctification then that is little a more than confining that nature, binding it, placing man in an ever more sterile circumstance to incarcerate his action.… Read the rest

By John Immel (Click here for MP3 audio)

The original publication of Moral Seduction was my first effort to show how the seeds of tyranny are sown with precise ideas beyond the narrow confines of church and Christianity. 

My first months of blogging stardom were spent highlighting tyranny’s philosophical elements as displayed in the Charismatic Reformed denomination called Sovereign Grace Ministries.My familiarity with their doctrine and practices made it an effective stepping off point.Plus, other voices needed to rise up to join the existing blog commentary concerning their blight on the vineyard.I was happy to take up in 2007 where I left off in 1998 before the blogging world took notice. 

People tend to think that this blog revolves around the very narrow criticism of Sovereign Grace Ministries.This is understandable but not true.No matter how much I enjoy poking those specific intellectual and spiritual thugs in the eye, they are hardly the bulk of my concern.… Read the rest

Five monkeys inside the cage
A banana on a string is all the covetage.

One climbs the stair to reach the prize
Five splashed with water to realize

It matters not which compatriot climbs
The penalty of wet they all must find

Tread up the rise will one primate go
Four then pounce in a monkey row

Fear they will the dastardly spray
Show they will corporate dismay.

No more water to come from above
Insert new thinker with his want of love

Monkey sees, and monkey do
Climb the stairs for his primate food

Surprise and horror and wonder and shock
As friends go ape and put him in the dock

Assaults persist till the lesson is learned
Tread not the stairs or suffer the spurn

New comes again a chimp to the congregation
Straight for the Banana not thought of sedition

Hazing and vitriol and violence expand
The previous victim raising the most energetic hand

Primates arrive till the first five are gone
Violence ensues but who knows the wrong

Water never comes; a penalty of ambition
But the conformist mind will not broach tradition

From beyond the grave the dead rule the mind
For those who live are forbidden to find

A path, a way, a means to above
To possess what is given, the object of love

Ask why we tread not upon the rise,
Is it the sacred that compels: “Be still our minds”?… Read the rest

Some of you might ask what does this have to do with Spiritual Tyranny. Here is my answer. I have been saying for some time that the body of ideas that leads to tyranny are making a gruesome insidious comeback in America and I want you to see how the philosophical premise drives the public outworking. Over the next three posts, I am going to draw your attention to themes already identified in an Arena of Ideas not directly related to Them Who Shall Not Be Named. In this post, notice how Juli preempted the stock dismissal and advocated in behalf of life by advocating in behalf of reason. You all are a very smart readership, so I suspect you will begin to see the application and relationship immediately.… Read the rest

I started on this article over two months ago, long before the current conversation on www.sgmrefuge.com with Protestant Knight (AKA ~John) advocating reform and Jim’s post Let’s take a poll (1) started on March 23 of ’09. It has undergone substantial changes from the original drafts, but as a writer the time comes to abandon a project. That time has come for To Reform or Not to Reform. What started as a 1500-ish word post turned into this 24-page 9,500 word behemoth with end notes.

I’m a wordy sort…what can I say?

This is a Sovereign Grace Ministries (2) related post. While many of you dear readers have no connection with SGM directly and therefore may be inclined to skip this post, please don’t. The concepts within this post are related to the current trend in American history on the political and religious fronts. Indeed, these fronts are inseparable.… Read the rest

All tyranny requires these elements:

Universal Guilt

Incompetent masses

Dictated Good

Abolition of Ambition

Collective Conformity

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Some months ago, I ran across a blog article by Cameron Schaefer called Change is a Community Project. His article should be called the Borgification of the Church. For those of you who are not Star Trek aficionados, well…those of us who are will just laugh near you.

I was Locutus of Church. Now I am John free INDIVIDUAL.  My battle cry: Resistance is ESSENTIAL!

But before many of you dear readers can get to the RESISTANCE part, you must first come to understand that it is NECESSARY to resist.  Eventually, we’ll get to WHAT to resist.

Mr. Schaefer is a twenty-something blogger sitting around in his underwear…Oops…I just had an Eric “Phenomenal” Simmons flashback. But the difference between moi and Mr. Simmons is I am going to advocate that you DO read what is being written: right, wrong, or heresy.… Read the rest