“First, the churches, in larger and larger numbers, are adapting themselves to felt needs in the congregations much as a business might adapt its product to a market. ..[to a] consumer, somebody who is going to attempt to hitch up a product to their own felt needs…they want a sense of personal well-being, however momentary and fragmentary that personal sense of well-being is, and our churches are beginning to cater to this.” ( Dr.David Wells)
Our Father Below has asked me to write a summary of our meeting this week , and copy it to him and all the Principals.
In view of the enormous stakes involved in the overall strategy to infiltrate and merge all the various Points of Sale into One Giant Monopoly, we have seen it as imperative to increase communication among the Principal Tempters. Several of us have felt undermined in our efforts, by others who have seemed to forget our overall goal: to mainstream the River Movement. It has been helpful for us to review the overall campaign, and brainstorm together the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats we have each observed.
Shamanazerr reported on our greatest Strength: the successful packaging of Fuller and Company. They are squarely in the mainstream now–The Professor with his “Prayer Walks”, and America’s Pastor at Twaddleback with his “Peace Plan”. We’ve got control in both arenas now: the churches and the Missions Organizations. We MUST keep both distracted from their first order of business: getting out the Nasty News and making more replicas of our Enemy.
So we have penetrated the market at every Point of Sale with identificational repentance, prayer walking, spiritual mapping, and forty days of purposelessness; every important distraction from that simple and dreadful command, “Preach the good news to all the world”. We will divert them with busyness that also is a clever sop for the conscience of those who are ashamed of the gospel. We will push that cute “Ultimate Treasure Hunt”–it combines all this nonsense but adds the lure of adventure to the mix –which is especially important to our targeted youthful demographic. Instead of totting up ‘souls won’, the patients will love to add up all the ‘lives they have influenced.’ We will fill them with pride as they talk of dynamic spiritual warfare that “changes the atmosphere”, and so we easily obscure the truth that the Nasty News is THE power of salvation. Pride is also the pull promotion towards glory clouds, open portals, orbs and all other various shamanistic technologies that are so extremely titillating to these under the sway of the Extreme Prophetic .
Other tools repackaged from the New Age proving equally strong for this target market are Centering prayer, and Sozo. Both are very effective at focusing attention away from the Enemy. With the Contemplative technique, we are able to block our patient’s real communion with the Enemy, and open their minds to our suggestions instead; and most importantly, they are not concerned at all with hallowing That Name, but only with enjoying the self-hypnotism repeating The Dread Name ad-nauseum produces. Do not let them near a serious study of The Enemy’s Prayer, as they must not encounter anything that would point them to the absurdity of using repetitious words to address their so-called Father.
Shamanezerr developed Sozo this same way, cleverly repackaging the “healing of the inner child” model from Jungian psychologies. Sozo’s effectiveness (aside from the draw of simony on the prayer ‘minister’) is that it keeps the patients fixed in searching deep within their souls for past hurts and wounds, seeking self satisfaction. Then, our voices speak sweet nothings as a visualized ‘Jesus’ will comfort them. For what should be dead to them, their past life, what ought to have been dead and buried in their baptisms, is fair game for us. And what fair game it is, very gamey, so scrumptious! Carcasses never buried– didn’t The Enemy say, that there “the Eagles” will gather? So, we gather, and so we devour. This does well,to keep the patients’ gaze upon their navels, not the Nasty Wooden Thing. Oh, their self love is so delicious. Feed it with more hypnotizing mantras and more Sozo.
Our greatest Strength, however is poised to become our greatest weakness. Life cycles of our products are becoming clearer as well– the “plundering of the Egyptians” trope may have reached its peak, as the economic downturn continues, and the ransacked economies of the world are looking for a scapegoat; and so they are starting to hitch up the horses to the chariots in pursuit–note the Atlantic’s cover story, “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?”
So at this point we mustn’t be too confrontational with our coveting appeal. Even the greedy disenfranchised may begin to see their guilt, and begin to think seriously, and perhaps repent! The enormously effective Prosperity Gospel (aka Pyramid Scheme) cannot be risked, it is the linchpin at our biggest Points of Sale. Because of this weakness in our market, we have all agreed to tone down the “seed-faith”, and all the other ‘greed is godly’ pulls for this bunch. Wolves won’t get wool when the sheep can’t work. And the gullible may get angry if pushed too much here, and start to rebel! Remember: for this group, money is their sacredest cow.
We have observed that another tool at the end of its life cycle may be the Fuller Brush Man himself–he is eighty now, isn’t he? How regrettable. He has been so useful. He is so avuncular and scholarly and nonthreatening, and those unfortunate “apostolic decrees” at the the Ludicrous Buffoon’s coronation have been largely forgotten. Every last one of them, all of that debacle must stay forgotten. We believe we have recovered the brand, and we can still position it for those with a lust for power and prestige– our push continues with Dominionism, the Joseph anointing, The Seven Mountains Mandate. Our puppets really believe they are the Head, while we pull on their tails to move them wherever we want them to go. Hah! What a luscious surprise, when these fools discover which end they really are. A very bad end for them indeed!
Your dear Emma Angel here reluctantly brought up the weaknesses we are facing in continuing to position the Ludicrous Buffoon to the downsized, disaffected divorced and dysfunctional psychographic, basically to the disenfranchised. I will not question Our Father Below’s wisdom in removing me from the position of Chief Tempter to the Ludicrous Bufoon, and giving it to dear, dear Dracovox–affectionately known to us here as the ‘Break Wind’ Angel. No, I have complete confidence in in him to be a Pull Through Angel, as he has been in the past. We all remember his management of similar loose cannons at the KFC franchise. Yet the danger here is not to be underestimated. Your sweet Emma Angel has said before, we are becoming grossly overconfident of this crowd! I am forbidding my pupils to tease our patients any longer, and although the benefits of their out-of-control behavior are obvious to us, in that they are oblivious to our machinations when they’re ‘whacked’, the risks of letting them be too ridiculous are too great to our overall campaign. Frankly, they all look demon possessed. Someone will eventually discern this, and begin to do real exorcisms at the Points of Sale again, and we lose our advantage.
Remember, the campaign was named by our Father Below himself: “The Hour is Urgent!” Our greatest strategy has always been fear and anxiety. We make them afraid of the coming of Our Messiah. We will make them afraid that they won’t be able to cope with the End-Times…that their little lights won’t be shining. That their foolish lamps will be empty of oil. Afraid their appetites and habits can’t be altered. Afraid of all those hideous inner desires, that they will erupt and control their lives. So we will play with their fears of missing out of the promised instant sanctification if they don’t stay in the movement, and so we expect Fire Tunnels to be big, big, big!
And don’t forget, keep repeating the old chestnut, “We are Entering a Time of Open Heaven.” So their pathetic Heavens open, and what falls out? All that glitters and distracts–angel feathers and gold dust and gold teeth, fake jewels and fake words, and everything that rusts and molds, rots and fades away. Draw their attention to these tawdry tricks, to any shiny shape that magically redirects attention from the Infernal Wooden Thing, and the Enemy. They are so pathetically gullible.
Ishhopmaner reported on our premier opportunity: securing Generation Next. This is Best Served at the House of Pancakes . Because this market is so sick of their parent’s excesses, he has bundled the Fasted Lifestyle very effectively with the Bridal Paradigm–brilliantly funneling all those raging hormones into the ‘Spirit of Burning’! We’re working the “Love-sickness” trigger–we make sure they’re depressed, discouraged and disillusioned whenever they are away from the hypnotic pull of the Play Rooms. We have inculcated the need for hyper-stimulation into our young patient’s neuro-transmitters from those pre-pubescent gateway drugs of playstations and I-pods. How very ironic! These patients castigate the culture, attacking it as an “abyss of entertainment”, and can’t see they are as dope-sick as any of our junkie patients. It is imperative for them to remain ignorant of our brilliant conditioning process.
And this leads us to our greatest, our only Threat, as it has been from the beginning, as my brother Screwtape so ably pointed out: we must be careful in our attempts to desensitize our Patients to these practices, (that in former days they would have considered occult!), that we do not awaken their reason. We want them fully ignorant of our devices, they must never be allowed to question what they are doing.
So our strategy here to neutralize this Threat will be to make the so-called Watchmen on the wall look ridiculous. Tempt them with shrillness and uber-separateness, and most of all un-love, and thus they’ll sound like irrelevant gongs. Lump them with the King James Onlyists and other weird, unreasoning, conspiratorial cults. We’ll make our patients afraid of any who have begun to doubt, who actually begin to read the Profane Book, and believe they must worship the Enemy in Spirit and in Truth. We must call all those who have begun to worship him with all their minds — as their blasphemous creed commands they do — Pharisees and Legalists. That label, like no other pejorative, must strike terror in their hearts. And fear is our greatest strategic tool.
So, to sum up, to take advantage of this magnificent opportunity, and minimize the Threat, and bring our expected return, we will redirect and exhaust. We will exhaust them with calls to greater zeal: 24/7 prayers, fasting, busyness. We are going to burden them even more with new ‘revelations’–like this one: It is they who will bring in the Tribulation by all this fervor, and they themselves who defeat Our Boy with their feverish activity! Isn’t it scandalously delicious ?
So in their zeal without true knowledge we will ensure that they are so tired and so distracted, that they do not do the real work the Enemy set before them to do–He made it so ridiculously simple– “TO GO”! And make some more little images of himself, hah! Why doesn’t he surround himself with mirrors, for Our Father Below’s sake? Why does he love these little worms so? Oh well, the great mystery of the ages. Our delightful occupation is to make his family business endlessly complicated. Scrumptious!!
We will devour them with a continuous feeling of inadequacy, of never really reaching the height of spiritual dedication. Yes, exhaust them! Mix lies with truth* to confuse them entirely, and never give them time to think about their doubts; with all their growth in self-denial, we will only exhaust them more! They must feel their sacrifices are never enough, their fasting’s never enough to free them, trapped as they are in self loathing (although really, it is self-admiration, we must make it seem like a more orthodox self immolation). Yes, we will exhaust them entirely, and many will be driven insane, until hapless and hopeless, they are plunged into the great darkness of Our Father Below. Ah! It is such a beautifully cruel plan. I congratulate all who helped to contribute, and may we all dine upon all we desire at the soonest.
Your Fellow Ravenous Spirit,
SHREWSHAPE
* “The devil mixes his lies with the truth, for he must use a truth to carry his lies. The believer must therefore discriminate, and judge all things. He must be able to see so much to be impure, and so much that he can accept. Satan is a “mixer”. If in anything he finds 99% pure, he tries to insert 1% of his poisonous stream, and this grows, if undetected, until the proportions are reversed. Where there is mixture acknowledged to be in meetings where supernatural manifestations take place, if believers are unable to discriminate, they should keep away from these “mixtures” until they are able to discern.”
from ’War on the Saints’ by Jessie Penn-Lewis
Now...Through A Glass Darkly 