Unification Theology And The Cross of Christ

by Bryce Pettit, Centers For Apologetics Research

The most universally recognizable symbol of Christianity is the cross of Jesus Christ. For believers it represents the love of God, a love that would not even spare heaven's most precious treasure.  For most of those outside the faith it represents an absurdity, and for the Jews, a blasphemy.  No other doctrine of Christianity divides believers from unbelievers like the cross of Christ.

There is a story that well illustrates this point, albeit with humor.  A woman bought a set of audio cassettes for her young son. dramatizing the life of Christ.  He was fascinated by the person of Jesus, his life, his miracles, and so on.  But when the tape started to describe Jesus' crucifixion, the boy became very upset.  He crossed his arms, stuck out his lower lip, and pouted. His mother happened to walk into the room at this time and noticed how upset her son was.  She asked him what was wrong and he said, "I don't like what they did to Jesus, nailing him to that cross." His mother explained to him that by dying on the cross Jesus could forgive all of

The Pagan Revival

Our post-Enlightenment age, for all its devotion to a purely mechanistic worldview that dismisses spiritual reality as superstition, has been unable to check the rebirth of ancient faith and ritual that never completely died out. Although suppressed for hundreds of years in Western civilization, ancient paganism is enjoying a resurgence among many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people who are rejecting their nominal and ineffectual attachments to Christendom. The development of an entirely pagan culture in our postchristian world now spans the globe and encompasses an innumerable variety of primitive and contemporary alternative spiritualities found represented in many ancient civilizations. Our secular society views these developments with a relativistic indiffference while the Christian Church now finds itself once again confronted by the same type of alien gods and goddesses that challenged it in the first three centuries.  

The forms these pagan spiritualities take are many. Perhaps the most well known in  the U.S. are the advances of the Wiccan and the Pagan movements, drawn from a variety of traditions ranging from the Celtic to the Egyptian. Other kinds of ethnic paganism such as Voodoo, Santeria  and Palo Malombe have always been in existence among devotees who are members of the Afro-Carribean cultures that flourish in largely urban settings

The Bondage Of Cult Mind Control

By Rafael Martinez, Director, Spiritwatch Ministries

"Mind control? There's no such thing!"

The very words seem so unreal, a millenial boogey-man, just another urban legend concocted by some paranoiac cranks to amaze and frighten people into the consideration of their fear-mongering agenda. It brings to mind vivid word pictures of  mindless, glassy eyed zombies under the control of puppet mastering demagogues. It hisses of secret government plans aimed at enslaving all mankind with drug-induced and electronic psycho-technology. One thinks of the tormented and trigger-bound "Manchurian Candidate" or Mel Gibson's haunted Jerry in the recent "Conspiracy Theory", passive victims of a perverse science. Such grotesquely evocative impressions flood the minds of those who hear the term, so unbelievably bizarre as to be dismissed outright as a fable. 

But that's not our point. 

The Siren Song: How Cults Deceptively Recruit

by Rafael Martinez, Director, Spiritwatch Ministries

 NOVEMBER 12 - UT Chattanooga, 10:06 a.m.

He was a likable, bright and sharp guy, but truth be told, he was actually a very quiet person whose lonely hours after work and school were getting too long. The party life was getting old - getting buzzed with a bunch of co-workers

The Truth About Satanism

By Lance E. King, Spiritwatch Ministries

A NOTE OF CAUTION: Please note that the following article contains a number of links to non-Christian source material.  In the interest of accuracy in research, these links have been provided to aid the mature Christian in gaining an accurate understanding of the beliefs under discussion.  It should go without saying that a link, for example, to the Church of Satan homepage is not an endorsement of their beliefs.  Be aware that we do not maintain editorial control over such links, and material contained on these sites may be offensive to some readers.