New Orleans, I believe, has been a stronghold of witchcraft for centuries, perhaps even since its founding. The city located on the banks of the "Big Muddy," has the popular moniker, "The Big Easy", referring to its Jean Harlow-laid-back, permissive attitude toward drunken revelry and promiscuity and relaxation of inhibitions, chiefly moral ones.
The "Big Easy" is exalted for its culture, based, they say, on cuisine, jazz, blues, and so on. Its baccanalian festival, Mardi Gras, has drawn untold thousands of collegians from all over the U.S. to its yearly orgy of drinking and free love and promiscuous sex. Prostitution and drug use are a big part of the festival, it must be admitted by all.
Bacchus was the Romanized Greek god of wine and orgies (the Greeks knew him as Dionysios). Bacchus is the god of New Orleans, or a chief object of worship in the New Orleans pagan pantheon, to be more precise in terms. New Orleans has many gods, just as America has many gods (see the list in the Emmaus Walk, offered on the home page). This loathsome god, and the other idols with it, was dealt a terrific blow by Katrina lately. The riverside metropolis was largely inundated, forcing out the residents, except for some hold-outs. Everything came to a halt, a complete shut-down of civic life, including the immorality and witchcraft that were riding high and firm in the saddle of this city. As a stronghold, it still maintained certain vigorous charismatic and evangelicals churches that enjoyed world-ranging ministries, but they were not been able to keep it from becoming one of the Devil's chief polluters, morally, of America. These same ministries and their evangelist-founders, by the way, were apparently not overly perturbed by the spiritual darkness surrounding them. After Katrina, they reacted to the city's destruction with tremendous compassion and material aid of all kinds, yet what about the spiritual darkness that had kept their city in such bondange for over two centuries? Did they really care about all those lost souls shackled by witchcraft and voodoo? I watched their broadcasts and never heard them cry out for New Orleans before Katrina.
Katrina has been allowed by God to do what the New Orleans churches and big TV ministries have failed to do, though it is their responsibility to crush evil forces by anointed prayer and intercession (just as it was lately done by Christians and Christian leaders in the witchcraft dominated nation and stronghold of Haiti). Katrina is a positive thing, spiritually. It has increasingly exposed the sickness of not only New Orleans society but its desperate need of a cleansing, forgiving, loving, providing God.
God is ready and willing to save all of the affected cities and areas, in every way! He did not have to use or allow Katrina, but when a society continues as this one has, and the churches fail in their responsibilities (they prayed many hurricanes away in the past, but this one was allowed by God for His purposes), God may have no other recourse. Katrina shows that God really cares! He still wants to save those people, and He still wants to save the Prodigal people of the United States! The hurricane burst open a door for revival in America coast to coast.
It is terribly painful to pay the cost the victims of the storm paid for this revival. They have suffered death and mind-boggling destruction that is unbelievable to those like myself who was not involved directly, but we are all involved now, in trying to do something to bring aid and Christian love to them, however we can individually and together with others.
This is not a political, economic, social, or even philosophical and religious issue, though liberal news anchors and liberal news commentators have tried to make it those things. It is a spiritual issue, but with physical aspects that also cannot be denied. When we get the spiritual view, and act on it, while taking care of the physical and emotional needs that are most critical, we will share Christ, and also join in prayer for the full deliverance and restoration of New Orleans, Mississippi and Louisiana, and the U.S. in general, from the domination and influence of witchcraft.
Christ is Lord and Savior. We must make Him again the foundation of our nation and society and the ruler in our lives. There is no other way to rightly respond to an event like Katrina. It goes beyond a wake-up call from God. We already had that wake-up call on 9/11 and in the Asian tsunami. It goes far beyond a wake-up call or warning. It is the most urgent call for revival and repentance in America, starting with the churches and our own families! The nation soon forgot about New Orleans and the whole area affected by Katrina--and aside from charitable giving and aid continued going about its usual business of drugs, extramarital sex, booze, violence, Internet pornography--(all of which are sin in God's book). But God has not forgotten those people who were struck down by Katrina! He is still just as caring and loving in his view of them.
America demonstrably failed to head the wake-up call of 9/11 (the pornography industry, for example, was shaken for a few days and its clinetele stayed clear, but the porn queens and kings soon got back in stride along with the U.S. stock market (which had to close for about a week). Just when they thought nothing could happen to hurt their profits, Katrina turned and hit New Orleans and the south coasts of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
What next is going to have to happen to wake us up? Radical rogue regimes are aiming missiles at our shores (while preparing nuclear warheads to arm them). Communist North Korea defies the entire world in missile development and testing, seeking long range missile capability in order to deliver a nuclear payload to American cities in order to make us bend to any demand they make (nuclear blackmail).
So far, America seems powerless to keep North Korea from its objective, choosing instead the weak, "Paper Tiger" policy of political pressure and threats of sanctions from the UN and various U.S. allies (all which North Korea's dictator despises and defies).
It is clear by all this, that America, like the Titanic, is fast converging with the fatal iceberg. Will we bend the knee in prayer, renounce our pride, and seek God truly through repentance and turning from our wickedness?
What is the lesson for us? What is the lesson for America? It should be clear to us by now. Time is running out. Perhaps, it has already run out. We can be compared to the fatally-misled Titanic of the White Star Line, after it struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. going full steam ahead into a choked ice field after six warnings on the day of the collision from other ships passing through the area. After the iceberg had passed and vanished into the night, the shining, magnificent vessel, her electric lights blazing from bow to stern, continued as though nothing had happened when actually she was taking in 31 degrees Fahrenheit sea water by the thousands of gallons and sinking fast. Though nothing seemed amiss on the upper levels on the nine-decked ship, and some passengers thought everything had returned to normal on this voyage from Southhampton to New York City, the world's greatest luxury liner, carrying the cream of Anglo-American high society, including millionaire tycoons of New York and Philadelphia, only went a short distance before the engines were stopped and the magnificent, doomed vessel ceased moving forward forever. To attempt to sail a foot further was absolutely futile, the despairing captain no doubt realized. His illustrious ship and splendid career were finished. The great Titanic was taking its last voyage, straight down to the bottom of the sea two and a half miles down.
He continued making fatal mistakes, ignoring the repeated ice warnings from other vessels in the area, which should have prompted him to slow the ship down--just in case an iceberg came drifted into the lane of the ship's course. Whatever his real reasons for his decisions, he was a large factor in the ship's destruction and the deaths of some 1,500 people. President Bush, too, is very much like the ship's over-confident Captain Smith and his boss, the ebullient, high-pressure Lord Ismay. How so? Well, he has a lordly, detached, extra-national State Department that is a state or government unto itself, careful for all its privileges and position, and which does not understand it is a mere agency to the state it ostensibly serves. He also has a White House filled with a staff that is detached from its own conservative base, and consistently ignored the warnings from that base until the Mid-Term election fiasco, all the while issueing ebullient, upbeat manifestos about its great efforts to get out a record turnout. Yes, people turned out, and they promptly voted against them into out of power and into the dustbin!
Ultimately, this is not about Democrats or Republicans, it is a matter of what spirit is running or dominating the U.S. Government--God's or man's, God's or secular humanism. In a witchcraft-saturated White House, besieged night and day by the wrong kind of spirits--vulnerable to it because of his own demonstrated naivete and his New Age views regarding all religions looking to the same God (He has said he appreciates prayers of people of all faiths--his very words)-- he has stumbled again and again in his administration, misled by advisers and by departments and agencies who do not have a Christian perspective in the least that would serve to steer them aright in diplomatic and government channels.
President Bush remains a vulnerable, misled, and sadly sympathetic figure in the last portion of his term in the Oval Office. That being the case--and I believe it is, based on the last term and a half he has served--he needs our prayers all the more. We may, due to the wrong message sent the terrorists (the President pleading in his post-Election address to the nation that our enemies the terrorists not take the Mid-Term upset as a sign we will give up the fight for freedom and let them do as they please to us) suffer all the more, very soon now. We may even suffer the utter loss of America as we have known it, just as the passengers who stepped aboard the gleaming, brand-new, "unsinkable" T.S.S. TITANIC, in April of 1912, were in a few days time to experience the terrific shock of struggling for their lives in freezing waters of the North Atlantic.
WITCHCRAFT
I Samuel 15:23
WITCH
Ex. 22:8
Deut. 18:10
MAGICIANS
Gen. 41:8
Gen. 41:29
Ex. 7:1
Ex. 7:22
Ex. 8:7
Ex. 8:18
Ex. 8:19
Ex. 9:11 [here is the scripture for the bombing and then the destruction of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon, all three of which represent the anti-God stance of Pharaoh and the imcompetence of his magicians to equal God's powerful miracle!]
ENCHANTER
Deut. 18:10
SOOTHSAYING
Acts 16:6
ENCHANTMENTS
Ex. 7:11
Ex. 7:22
Ex. 8:7
Ex. 8:18
N um. 24:1
2 Kings 17:17
2Kings 21:6
2 Chrons. 33:6
Is. 42:9
Is. 47:12
DIVINATION
N umbers 22:7
Num. 23:23
Deut. 18:10
2 Kings 17:17
Jer. 14:14
Ezek. 12:24
Ezek. 13:6
Ezek. 13:7
Ezek. 21:21
Ezek. 21:22
Ezek. 21:23
Acts 16:16.
Please bear in mind that soothsaying, enchantments, divination, and spell casting (given in the Exodus account of Pharaoh's magicians casting spells in an increasingly vain attempt to counter and surpass God's miracles with Satan the former archangel's limited and less than divine powers) are not all the same thing, but manifestations of witchcraft. Witchcraft also involves the inflicting of disease and death on other people through mediums or witches or warlocks (warlocks are male witches). I read in the New Tribes Mission magazine that native peoples in the jungles of South America or New Guinea and the other Pacific islands are very fearful of such witchcraft being used against them by their enemies. They get sick and die, declaring it is a witch's spell that is killing them, and that could very well be the truth. Without Christ, they are powerless to protect themselves.
Witches (often called the more socially acceptable term, "psychics") are also paid to attract and win lovers or the affections of people or maybe some advancement in career or finances. This is done so commonly today because it appears more innocent than the disease and death type of spell casting, which is "black magic," so-called, whereas the other uses--getting a spouse by a horoscope in an on-line dating service, or getting a promotion over a rival--appear to be "white" or harmless magic and spell casting. Yet in God's eye, in the light of the Bible, there are no shades of black--they are all one color to God--black as sin and rebellion--black as Satan himself. There are no gray areas when dealing with witchcraft. Dabblers in the so-called "white magic" area of witchcraft are tempting the spirit of suicide to grab hold of their souls--and it will do so the more the person enters into this forbidden realm. A friend of mine years ago, when he was still unsaved, had a wife who dabbled in "white magic," and though she claimed that was all it was and it wouldn't harm her in any way, she later took her life. It is a common thing for the demons involved in witchcraft to demand their dues from people they patronize with special powers or demonic gifts--and their dues? It is a person's very life, through suicide, followed by the damnation of their souls for all eternity. What a terrible price to pay for passing demonic thrills and deceptive benefits of magic and witchcraft!
Acts 8:9
BEWITCHED
Acts 8:9
Acts 8:11
Galatians 3:1
