Of Myth and the Bible – Part 2: Modern Cultural Imperialism

Posted on July 1, 2015 by admin

In the last post, I looked at the most famous Biblical genealogy of Jesus Christ to prove that the Biblical notion of history is always very literary, but not always very literal. We must understand the Bible in its own ancient Near Eastern context, in the perspective of the original writers and readers to whom the text was given.

I believe that the Bible is God’s Word and as such, it is breathed out of God through the writings of men inspired by the Holy Spirit. So, while the Biblical writers are very human and therefore very much creatures of their time and culture, there is also another author who is operating providentially behind the writing of the text to communicate transcendent truth, and that is the author and finisher of our faith, God Himself.

How He actually does this, I am not sure, but the divine authorship does not reduce the human authorship to dictation or automatic writing. God uses the genre conventions and mindset of the ancient time period within which to communicate His transcendent truth. Continue reading →

Of Myth and the Bible – Part 1: The Lie of Modern History

Posted on June 26, 2015 by admin

Whenever I consider that I have something important to say about faith, imagination, and/or apologetics, I usually discover that C.S. Lewis has already said it long before I could, and he has said it better than I will. True to form, the title of my book Myth Became Fact, is actually the title of a famous essay by the late Lewis that describes the heart of Christianity as a myth that is also a fact. He comforts the fearful modernist Christian whose faith in the Bible as a book of doctrine and abstract propositions is suddenly upset by the frightful reality of the interaction of holy writ with legend, pagan parallels, and mythology.

Rather than deny the ancient mythopoeic nature of God’s Word as modern Evangelicals tend to do, Lewis embraced it as a reflection of God’s preferred choice of concrete communication over abstraction (the worshipped discourse of the modernist). He understood myth to be the truth embedded into the creation by the Creator in such a way that even pagans would reflect some elements of that truth. Thus, when God Himself incarnates truth into history in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is no surprise that it takes on mythopoeic dimensions reflected in previous pagan notions of dying and rising gods. Continue reading →

What in Hell Happened to Satan?

Posted on June 18, 2015 by admin

In the last post, I explained how the nations had been allotted to the fallen Watchers (“Sons of God”) as territories over which they ruled (Deut. 32:8-11). The satan, as the “god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), was most likely the Watcher of Rome, because Rome ruled the known world at the time, AND it was the oppressor of Israel.

So how are we to understand the Biblical tension of the satan being “cast down” (Jn. 12:31) and without power (Heb. 2:14), while simultaneously having the ability to prowl around and devour people (1Pet. 5:8)?

Through the entire Chronicles series, I have used a concept called “binding” of angels, demons, and Watchers through either supernatural restraint or imprisonment in the earth or Tartarus. Continue reading →

Who in Hell is Satan?

Posted on June 11, 2015 by admin

Chronicles of the Nephilim has largely been based upon the Divine Council worldview that has been explained in many free articles on the Chronicles Links Page and my book When Giants Were Upon the Earth. This involves the fallen Watchers from God’s heavenly host who are called the Sons of God. They led the world astray in the Days of Noah, that led to the Flood as Yahweh’s judgment. Deuteronomy 32:8-9, then speaks of how at the Tower of Babel, Yahweh divided the seventy nations according to the number of the fallen Sons of God and placed them under their authority. They became the “princes” (Dan. 10:13, 20-21) or “gods” of those pagan nations (Deut. 32:17; 4:19-21), rulers of those geographical territories.[1]

So the headline was a trick, ya see, because Satan isn’t in hell, he’s in the heavens (Eph 2:2).

When earthly rulers battle on earth, the Bible describes the host of heaven battling with them in spiritual unity. In Daniel 10, hostilities between Greece and Persia is accompanied by the battle of heavenly Watchers over those Gentile nations (described as “princes”).

Daniel 10:13, 20
The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia.” …Then he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? But now I will return to fight against the prince of Persia; and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.

When Sisera fought with Israel, the earthly kings and heavenly authorities (host of heaven) are described interchangeably in unity.[2] (previous posts showed that in the Bible, “host of heaven” and “stars” are used to mean both the stars we see in the sky and the gods of the nations, interchangeably Deut. 32:43; 4:19; ; Isa 14:12-13)

Judges 5:19–20
“The kings came, they fought; then fought the kings of Canaan…From heaven the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera.

When God punishes earthly rulers, he punishes them along with the heavenly rulers (“host of heaven”) above and behind them.

Isaiah 24:21–22
On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth. They will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit; they will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished.[3]

Though this notion of territorial archons or spiritual rulers is Biblical and carries over into intertestamental literature such as the Book of Enoch (1 En. 89:59, 62-63; 67) and others,[4] it seems to lessen at the time of the New Testament.

The New Testament epistles speak of the spiritual principalities and powers that are behind the earthly rulers and powers to be sure (Eph. 6:12-13), but it appears to be more generic in reference. And after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, these spiritual powers have been disarmed and overthrown (Col. 2:15, Luke 10:18), at least legally losing their hegemony (Eph. 1:20-23).

The fallen angelic powers are still around in the first century, but have been defanged with the inauguration of the Messianic kingdom of God.

But there is one of those fallen angelic powers that seems to rise up and grab extraordinary power in the New Testament: The satan (which translated, means, “Accuser”). The Accuser’s choice of Belial as a proper name in Jesus Triumphant is well-attested in Scripture and other ancient Jewish writings, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran.[6] He is also called Beliar, Mastema, and Sammael in other Second Temple literature.[7] (For more details on the satan in the Old Testament, see my book When Giants Were Upon the Earth)

Throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew word belial is used as a personification of death, wickedness, and treachery, as well as “an emotive term to describe individuals or groups who commit the most heinous crimes against the Israelite religious or social order, as well as their acts.”^{^[8]}(For more details on the satan in the Old Testament, see my book When Giants Were Upon the Earth)

The Apostle Paul uses the proper name of Belial for the satan (using language similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls) in 2 Corinthians 6:14–15: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial?”

Three times in the Gospel of John, this Accuser, Belial, is called “the ruler of this world” (Jn. 12:31, 14:30-31, 16:11), in 2 Cor. 4:4, “the god of this world.” In Eph. 2:2 he is called the “prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” In fact, when Jesus was tempted by the satan in the desert, he offered Christ all the kingdoms of the world for his own “domain and glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish” (Luke 4:6).

It seems as if the satan is the only Watcher god in authority over the nations, like he has all the power. What happened to all the other ones?

Walter Wink points out a possible key to the solution. In the intertestamental period,

“Much tradition identified Satan as the angel of Rome, thus adapting the angels-of-the-nations idea to the situation of Roman world-hegemony. Since Rome had conquered the entire Mediterranean region and much else besides, its angel-prince had become lord of all other angel-princes of the vanquished nations.This identification was already explicit at Qumran, where Rome and the Romans (the ‘Kittim’ of the War Scroll) are made the specific allies and agents of Satan and his host.”[9]

The Dead Sea Scroll 11QMelch interprets Psalm 82 as describing Satan/Belial as the chief of the gods in the divine council to be punished for his unjust authority over the nations.^{^[10]}

Another Jewish intertestamental document, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, lists in several places Beliar, synonymous with Satan, as holding captive mankind.[11]

In 3 Enoch 26:12 Sammael is called the Prince of Rome, just as Dubbiel is called the Prince of Persia (remember the “Prince of Persia” from Daniel 10?).

Just like the satan in the New Testament, Sammael is called the “prince of the accusers who is greater than all the princes of kingdoms that are in the height [heaven]” (3 Enoch 14:2). And just like the satan in the New Testament, Sammael’s name means “god of the blind” (2 Cor. 4:4).^{^[14]}

But what about this notion of the ruler (archon), or god of this world? Is the world something bigger than the realm of this satanic Prince of Rome? To answer that, we will have to look at the idea of the world as presented in the New Testament.

It is common in the Bible to refer to the Roman Empire as “all the world” (oikoumene) which meant the known inhabited world under Rome’s power (Luke 2:1; Col. 1:6; Rom. 1:8). All the known nations were encompassed in its power and worldview, so it seems those national angelic entities over those nations would therefore also be under the authority of the Watcher of Rome.

If Belial, the satan therefore was “god” or “ruler” of that “world,” then most likely he had become the angelic authority over Rome, and it would make sense that the New Testament would focus on the satan over the other Watchers.

In this understanding, When Jesus the Messiah arrives and inaugurates the kingdom of God, he does so by “binding the strong man” the “god of this world,” the satan. His casting out of demons was a herald of casting down the satan’s power (John 12:31; Matt. 12:28-29), and taking authority over his world. It was as if one fell swoop of the highest heavenly power over the nations brought down all the enemies with him. Jesus destroyed the devil who had the power of death (Heb 2:14).

Then why was the satan still around? He still prowled around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1Pet. 5:8). His binding was for something very particular. We will examine this “binding” in the next post.

For additional Biblical and historical research related to this post, go to www.ChroniclesoftheNephilim.com under the menu listing, “Links” > Jesus Triumphant.

[1] See Appendix, “Sons of God,” in Brian Godawa, Noah Primeval (Los Angeles: Embedded Pictures, 2011, 2012), 280-289.

[2] See also 2 Kings 6:15-17 where Elisha’s servant has his spiritual eyes opened to see the myriad of heavenly warriors surrounding Israel preparing to battle Syria.

[3] Interestingly, this passage of Isaiah is not clear about what judgment in history it is referring to. But the language earlier in the text is similar to the Flood when it says, “For the windows of heaven are opened, and the foundations of the earth tremble. 19 The earth is utterly broken, the earth is split apart, the earth is violently shaken. 20 The earth staggers like a drunken man; it sways like a hut; its transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and will not rise again.” So this may be another passage that uses a Flood reference tied in with the Watchers and their punishment.

[4] See also Jubilees 15:31-32; Targum Jonathan Deut. 32, Sect. LIII; 3Enoch 48C:9, DSS War Scroll 1Q33 Col. xvii:7, Targum Jonathan, Genesis 11, Section II.

[6] Especially in the War Scroll (1QM) and the Thankgiving Scroll (1QH). Florentino Garcı́a Martı́nez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (translations)” (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1997–1998), 113-178.

[7] C. Breytenbach (I, IV) and (I–III) Day P. L., “Satan,” ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 72; S. D. Sperling, “Belial,” DDD, 169; J. W. van Henten, “Mastemah,” DDD, 553. On Sammael: M. A. Knibb, “Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament: Expansions of the “Old Testament” and Legends, Wisdom, and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, vol. 2 (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1985), 151.

^{^[8]} S. D. Sperling, “Belial,” ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 169. “Such crimes include: inciting one’s fellows to worship foreign gods (Deut 13:14); perjury (1 Kgs 21:10, 13; Prov 19:28); breach of hospitality (Judg 19:22; 1 Sam 25:17); lese-majesty (1 Sam 10:27); usurpation (2 Sam 16:7–8; 20:1); abuse of Yahweh’s sanctuary by female drunkenness (1 Sam 1:13–17); and the cultic misappropriation and sexual harassment of women by priests (1 Sam 2:12–22). Refusal to lend money on the eve of the Sabbatical year (Deut 15:9) falls into the category of heinous deeds because it indicates lack of faith in the divine ability to provide.” See also, Deut 13:13; Judg 19:22; 1 Sam 1:16; 2:12; 10:27; 25:17; 2 Sam 16:7; Nah 1:15 (2:1); 1 Kgs 21:13.

[9] Wink, Naming the Powers, Kindle Locations 409-412. Of the Qumran War Scroll, Davies says, “Using the term “Kittim,” which in the Hebrew Bible is applied to Greeks and then (in Daniel) to Romans, it transparently identifies the Roman Empire as the ally of Belial, the spirit/angel of darkness, and of the “Children of Darkness,” and describes their defeat in a great seven-stage battle… At present, there is little consensus on the literary history, though a date in the last quarter of the first century B.C.E. is widely accepted, as is the identification of the Kittim, allies of the “Children of Darkness,” as the Romans.” Phillip Davies, “The Biblical and Qumranic Concept of War,” James H. Charlesworth, Ed. The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls Volume One – Scripture and the Scrolls (Waco: Baylor University, 2006), 223, 226.

^{^[10]} 11QMelch (1st century B.C.) Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Revised and extended 4th ed. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 361.

[11] TDan 5:10-13; TZeb 9:8; TLevi 18:12; Test. Judah 25:3; Assum. Moses 10:1-3. These texts are from the 2nd century B.C.

^{^[14]} P. Alexander, “A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (New York; London: Yale University Press, 1983), 236.

What in Hell Are Demons?

Posted on June 4, 2015 by admin

In anticipation of the release of my next novel, Jesus Triumphant, Book 8 of the Chronicles of the Nephilim, I am going to post some articles on wild and bizarre spiritual stuff in the New Testament that will show up in the novel to come. July release. You better get cracking on the previous books in the series cause it all fits together with the Watchers, The Nephilim and the Cosmic War of the Seed.

Demons are a theological problem. Where do they come from? What are they? Why are they almost entirely absent in the Old Testament, and then all of a sudden, there is a flurry of demonic activity and possessions once Messiah comes to Israel? The casting out of demons is so frequently linked with Jesus’ proclamation of the Gospel that it seems to be more than a mere symbolic expression of his power over the spiritual world. It appears to be an essential theological component of the New Covenant.

First, just what are demons? We see in the New Testament that they are evil spirits that possess or inhabit the physical bodies of living individuals (Luke 11:24-26), and who are cast out by Jesus and his disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 8:16; Luke 10:17). Their presence sometimes causes physical infirmities like blindness (Matt. 12:22), deafness (Mark 9:17-29), or epilepsy (Matt. 17:15-18), as well as mental insanity (Mark 5:15). Many of them can inhabit one body (Mark 5:9), and bring great strength to the host (Mark 5:4).

But where did these evil spirits come from? In the Old Testament, there is very little explanation of demons. God sends an evil spirit to torment King Saul in 1 Sam. 16:14. Based on Saul’s insane behavior it is safe to say he was most likely possessed by that evil spirit (v. 15-23). 1 Kings 22:22-23 reveals that God sends a “lying spirit” into the mouths of false prophets. Demons? Maybe. But certainly subservient to God’s interests. Even the satan is depicted as a circumscribed servant of God’s will in the Old Testament (Job 1:12). As explained in other Appendices of the Chronicles, pagan idols are often referred to as demonic (“sheddim” Deut. 32:17; Psa. 106:34-37; Lev. 17:7; 2 Chron. 11:15) exposing the spiritual reality behind their earthly façade of graven images and foreign deities. But even these are not the same as what we traditionally think of as demons.

Other than these few examples, there is a dearth in the Old Testament of the kind of activity we read about in the New Testament, with raging demoniacs being exorcised by Christ and his disciples. It seems like the demons knew that the presence of Messiah was the final countdown of their own demise and they were throwing fits and tantrums. As if the Seed of the Woman was crushing the Seed of the Serpent’s head and the body was wriggling in pain.

But they are never described as fallen angels in the Bible. What then, are demons and from where do they come?

The church father Origen claimed that there was no clearly defined teaching on their genesis in the early church, but that a significant opinion was that “the devil was an angel, and that, having become an apostate, he induced as many of the angels as possible to fall away with himself, and these up to the present time are called his angels.”^{^[1]}

This common Christian idea of the satan and demons as fallen angels is often proof-texted from Isa. 14:12-15, Ezek. 28:12-16, and Rev. 12:4. But as explained in the Appendix to Enoch Primordial, I do not believe these passages apply to a satanic fall from heaven.[2] Isaiah 14 is the likening of the monstrous pride of the king of Babylon to a Canaanite myth of arrogant deities. Nothing about the satan there. And there is no reference to any others joining him either. Ezekiel 28 is a condemnation of the king of Tyre by likening him to Adam’s fall in the Garden, not the satan. This passage also fails to mention anyone in collusion with the arrogant prince. One has to import an alien notion of the satanic fall into these passages through eisegesis.

Lastly, Revelation 12 is not about a satanic fall or war in heaven before the Garden of Eden, or even in some future end of the world scenario. It is an apocalyptic parable that is describing the war of the satan at the incarnation of Christ, his ascension to the throne of authority over all principalities and powers, and his suppression of the satan’s power as the Gospel goes forth into the world.

So in the Bible there is no evidence of angels falling before the Garden of Eden. There is a satanic “fall” or a “casting out” of heaven (John 12:31) and a “throwing down” to the earth of the satan during the time of Christ (Luke 10:17-20). But that would be too late in the game to explain the few evil spirits in the Old Testament or their presence before the arrival of Messiah. The only other “fall” of angelic beings in the Bible is the Sons of God, the Watchers, in Genesis 6 coming to earth.[3]

But that presents another problem, namely that the ontological nature or “material being” of the angels as revealed in the Bible would seem to preclude these fallen angels from being the Old Testament or New Testament demons or “evil spirits.” While angels are multidimensional in their ability to traverse between the heavenlies and the earth, they are described as having flesh that eats food (Gen. 18; 19:1), and can have sexual congress with human beings (Gen. 6:1-4). This is a heavenly flesh that is different from human flesh (1 Cor. 15:39-40), but is flesh nonetheless. It is a body. This would make angels such as the Watchers unlikely candidates for incorporeal spirits seeking flesh to inhabit or possess.

There is no origin of demons detailed in the Bible. There is merely a description of their spiritual nature and evil activities. But there is a tradition of their origin that carries some weight beyond mere speculation. Regarding this origin, the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible says, “The most popular myth, however, is found in the Bible, intertestamental literature, the rabbis and the Church fathers: demons are the souls of the offspring of angels who cohabited with humans.”^{^[4]} We are right back to that ancient text that keeps rearing its head in the New Testament; the book of 1 Enoch. There we read that the giants had unique ontological status as hybrids of both human and angel. So when they died in the Flood, their spirits became roaming entities seeking bodily possession of humans.

1 Enoch 15:8-16:1
⁸“But now the giants who are born from the (union of) the spirits and the flesh shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, because their dwelling shall be upon the earth and inside the earth. ⁹Evil spirits have come out of their bodies. Because from the day that they were created from the holy ones they became the Watchers; their first origin is the spiritual foundation. They will become evil upon the earth and shall be called evil spirits…¹²And these spirits shall rise up against the children of the people and against the women, because they have proceeded forth (from them)… From the days of the slaughter and destruction, and the death of the giants… they will corrupt until the day of the great conclusion, until the great age is consummated, until everything is concluded (upon) the Watchers and the wicked ones.”^{^[5]}

Chronicles of the Nephilim assumes this Enochic interpretation in its storyline as the last gasp attempt of the Seed of the Serpent to bite the heel of the Seed of Eve. Needless to say, their head is crushed in that attempt.

See the cool book trailer, artwork, characters, and free articles at www.ChroniclesoftheNephilim.com

^{^[1]} Origen, “De Principiis,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Frederick Crombie, vol. 4 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 240.

[2] Brian Godawa, Enoch Primordial (Los Angeles: Embedded Pictures Publishing, 2013), 367-373.

[3] See the chapter “The Book of Enoch: Scripture, Heresy, or What?” in When Giants Were Upon the Earth: The Watchers, Nephilim and the Cosmic War of the Seed (Los Angeles: Embedded Pictures, 2014),.

^{^[4]} G. J. Riley, “Demon,” ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 238. Early church fathers who believed this are Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Minuciux Felix, Irenaeus, among others: Bo Reicke, The Disobedient Spirits and Christian Baptism (New York: AMS Press, 1946), 80-81. Other Intertestamental literature that affirms demons as sons of the Watchers are Test. Of Solomon 5:3; 17:1; Jubilees 10:5; Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q510 v.5; 4Q511 Frag. 35; 4Q204 Col V.2-3 (1Enoch 10:15), that call the demons, sons of the Watchers or “spirits of the bastards.” Florentino Garcı́a Martı́nez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (translations)” (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1997–1998), 415, 1029, 1033-35. 11Q11 Col. V.6 calls demons “offspring of man and of the seed of the holy ones.” DSS Study Edition, 1203. See Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “The ‘Angels’ and ‘Giants’ of Genesis 6:1-4 in Second and Third Century BCE Jewish Interpretation: Reflections on the Posture of Early Apocalyptic Traditions,” Dead Sea Discoveries, Vol. 7, No. 3, Angels and Demons (2000), pp. 354-37; Ida Fröhlich,”Theology and Demonology in Qumran Texts,” Henoch; Vol. 32 Issue 1, June 2010, 101-129.

^{^[5]} James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (New York; London: Yale University Press, 1983), 22.

THE Best Published Review of Chronicles of the Nephilim EVER

Posted on April 1, 2015 by admin

Of course, I think that for every article.

But honestly, this is entertaining.

And I loved the way the designer laid out the artwork.

Concise introduction of the entire series by the author.

That’s me. Yeah, I know. Shameless act of self promotion.

http://bit.ly/1OZSLBJ

Fight the Christophobic Madness in Hollywood Storytelling

Posted on March 30, 2015 by admin

If you are tired of how Hollywood rapes the Bible and subverts its stories for their Christophobic agenda, BUT you still would like to read movie-like stories of Biblical heroes as action adventure, and spiritual warfare, (Giants, Watchers and demons included) then start reading Chronicles of the Nephilim now.

You’ll be ready for the fantastical climax of Jesus Triumphant in June this year.

Chronicles of the Nephilim are on Kindle, paperback or audiobook exclusively at Amazon.com

Click here to sign up at the website for updates so you will know when Jesus Triumphant comes out, and get edgy newsletter articles. (No spam, only once a month or so.)

See the cool rotating banners for Jesus Triumphant here.

P.S. If you have a weak stomach or can’t handle biblical sex and violence, then this series will challenge you. There’s a lot of evil out there to redeem.

P.P.S. If you think this is another cheesy Christian attempt at “preaching” through art, you will be sorely disappointed. I hate that crap.

David Ascendant Now on Audiobook

Posted on March 17, 2015 by admin

Click here to get it through Amazon/Audible.

OSCAR WATCH • The Imitation Game: A Masterpiece of Subversion.

Posted on February 20, 2015 by admin

The story of Alan Turing, the brilliant yet troubled mathematician who led the cryptographic team that defeated the Nazi Enigma code in WWII and created the world’s first computer.

Wow, this Oscar season offers a slew of amazing performances. This one by Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing is a riveting and pathos filled drama that views like a gay version of the Oscar winning A Beautiful Mind.

This movie is a riveting, solid, well-told story. Brilliant in its machinations and exciting in its imagination. It explores the nuance of moral decisions in war, the complexity of social classes and issues, the alienation of mental illness, and the pain and irony of genius.

Who could have thought that there could be such exciting suspense, such heart-stirring pity, and such powerful moments of cheerful dramatic victories in a movie about a group of weird nerds penciling out mathematics and building a computer? But The Imitation Game is all that.

And it’s a brilliant artistic masterpiece for the homosexual agenda.

Many conservatives and religious folk have said that the homosexual element is minor and not what the movie is really about. They have missed the point entirely and have become victims of good storytelling, no, great storytelling.

Let me explain how this works.

A great story is able to link, by analogy, a personal journey to a larger societal or historical issue that both connect by analogy to a broader universal theme. For instance, A Beautiful Mind told the story of Nobel Peace Prize winning mathematician John Nash (also, an asocial type like Turing), whose brilliant work in cryptography, coupled with his schizophrenic mental illness, became a metaphor for the universal theme of the modernist rational quest for truth and the romantic humanist desire for love and meaning. His mind’s limitations caused delusions of paranoia, but the heart has its reasons that the mind knows not of. It’s Cold War subtheme of paranoia was historically timely in that the movie was released in a post-9/11 world. John’s own personal psychological struggle with discerning reality from illusion was an incarnation of our modernist quest to discern truth from fiction, and real from imagined enemies. His personal struggle with his mental illness was a perfect metaphor for a philosophical and social issue.

The Imitation Game is a similar timely metaphor. It tells the story of an oddball man who was rejected by the very society that he saved because of his genius. A tragedy of greatness. It is about breaking down our personal and social prejudices by showing that the very kind of people we often reject are the ones who do great things, such as, oh, save the world. History definitely bears out the repeated theme of the movie, “Sometimes, it’s the very people that no one imagines anything of that do the things no one can imagine.” Society too often rejects the misfits, who may offer the most to bring balance to the world. And who of us doesn’t at some time in our lives feel like such misfits and oddballs who feel out of place?

Let the spin games begin.

Storytelling does not make logical arguments so much as emotional arguments. It incarnates logic or worldviews which touches us existentially as storied human beings. Story makes its most powerful connections emotionally through such rhetorical techniques as montage. The concept is that by placing two or more disparate images or storylines next to each other, viewers make emotional connections between those things, whether or not they are logically connected.

In The Imitation Game, the story addresses social “inequities” most of us would not dispute. It deals with the unfair repression of women in the workforce and society. Keira Knightley’s character, and closest friend of Alan, Joan, is shown as being smarter than all the boys, while being given short shrift in society. She isn’t allowed to work with only men, her parents pressure her to get married instead of becoming a working woman. These are all the classic feminist arguments neatly packaged into a perfect victim that only a Blue Meanie would not sympathize with.

Then, it shows us Alan’s alleged autistic Asperger’s type social awkwardness. Well, who among us would not feel sorry for such innocent suffering? The poor guy can’t help it, and he’s really quite sweet underneath that rudeness and lack of emotion and sensitivity. Heck, understanding people is like cracking a code for him. And of course, it is precisely that autism that blesses him with the mathematical brilliance to break the Enigma code of the Germans that ended the war early and saved millions of lives. But that is not all. That autism that we would see as “abnormal” resulted in figuring out the world’s first computer, one of mankind’s greatest achievements.

So, you can see the litany of injustices that are laid out, with which the viewers could not disagree. Civil rights of women, unjust stigma of mental illness, the revenge of the nerds.

Americans are suckers for the underdog. If you want to engender sympathy for a character, make them suffer persecution, unfairness, injustice. In other words, make them a victim. The ultimate power of the extreme violence of the The Passion of the Christ was that it basically made Jesus the most unjustly brutalized victim in the history of cinema. Which is really necessary since the point was to make him the savior of the world through suffering, so Gibson had to maximize that suffering to make the emotional connection in the viewer with the grandiosity of the redemption. This is why many liberals, in a fit of outright contradiction, hated The Passion as being “obsessively gory” but fully embraced the equal brutality of 12 Years a Slave as being “redemptive,” though both movies were doing the exact same thing. Because such viewers do not want to give religion the same redemptive power as race.

The thematic cleverness of The Imitation Game lies in its montage connection of Turing’s homosexuality with his genius and with all these other civil rights issues with which we have all come to agree upon. The movie creates a touching tragic homosexual love story from Turing’s past to show his deep pain of loss. And then it lays it on heavy with a bookend story of Turing’s tragic arrest and conviction of his homosexual acts in a time and place in British history where it was illegal. Who wouldn’t feel sorry for the suffering of chemical castration that he had to endure as a legal penalty? Again, more victimization, more emotional sympathy.

It will never occur to many viewers that there is no rational justification for claiming sexual behavior as an innate civil right, that there is no logical or rational connection between Turing’s homosexuality and his genius, his saving the world, or other civil rights protections. There doesn’t have to be. An emotional connection was made through montage and analogy, and that is just as powerful on the viewer’s psyche. Emotionally, the viewer feels the connection of Turing’s homosexual identity with greatness and with saving the world. The irrational, yet emotional conclusion is that to be against homosexuality is to be against greatness and saving the world.

This is the very reason why homosexual activists have been successfully commandeering school curriculums across the US to teach historical “contributions of homosexuals.” Even though their sexuality has nothing to do with their achievements, by emphasizing that identity through indoctrination, they will emotionally manipulate society to accept it as normal, or be ostracized as homophobic bigoted haters who will stop great achievements from saving the world simply by disagreeing with the morality of homosexuality. No logical or rational arguments are allowed.

Coded messages are creatively embedded in the story to subvert the viewer though analogy. Here’s how its done. The storyteller makes an argument with which the viewer agrees, by using phrases that are common with an argument with which the viewer may not agree. So, when Alan is explaining how machines and human minds are different, he says, “The question is, just because a machine thinks differently than you, does that mean it is not thinking? We allow such differences with humans. He have different tastes, different preferences. Our brains work differently.” Though these statements are about one area of scientific differences, they clearly reflect the common framing of the homosexual debate as “sexual preferences” rather than sexual morals, and the already discredited attempt to say brains of homosexuals are different by nature. You know, “born this way.” In this way, emotions can persuade contrary to the facts and reason.

The ultimate argument for normalizing homosexuality is the complete deconstruction of “normal,” to the point where people have contempt for “normality” by spinning it as being unrealistic, even destructive. At the end of The Imitation Game, Alan is depressed and envious of Joan’s “normal life.” But she then says that no one normal could have done what he did. She explains a litany of things like trains and tunnels and people that would not exist if it were not for him saving the world through decoding Enigma. She says, “If you wish you were normal, I can say that I certainly do not. The world is an infinitely better place precisely because you weren’t normal.”

A detective who figured out Alan’s secret sex life, after hearing his story of decoding Enigma, says, “I can’t judge you.”

So, now the emotional connection is reinforced between “judging” (that nasty evil word in our multiculty world) and “normality” (that wicked evil claim of Christians about sexuality). Really, this becomes a subversive intolerance and hatred of normal as evil.

Rational arguments are neatly subverted by the power of emotional ones in this beautifully crafted masterpiece of emotional montage. It’s really quite impressive propaganda. I think Christians could learn a thing or two from it that they should apply to their shabbily crafted celluloid sermons.

But there is another comparison with Christians and homosexuals in this world war of stories. The victimization of the homosexual in The Imitation Game is exactly reversed in the movie, Unbroken, about the Christian Louis Zamperini and his suffering as a WWII POW. It really typifies the reversal of what I think is going on in our culture where those who disagree with homosexual practice are now being targeted for their identities and oppressed through social bigotry and Christophobia (businesses and careers destroyed, smear campaigns of hate). In The Imitation Game, the homosexual identity is connected with the story of greatness, while in Unbroken, the Christian identity is disconnected from the story of greatness.

And who is the one whose identity is being oppressed?

OSCAR WATCH • The Theory of Everything: Unintentional Tragedy of a Crippled Atheist Mind.

Posted on February 9, 2015 by admin

The story of brilliant Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking and his relationship with his wife Jane Hawking, based on her book, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.

If Eddie Redmayne does not win the Oscar for his portrayal of famed scientist Stephen Hawking, it will be a proof for the existence of Satan.

Hawking is as universally famous for his Quantum physics as for the debilitating disease that froze his body into a prison. This movie does a masterful job of capturing the heart wrenching decline of Hawking’s physical capacities that began in his college years at Cambridge. You cannot watch his transformation from a young idle but brilliant young man into the twisted frozen cripple without having your heart deeply moved by the pathos and irony of such misfortune.

But this movie is also a love story that embodies the additional irony of an uneasy relationship between faith and reason in our secular age. Felicity Jones is fabulous with nuance as Jane Wilde Hawking, who meets Stephen in college and falls in love with him just before his diagnosis of ALS, the disease of the baseball hero, Lou Gehrig. It cripples the body, but leaves the mind untouched.

What makes this story so fascinating is that Jane is an Anglican Christian while Stephen is an atheist. When Jane first finds out that Stephen is a “cosmologist,” he explains it is like “religion for intelligent atheists.” She asks him “what do you worship?” and he replies, “One single equation that explains the universe.” This motivation, which sounds suspiciously like a God substitute, becomes the Bethlehem Star for Hawking’s life journey as a mathematician who “can’t allow his equations to be muddled by a supernatural creator.”

But Jane is no simple-minded pushover in her spiritual beliefs. She retorts with a feistiness that she carries through the film, “That seems less an argument against God than against physicists,” and thus their stormy relationship of passionate strange attraction that gives Stephen motive to live, and the spiritual repulsion that drove them apart. (In one point of the movie, they look up at the stars and Jane quotes Genesis One. But she doesn’t say, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” rather, she says, “In the beginning was the heavens and the earth…” Which is revealing of the filmmaker’s bias in not wanting to give God too much screen time.)

The strain on their relationship develops when Stephen is incapable of helping Jane with family duties, He withdraws into his physics work as she raises their (ultimately three) children. He lives in denial of his disease because he refuses to be defined by it. He avoids using a wheelchair, keeps using the stairs by crawling up and sliding down, and worst of all, denies Jane the full time help she needs to take care of him. This character flaw in Hawking has the result of incarnating a paradigm for the triumph of the human spirit in the face of great adversity. An imprisoned body cannot keep the self-determined mind from flying to heights of grandeur.

The problem is that what the filmmakers seek to depict as a victory of boundless humanity over the boundaries of life actually becomes an unwitting tragedy of the self-delusion of mankind without God. As much as Hawking denies his limitations, he hurts the one who loved him most. He ultimately has to accept a wheelchair, can no longer climb the stairs and gives in to having full time help. Why? Because reality will always crush human pride and force us into submission whether we like it or not. (We. Will. All. Die.)

And that leads to the second tragic element of this story. The new help is a man who begins with genuine concern to help Stephen, but inevitably falls in love with Jane. And one can certainly understand the overwhelming temptation of having a “normal” relationship with a healthy equal under such strain. Jane and her reluctant lover manage to fight their baser instincts our of their moral convictions and apparently do not give in to temptation.

Jane’s own moral striving over the flesh is contrasted with Stephen’s selfish absorption. But the dark matter between them leads to Stephen’s own adulterous betrayal of Jane with one of his later female helpers. We see a twisted kind of loving control the new caretaker has with Stephen that draws him away from the one woman who truly loved him and sought his well being for 30 years. The mind is not the only thing that can overcome physical limitations, so can human pride.

But the real tragedy of this story is not so much in the physical captivity of a great mind, or the degeneration of love and marriage, as much as it is in the spiritual captivity of a mind in denial of reality. Again, this is not the intent of the filmmakers, but rather the inescapable deconstruction of their own godless theme.

At the end of the film, in an atheist sermon quite similar to Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot foolishness, Hawking says to a crowd at the end of the film, “It is clear we are ordinary primates on a planet orbiting an average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred million galaxies. but ever since the dawn of civilization, people have sought for understanding to the underlying order of the world. There ought to be something special about boundary conditions of the universe. And what can be more special than that there is no boundary? There should be no boundary to human endeavor. No matter how bad life seems, there is always something you can do and succeed at. While there is life, there is hope.”

No boundaries, huh? Exactly what scientific observation or mathematical formula gives the physicist that idea? That may be a nice humanistic slogan of inspiration but it is deeply scientifically false and lethal to finding that simple equation for salvation. For our boundaries are so intrinsic to our existence that denying them is self-delusion. We are all going to degenerate and die. That’s a boundary condition that is scientifically irrefutable and inescapable (despite the sci-fi fantasy of transhumanists). We are contingent finite beings in a contingent finite universe—also a scientific fact.

If there are no boundaries, then physicist, heal thyself.
Or should I say, physicist, create thyself.

Ever since the Tower of Babel, Homo Ignoramus Rebellious has sought to “make a name for ourselves” by building our towers of self-deification. We don’t want to be accountable to a Creator, so we deny our own limitations and boundary conditions and in flying leaps of irrational delusion, conclude we are without limits. We can become as gods. Well, if you deny the central point of rationality, the Judeo-Christian God, it makes sense that you will replace him with an idol of yourself. The insanity of Original Sin.

It is in understanding the boundaries and learning how to let them guide you to the truth wherein real freedom lays.

Einstein once said that scientists are poor philosophers and he was right. Like Hawking, they call for the “end of philosophy and religion,” with their pseudo-science, while they make speculations that they themselves do not even realize are not scientific but philosophical and religious speculation.

One can claim that the universe is infinite, but in order to do so, one must be a science denier. To posit that everything came from nothing is anti-science. To posit that life came from non-life is anti-science. To posit a multi-verse of infinite universes is pure philosophical speculation without empirical support. It amounts to a religion created to salve the wound of the self-referential absurdity of atheism. Atheist scientific speculators like Hawking are merely creating their own religion in the name of physics—but make no mistake, it is religion and philosophy, not science.

The summary of Hawking’s life is sadly an incorrigible denial of the scientific and logical implications of his own pursuit of the origin and meaning of the universe: A Creator. He will not bow the knee to the higher power, so he makes up a fairy tale of a philosophically and scientifically absurd self-creating universe in order to justify his pre-determined philosophical conclusion, “What need for a creator?” “No boundaries, no beginning, no creator.”

At one point in the film, we hear the line from Hawking’s hit book, A Brief History of Time, about the hope that when we know the simple equation, we will “know the mind of God.” Jane mistakenly thinks that this is some kind of concession to the possibility of a God, but she misses the point. In context of that book, Hawking was redefining God out of existence by using “mind of God” as a euphemism for the impersonal mathematical equation that supposedly upholds and runs the universe (And they say Christians believe silly things). His intention is to say, call it God, if you want, but it’s ultimately an impersonal force (Always add after such statements: “And I am not accountable to it for my moral behavior” and you will understand the true origins of the black hole of human nature).

I have no desire to make light of Hawking’s brilliance or of his suffering in this world. To the contrary, as I watched this movie, I was profoundly moved. I wept at his suffering and the suffering he caused his wife and family. I could not help but think of how the mind untethered by God results in a captivity that is far more wretched than the degeneration of the body, indeed the universe. It moves one to posit absurdities of one’s own grandeur and the denial of the logical consequences of meaninglessness in an atheist universe. It drives silly tiny man to shake his trembling cramped fist at his Almighty Creator. “No boundaries! No beginning! No creator!”

After all, if we are really as meaningless and insignificant as Hawking concludes, then it is self-delusion to conclude with the absurd non-sequitur, “If there is life, there is hope.” There is no hope in such a case, there is only death and nothingness to look forward to. You can’t create meaning out of nothing.

Unless you live in denial of reality.

I finally got a glimpse of understanding of the beauty of the promise of resurrection in Hawking’s own misfortune of captivity. Here is a man who Jesus offers true hope, not false humanistic hope, of truly having final triumph over all the boundaries of life and death. How I longed to see this man rise up at the Resurrection of the Dead and become whole in mind, body and soul. In a way, he is a metaphor for us all, captive in our twisted pride and denial, seeking freedom everywhere but in the only one who can free us from our own self-delusion of “no boundaries, no beginning, no creator.”

These words of Jesus came alive to me with hope in the face of deep sadness:

Luke 4:18–44

Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”