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I am sick to my stomach. The sudden unholy rise of Satanism, witchcraft, séances, psychic fairs, occult symbolism, and demonic rituals out of the depths of secular pop-culture is nothing short of disturbing. I’m sure you’ve seen it: Viral videos of SatanCon in Boston, the largest gathering of this atheistic cult to date, chanting “Hail Satan!” and tearing apart the Bible, Target mainstreaming Satanic art in low-fashion merchandise, the demonic ‘golden medusa’ sculpture watching over the New York City courthouse symbolizing the “urgent and necessary cultural reckoning underway” for overturning of Roe v. Wade, media outlets like The Guardian propagating Satanism as the bold and new way forward for their fight against the Evangelical right, all-star athletes and poster boys of the American dream like Tom Brady endorsing his ex-wife’s witchcraft rituals before games as well as Aaron Rodgers seeking spiritual enlightenment in Peru through the mind-altering herb Ayahuasca resulting in a shadowy demonic encounter, not to mention the plethora of Hollywood icons who have all but embraced Satan himself as Lord. Those are only a few examples. There are a lot more. The Dark Lord is now the emblem of unbridled freedom and self-worship, the icon of our plastic and androgynous culture, utterly indistinguishable from the ethics/beliefs espoused by the far left woke mob.
Such revelry is not limited wokeness or secularism, though it continues to resonate in an anti-religious milieu. Other so-called Christian churches have all welcomed the dead to worship hand-in-hand with them: Bethel, the hyper-charismatic megachurch led by Bill Johnson, is reclaiming New Age practices such as tarot cards, psychic oracles, grave soaking, and guided mediations to heaven as our vocation, a Christian Ouiji board is now popularizing with the blasphemous branding “The Holy Spirit Board”, Word of Faith is preaching magical incantations to declare your best life now into existence ex nihlo because your words have the same creative power as God’s “Thus saith the Lord”, the steady rising of Christian atheism in philosophical discourse is gaining traction in mainstream culture such as in the too-far-gone United Church, insofar that the major tenets of Progressive Christianity is affirming, if not, complementing the seven fundamental tenets of Satanism, which continues to infiltrate the Evangelical Church at an alarming rate. Again, these are only a few examples. There is much more. We live in very dark times.
It is wholly unsurprising that all Satanists are atheists, most of which are impassioned naturalists and liberal humanists who reject supernaturalism—the existence of God, Satan, “evil” and all transcendent beliefs that come with it, largely embracing a naturalistic approach to paranormal activity. For this reason they do not worship Satan, so they say. They are de facto materialists who worship their own bellies: pleasure, appetites and passions are the ultimate ends of this world. Their infernal imagery has no real-world correspondence to Satan himself, he just so happens to best embody their carnal aspirations as the universal icon of rebellion against the normalization of traditional Christianity. The stark line between you and God is slowly fading into the shadows—idolatry is the new iconography (1 Samuel 15:23). Their witch-hunt is greater than God in the White House, if you can tell, they want Him burned at the altar of democratic zeal, to wipe out His ‘authoritarian’ presence from the nation: culture, politics, civil rights, education, et cetera. They want an unadulterated apostate society. These are not my words by the way, though paraphrased, this is what they affirm. And many Christians here in the West couldn’t agree more. Hold your horses, don’t point your fingers—you might be one of them.
The Church of Outer Darkness
I urge you: What is the real difference between Satanism and Progressive Christianity? This is not a catch-all question; every social group has superficial differences, of course, that can easily distinguish one from the other. But what fundamentally differentiates these social movements in beliefs and moral values that which would prohibit them from worshipping together? It is very difficult to sift the gold out of the dirt, here, if there is any. While Progressives pride themselves in their supposed openness to the incidental possibility of life after death, advocating epistemological skepticism and existential incredulity, and Satanists typically outright reject supernaturalism even though they do advocate the same enlightened epistemic virtues and welcome witchcraft, the Progressives universal disdain for hellfire and radical openness to a heaven-free-for-everyone necessitates all Satanists are inherently good and will go to heaven if there is one, despite their hatred of all things God and transcendent moral truth, especially His written word. This kind of behaviour is not just tolerated in Progressive churches, it is welcomed with arms wide open. Progressives typically do not hold to creeds, official stances, or statements of faith as not to discriminate, but let personal belief and social justice triumph over “right belief” and the teachings handed down to them, which is what Satanism also advocates. You see, Progressives nominally embrace Jesus Christ (as their spiritual forefather) but deny His power, they affirm that the prophecy of Scripture comes from the will of man and private interpretation (cf. 2 Peter 1:20-21), but adamantly reject “every word that comes from the mouth of God” as true (cf. 2 Timothy 3:1-7; Matthew 4:4). Consider the archetypal parallels:
“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.”
Ephesians 6:11
Satanism rejects traditional Christianity—so do Progressives. Satanism rejects the premise that God alone is good and humans are born into sin—so do Progressives. Satanism rejects the virgin birth, sinlessness, bodily resurrection, and atonement of Jesus Christ—so do Progressives. Satanism rejects the deity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity—so do Progressives. Satanism rejects that the Bible is the authoritative, inerrant, and infallible word of God—so do Progressives. Satanism rejects that abortion is wrong or sinful—so do Progressives. Satanism rejects objective (moral) truth is obtainable—so do Progressives. Now on the other side of things: Progressives affirm Jesus Christ in not the only way and that all people are inherently good—so do Satanists. Progressives affirm the conclusions drawn in modern science contradict Biblical truths and must take precedent over the teachings of sacred Scripture—so do Satanists. Progressives affirm the necessity of radical kinds of feminism, animal activism, and environmentalism as well as the need for social justice warriors and Critical Race Theory—so do Satanists. Progressives affirm the multiplicity of genders and LGBTQ2S+ practices, including the parental right to manipulate and mutilate a prepubescent child’s mind/body—so do Satanists. Progressives affirm that moral priority of personal beliefs and experiences as well as enlightened reason over and above truth, “right belief”, and objective reality—so do Satanists.
The jig is up. Progressive Christianity has more in common with Satanism than it does traditional Christianity! You could say that Progressive Christianity is just an ideological off-shoot, a denomination even, of Satanism, in their mirrored rebellion against the status quo. If this is not antichrist, then I don’t know what is. Satanists and Progressives can comfortably worship together—not God, but themselves—within the confines of their own congregation, alongside high-ranking apostles of the Word of Faith, wokeness, radical Left, and New Agism who are all cut from the same priestly cloth. If it looks like a satan, and walks like a satan, and talks like a satan, it is freaking Satan.
The Gates of Hades Borders a Nation.
This bubonic idolatry plaguing the Western world has freely infected nearly half of us. I am mortified that our idle hands amidst the blessings of industry has led to a gnostic materialism, comfortably espousing ancient heresies as though it were without spiritual consequence. And because of the heretical archetypes we face that resemble the devilish bulwarks against the early Church, I keep hearing that we live in the time of Acts 17 when Paul evangelized on Mars Hill. This is categorically false.
We live in a culture that has rejected Christ—one could hope a ghoulish caricature of Him, Lord willing—nevertheless, it was predominately Christian: They were brought up to believe in Christ as Lord and Saviour, they were taught the need for repentance, they were preached directly from the sacred Scriptures, they shared in the Lord’s Supper, they were baptized into His death. The Athenians Paul witnessed to did not know any of this, whereas our culture has been there and done that. They know better, so to speak, they’ve heard it all before. The spiritual climate of our teeth-gnashing paganism is not Stoic nor is it Epicurean—it is not willing to reason. In fact, it is quite antithetical to it: logic is racist, tradition is terrorism, victim is victor, and the free speech of the Areopagus is intolerable. It is not willing to hear out the gospel because it is not their gospel. They are right. We are wrong. We cannot forgo the warnings of Peter lest we fall into a snare, “For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.” (2 Peter 2:20; cf. Hebrews 6:1-8). We are dealing with a very different world: Simon the Sorcerer at best, the Great Apostasy at worst (Acts 8:9-24; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12).
All this has been permeating around the proverbial edges of the Protestant ethos because of our calamitous rejection of ecclesial authority, favouring presbyterial anarchy over a geo-episcopal structure—hierarchy be damned—insofar that many, if not, most Christians right now (presumably low-church Baptists) are devoutly against the mere idea of a Christian nation because it could foster ecclesiastical tyranny, as if the secular State is not guilty of such crimes as it is, and bizarrely against Christian Nationalism because it could breed a “cultural Christianity” of nominal descent, as if a culture of Satanists and apostates is better off! You see, those who only do church on Sundays or believe they are good people because they attend mass are not unclean enough. They need to be proper reprobates, a fiery brood of vipers (cf. Matthew 12:34, 23:33; John 8:44, Genesis 3:15).
Pff. Give me a break! The more and more people who become Christian, the more and more national Christianity becomes. It is that simple. The Kingdom of God is a tree, and trees grow (Luke 13:18-19). We are called to water the tree, to tend to it. In the early church it was a sapling. It is now a tree of hundreds of millions, if not, billions of professing believers worldwide. Nominal believers have roamed these parts since the time of Moses (Romans 9:6). Christ even said it would happen—nation or no nation (Matthew 7:21-23). So, whether the culture is Christian or pagan or apostate, people will suffer from the very same sin condition, assuming the best of themselves for themselves. My brother, Blake, summed up the benefits of cultural Christians very well in his most recent article Chesterton’s Fence & The Way Forward, which I encourage you to read:
At the very least, one should admit that our past Christian nation gave society the dots that preachers or evangelists could help the citizenry connect for themselves; those dots being the ancient landmarks.
Secularism is against sacredness in the public square. Satanism is against sacredness on a national front. When nothing is sacred, hierarchy is flattened, everything is equal, everyone is good, and secularism is divine—we’ve thrown our pearls to the swine.
Get Behind Me, Satan!
As sympathy for the devil rises in national popularity—that is Satan, not the song—a godless state against theocratic norms and cultural Christianity has also now woven itself into the fabric of Christianese culture. Where this ghastly rhetoric against a Christian nation comes from couldn’t be more transparent. Consider when Satan whispered false motives into Peter’s mind unbeknown to Peter himself, and Jesus retorted, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Matthew 16:23)
Satan is on a mission to destroy Christianity in the culture. He’s doing it right before our eyes. Why is he doing that? If cultural Christianity stimulates a worse set of conditions to foster proper worship in Christ, why strike at all? He had us where he wanted us! Why marginalize it now? Why not abolish the dividing wall of Church and State instead, if that is unbiblical? We wrestle against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. The State is a ruler. The Church is an authority. Satan is a ruler, and he wants his authority back (cf. Matthew 4:8-9).
Don’t buy into the lie. Do not bend your knee to Baal. To be idle is to be an idol.
Satan wants the West. Are you gonna let him have it?
I sure as hell won’t.
Matlock Bobechko is the Chief Operating/Creative Officer of Bible Discovery. He is an eclectic Christian thinker and writer, award-winning screenwriter and short filmmaker. He writes a weekly blog on theology, apologetics, and philosophy called Meet Me at the Oak. He is also an Elder at his local church.
