IBS | Our Younger Generations Are Not Prioritizing Religion| Witchcraft in the Church |Week 4

Welcome to Buttafleye Ministry Interactive Bible Study. Theme: Witchcraft in the Church. Topic: "Our Younger Generations Are Not Prioritizing Religion." Participants, please answer the interactive questions at the end of this blog. Join this FREE study or other studies of interest. JOIN STUDY

The Resurgence of Witchcraft

Why are teens today, not leaving a religious lifestyle?

People (mostly teens) turn to magic the same way people turn to religion: for a mixture of community, belief, and hopefulness.

A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 54 percent of teens ages 14 to 18 said: "living a religious life" is very important to them, compared to 95 percent who thought free time and 93 percent who thought career success was more important. These numbers point out the fact our younger generations are not prioritizing religion as being important.

"There is no one way to be a witch," says Mey Rude, who left the Catholic church after coming out as trans. "It's a really freeing identity."

Why are teens choosing the "New Age" over religion or Christianity?

More dramatically, a 2018 Pew Research poll found that 65 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 believed in at least one of four beliefs that Pew called "New Age." These beliefs included the power of psychics, astrology, and spiritual energy being in physical things. But even among those young people who find religion important, it's not the religion older generations may think of. Some of our young people still find traditional religion important, but others in this group are involved in religion related to varied forms of consciousness and the gods and goddesses of paganism. Many young Americans seeking spiritual matters are looking for truth in nature and themselves.

A big difference between today's teens exploring witchcraft and previous generations of teens is their parents. The parents of today's teens have a weakened relationship with the traditional Christianity of the past.

I was actually thinking I could maybe wear a suit to the dance. Because I'd feel better in a suit. Uh, I feel more myself in boy's clothes. Actually, dad, I don't think I'm a girl at all. Even though I look like a girl, even though I have a girl's name, even though you've always thought of me as a girl. I'm a boy. I feel good when people call me "he" and "young fella". Like Rozʼs grandma did. I can't keep going on as a girl anymore. I just can't, dad. [...] Theo. Maybe you could start by calling me, Theo. After Dorothea.”

— Theo to his dad[src]

What is nonbinary?

Let's start with the basics - what does non-binary refer to? Non-binary is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn't sit comfortably with 'man' or 'woman'. Non-binary identities are varied and can include people who identify with some aspects of binary identities, while others reject them entirely.

Non-Binary Trailblazers for young people.

Non-Binary Teens

"Those were my first steps into embracing my own sexuality and the first glimpses of exploring my gender," Gaudet told VICE via Skype from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Normalizing homosexuality

Just like our modern Western culture is recasting and normalizing homosexual and transexual behavior, the same is happening with witchcraft.

Today there are supermodel covens, suburban boys casting spells, and young witch influencers like Frankie Castanea, who has over a million Tik-Tok followers.

How is the world normalizing homosexuality?

TikTok star, 23, is a self-confessed 'hex symbol' and real-life practicing witch

EXCLUSIVE: Frankie Castanea has been casting spells and worshipping gods Diana and Hades since she was 16 as she claims it helps her to create change in her community.

Just don’t expect this very modern “witchtokker” – who boasts more than a million followers on TikTok – to be wearing a pointy hat. Frankie says: “I define being a witch as creating change in your own life and the community around you. The very basic way to create change is through spells, but it goes a lot further beyond that.

How is TikTok influencing our youth?

What does the Bible have to say about witchcraft?

There are several scriptures that deal with this issue. In 1 Chronicles 10:13, we read the following: "Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord; he did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance." One of the big issues with witchcraft is there is a spiritual power behind it. Mediums, spiritualists, witches, and warlocks are tapping into a power other than the power of the Most High God. To dabble in these areas is a form of idolatry because we are focusing on something other than the Most High God.

The reason the Most High God's Word speaks so negatively about witches is that He did not want His people to get involved with the false gods, which are real. Satan and his demons are the gods of witchcraft and Satanism. I believe the pagan gods and goddesses were devised by the god of this world (Satan) to take away from the worship of the true Most High God. Or at least Satan and his minions were influential in this process. Through the satanic influence and the wrong choices of humans, witchcraft is proliferating in Western culture.

Over the course of the 20th century, the popular idea of the witch underwent a transformation. Gone is the baby-eating, Satan-worshipping hag of medieval Europe, and in its place has emerged the idea of female healers.

What is a feminist?

Second-wave feminists

They are seeking a strong female subject latched onto the witch as the embodiment of feminine power. Witchcraft entered the feminist consciousness spiritually, through traditions like Wicca, and politically, as groups like WITCH—the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell—publicly hexed everything from beauty pageants to fees for public transit. Yet while the revival empowered some, it excluded others, and many of the groups that emerged were reserved for women. We should not be messing around with this type of activity. Leviticus 19:31 makes this clear: "Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God."

The epidemic of racism has once again taken another Black life and exhausted Black Americans who have reclaimed the streets to protest the police killing of George Floyd. Yet, amid these protests, many Black people are fighting another battle: Queer- and transphobia. Iyanna Dior, a Black trans woman, was viciously attacked in Minneapolis, the city at the heart of the recent nationwide protests, just mere days after Floyd’s death. Her assailants: A group of Black men.

Iyanna’s documented assault, which was widely circulated among LGBTQ+ circles, portrays an unfathomable, gruesome attack against Dior by multiple men, for a lengthy amount of time. Survival like Iyanna's, however, isn't always the case for Black trans women in this country. Just last week, two trans women, Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, and Riah Milton were reported murdered. These repeated killings bring forth a question that all Black queer and trans people must ask themselves over and over again when the life of a Black trans person is taken away.

When a certain group of anonymous activists gathered at the women’s march in Portland, Oregon, to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump last month, their decision to don crooked witches' hats and billowing black robes tapped a complex history of persecution and activism.

In Galatians 5:19-21, witchcraft is listed with activities like murder, drunkenness, adultery, fornication, hatred, envy, idolatry, and others. The scripture tells us that those who practice these things will not enter the kingdom of God. We need to quit following the cultural norms of the day and stick to the norms of the Bible. The problem today is we don't know our Bibles and we are being influenced by the internet and what's on our phones. Don't fall for it. Stand up for the Word of God. If someone you know is curious about witchcraft, inform them of what the Bible has to say about it.

Mike James & Buttafleye Ministry| Author

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Sources: "Inside the Practices of a Teenage Witch," by Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post, October 31, 2021.

BLM leaders practice 'witchcraft' and summon dead spirits, black activist claims

The new witches of Salem: feminist, empowered and anti-Trump

Witches are real and their ranks are growing. Amid the rise in political activism across the country, young American women have been drawn to witchcraft as a sign of feminism and community building. Salem, Massachusetts, is engrained in the mythos of witches and draws many women curious about the movement. Some of these witches come from families that have practiced witchcraft for generations, while others are new to the world of spells. But one thing they all have in common: they see it as a feminist practice.

‘The new socialism is not just political, it is magical and sexual.

What We Do Is Secret

This was, ostensibly, a resurrection of W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy From Hell), a second-wave feminist group founded in the late 1960s responsible for such playful and pertinent actions as the hexing of Wall Street and the cackling harassment of bridal fairs and beauty pageants. W.I.T.C.H. notoriously reclaimed the image of the ‘crone’, a figure central to the demonization of women during the inquisitorial purges of the Middle Ages. Using schlocky Halloween props, they redeployed the stereotype as a subversive currency, highlighting the kinds of behavior still deemed inappropriate for women; independence, aggression, and the right of refusal, qualities that Trump himself would neatly disparage when he termed Hilary Clinton a ‘nasty woman’ during the presidential campaign of 2016. But while the original W.I.T.C.H. had invoked the image of the enchantress in essentialist gendered terms, the contemporary ‘witch bloc’ assembled in Portland, embodied a distinctly intersectional sentiment evidenced by their monochromatic placards: ‘Trans Women Are Women’ and ‘Witches for Black Lives.

It would seem that every generation is due to its occult revival. Group exhibitions like ‘NEO-PAGAN-BITCH-WITCH!’, curated by the artist's Lucy Stein and France-Lise McGurn at Evelyn Yard last year, or ‘Witchy Methodologies’, a symposium organized by artist Anna Bunting-Branch at the Institute of Contemporary Art, both in London, suggest the relevance of witchcraft to a range of contemporary artists. With its evocation of animate matter and the transformative potential of ritual, paganism presents some fundamentally lucrative tools. Indeed, the perennial allure of secret doctrines has been offering initiates, adepts, and casual thrill-seekers alike the promise of self-knowledge since the counterculture gobbled down tarot cards and the teachings of Carlos Castaneda in the ’60s.

Obedience is better than sacrifice

This is the same knowledge from the beginning with Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis. The forbidden knowledge that one receives to be a god. This is very dangerous because it is rebellion and rebellion is witchcraft. What prophet a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?

Genesis 2 narrates that the Most High God places the man in a garden with trees whose fruits he may eat, but forbids him to eat from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." The Most High God formed woman after this command was given.

Mark 8:35-37 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. [36] For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? [37] Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Again, what is so deceptive today is the normalization of this type of activity. It is thought of as funny or innocuous by popular culture and an "in" thing to dabble in. Folks that is what deception is all about—making things appear in a way other than what they truly are.

Arthur Evans & Buttafleye Ministry| Author

Join the Buttafleye Ministry authors club and be a blog writer. Here

Sources: Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture (1978).

BLM leaders practice 'witchcraft' and summon dead spirits, black activist claims

What comes first, our Blackness or our queer- and transness?

Black Lives Matter

The main objective is to reconstruct the traditional family. How? by replacing the male with a transgender male or vice-versa.

Black conservative Christian and host of “The Hamilton Corner” podcast recently said the Black Lives Matter movement is associated with witchcraft and Marxist views.

According to The Christian Post, in an Aug. 19 podcast episode called “The BLM Connection to Witchcraft,” Abraham Hamilton III argues that Black Lives Matter is “Marxist, anti-Christ, anti-family, [and] anti-man organization.”

After reminding his listeners that Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, described herself as a “trained Marxist,” Hamilton read aloud a quote from Cullors explaining her point of view on spirituality.

“I’m calling for spirituality to be deeply radical," Cullors said. “We’re not just having a social justice movement, this is a spiritual movement.”

Hamilton played audio from a “Zoom-type conversation” between Cullors and Dr. Melina Abdullah, a professor of African studies at California State University Los Angeles who founded the group’s L.A. chapter.

The conversation took place in June, shortly after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“We’ve become very intimate with the spirits that we call on regularly,” Abdullah said in the clip. “Each of them seems to have a different presence and personality. You know, I laugh a lot with Wakiesha … I didn’t meet her in her body, right? I met her through this work.”

The “Wakiesha” mentioned by Abdullah refers to Wakiesha Wilson, an African-American woman who was found dead in a Los Angeles jail back in 2016.

Hamilton argues that the conversation proved that Black Lives Matter leaders were “summoning the spirits of the dead and using the power of the spirits of the dead in order to give them the ability to do what they’re calling the so-called justice work.”

Hamilton stated that those leaders seeking to summon the spirits of the dead are adhering to “the Yoruba religion of Ifa.” “They are summoning dead spirits,” he said. “One of the touchstones of this religious practice is ancestral worship. Guess what the Bible calls that folks? Witchcraft.”

What is Necromancy?

Patrisse Cullors says, “In my tradition, you offer things that your loved ones who have passed away would want. Whether it’s like honey or tobacco… things like that…. It is important that we be in direct relationship with the dead.” She continues: “Hashtags for us are way more than a hashtag. It is literally almost resurrecting spirits that are going to work through us to get the work done.” Melina Abdullah concurs. “What’s happened as we invoke these names is the invocation of their names that goes beyond remembering them,” she explains. “We call out our ancestors, we call them out for specific purposes”.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12

There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things, the Lord your God will drive them out before you.

The first thing that we do when we hear of a murder is we come out, we pray, we pour a libation we built with the community… This movement is much more than a racial and social justice movement. At its core, it’s a spiritual movement. “I know you always had this spiritual practice,” she goes on to say. “We were going to the ocean and doing these rituals and really feeding our spirits.” Patrisse Cullors, likewise, says: “Our spirituality is at the center of Black Lives Matter and that is not just for us. I feel like so many leaders and so many organizers are deeply engaged in a pretty important spiritual practice. I don’t think I could do this work without that.”

What does the Bible say about Necromancy?

Laws prohibiting various forms of witchcraft and divination can be found in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. These include the following (as translated in the King James Version): Exodus 22:18 – Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Isaiah 8:19

When they say to you, “Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter,” should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?

1 Samuel 28:7

Deuteronomy 18:11

or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.

Deuteronomy 26:14

I have not eaten of it while mourning, nor have I removed any of it while I was unclean, nor offered any of it to the dead. I have listened to the voice of the Lord my God; I have done according to all that You have commanded me.

Isaiah 29:4

Then you will be brought low;

From the earth you will speak,

And from the dust where you are prostrate

Your words will come.

Your voice will also be like that of a spirit from the ground,

And your speech will whisper from the dust.

Leviticus 19:31

‘Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.

1 John 4:1

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Revelation 21:8

But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

2 Kings 21:6

He made his son pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and used divination, and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord provoking Him to anger.

Leviticus 20:6

‘As for the person who turns to mediums and to spiritists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.

Deuteronomy 18:10

There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,

Leviticus 20:27

‘Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.’”

2 Corinthians 11:14

No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

1 Samuel 28:7-19

Then Saul said to his servants, “Seek for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.” And his servants said to him, “Behold, there is a woman who is a medium at En-dor.” Then Saul disguised himself by putting on other clothes, and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night; and he said, “Conjure up for me, please, and bring up for me whom I shall name to you.” But the woman said to him, “Behold, you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off those who are mediums and spiritists from the land. Why are you then laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?

"It allows myself to express myself without this constant ego filter," he says. "When I picture myself [as a witch], without judgment, everything just fits."

-Teen

BLACK CHRISTIAN COMMENTATOR, BIBLE TEACHER CLAIMS BLM FOUNDERS PRACTICE WITCHCRAFT, SUMMON THE DEAD Here

Black Lives Matter Here

Class Videos

WHY I DECIDED TO BECOME A WITCH | TEEN VOGUE

LITTLE DEMON- GUESS WHO'S BEHIND THIS...

THE BLM CONNECTION TO WITCHCRAFT

Witchcraft Within The Church

WITCHTOK YOUR WITCHY REMINDERS

USING THE HASHTAG BLACK LIVES MATTER IS WITCHCRAFT

WITCHCRAFT IN THE CHURCH- BY DAVID WILKERSON

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