The Prestidigitational Preachers

GRANTED, THAT’S A “BIG” WORD.

Probably 99.9% of the English speaking world have never heard the word. Somewhat of a tongue twister, to say the least.

The word entered the English language in 1843 via the French which combines presti- [French, nimble] with digitus [Latin, a finger]. Thus, literally it translates “nimble fingered”, referring to one who practises sleight of hand to mislead or deceive.

A prestidigitator is thus a nimble-fingered juggler or a conjurer, also known as legerdemainist—one who engages in trickery, hocus-pocus, and conjuring to deceive or mislead people. Usually the purpose is to extract money from people by fast-fingered deception, or as it became metaphorically employed in the English language, to indicate a juggler with words, a verbal trickster, a deceiver, or a con-man.

English moral philosopher and writer, third Earl of Shaftesbury [1671-1713], applies the word figuratively when he wrote: “There is a certain knack [trick, dodge, craftiness] or legerdemain in argument.” Churchian theology over the past 2000 years consisted mainly of legerdemain in argument—and even more so today!

Verbal craftiness has been with mankind for millennia. Semiramis, the Nimrodian floozy and original pagan Madonna with illegitimate child, was an arch-deceiver. By words she entangled the postdiluvian society philosophically into a moral morass of ethical dereliction and antinomianism [lawlessness]. By her teachings she thrust humanity back into the gross antediluvian wickedness. The priests of ancient Egypt and Babylonia plied her deceptive religious trade by similarly employing such “sleight of words”. The academic sophisticates refined and polished the vocabulary. They designed a complex schemata and supporting curriculum devising the illusory doctrines of human immortality, of “life after death in heaven”, and the transmigration of souls. In time the many- breasted whore became “Mea Domina” or “My Lady” and the “Mother of the gods”. After all she could by her “secret wisdom” bring back the black god Nimrod as white baby god Horus!

By her misleading words she claimed to have obtained esoteric, secret knowledge of the transmundane—the spirit world that lies beyond earthy existence. She entered into the secret satanic paradise to eat the forbidden fruit. She created the sham notion that she could, through her religious mysteries, through her secret wisdom, impart to mortal humans eternal spiritual life by physical copulation with the temple priests and priestesses.

These original two great lies—immortality and secret knowledge to be “like God”—was used by Satan to trick Eve. He was the first “prestidigitational preacher”!

He cleverly twisted, reconstructed, and reformed the words of the Eternal. Eve was eager to know “the secret things of God”. She wanted God-knowledge and God-life; eternal life! Satan tricked her to believe that God is withholding these precious gifts from her and Adam. Satan made her a counter-offer. You can have these great gifts now--your best life now!-- by eating the forbidden fruit. But Satan’s offer was fraudulent. It led to perversity, spiritual ignorance and death!

Neither of these two great human cravings is wrong—knowing the great secrets or mysteries of God serves as the basis of obtaining eternal life. Except, the Creator decides WHEN to reveal the “secret things” and HOW to grant eternal life. He has a way, a process, by which the secret God-knowledge and the eternal God-life is obtained.

Semiramis, influenced by Satan’s delusional, deceitful, lying re-articulation of the Eternal’s words [that is, twisting the truth of God] developed a competing, counterfeit system to obtain the “secret knowledge” leading to a fraudulent "divine destiny"—an illusionary eternity.

When Moses appeared on the scene 2500 years later, circa 1490 BC, this system was fully entrenched in the Egyptian culture and religion. The priesthood—the “Holy Men of God”—had created many “gods” with “My Lady”, Semiramis, as “Mother of all gods” which could provide them with all their passionate longings in this life—prosperity! That meant good crops, healthy cattle, plenty offspring, job-success, wealth and health NOW! This fake Babylonian-based religious system with its perverse philosophies, principles, priesthood, predicants and predikants, also offered the "secret to eternal life": Simply worship at the local temple; bring your votive offerings to the priest; have sex with the male and female temple prostitutes; confess the name of the Universal Deity, and your eternity is secured!

Today, 3500 years later nothing has changed. Semiramis is still worshipped. False friars—mendicants in thousasands of denominations—have made religious begging a highly lucrative and sophisticated art. They are the prestidigitational preachers. They are nimble-minded, rapid-fire, winged-word speakers. Or, adaptive to their purpose and audience, smooth, suave, silver-tongued, charming persuaders with a thousand misapplied and decontextualized scriptures up their silky sleeves.

However, the verbal trickery is the same as in the Garden of Eden: You will not die. You will go straight to heaven. Only confess the new westernised name of the ancient Babylonian god and give your tithes and offerings to the pastor to ensure he can live in extravagant opulence and fly in his own super jet! Your blessings will be stratospheric!

Yehovah’s secret to eternal life is different. He revealed the original WAY TO LIFE ETERNAL to Moses who declared at Deutoronomy 29:29 "The secret things belong unto Yehovah our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever...”

Why are the open secrets, the necessary knowledge to eternal life, revealed to man? Moses explains: “... [so] that we may do all the words of this law.”

What is the divine purpose of knowing God’s revealed knowledge—the open secrets meant to be understood by man?

It is to provide man with the longed-for eternal life by means of living a God-fearing [respecting] and holy [sanctified] life through obedience to ALL God’s commandments. Yehovah defines these laws as holy, just, good, spiritual, righteous, perfect, and applicable into eternity! [Romans 7:12, 14; 9:31, James 1:25.]

This does not imply that eternal life results from obedience to the law as if our righteous lifestyle ensures our eternal salvation. The law of God serves as the moral compass for humanity. Keeping the law indicates one’s willingness to live by the eternal standards set by Yehovah from eternity. Salvation comes by accepting Christ’s salvific sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins and having faith in the Father’s and the Son’s resurrection power [John 5:25-29].

The object of man’s deepest desire—LIVING ETERNALY!—can not be obtained by personal righteousness but only through Christ’s righteous work on behalf of humanity. Paul clarifies the mystery of the eons in many passages of his epistles. Consider, inter alia, 1 Corinthians 1:29-30: “[N]o flesh should glory in his presence. But of him [the Father] are [w]e in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification [or purification, (we can’t purify ourselves)] and redemption [or salvation]."

God’s PROCESS or PATHWAY to eternal salvation is through Christ alone. “For there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” [Acts 4:12].

Having said that it is also understood that the only way to salvation—Christ—clearly demanded that His law is to be kept. His explicitly irrefutable statement reads: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” [Mat 5:19].

That declaration was made at the beginning of his gospel message. The same message appears at the end of his gospel message in Revelation. He makes two unshakable declarations “Here is a call for the patient endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Yeshua” [Rev 14:12].

Can anything be plainer? At the very end of his gospel message and at the end of his human time on earth Christ declares that the saints—His holy people—the people who have the faith of Christ, keep the commandments of God!

But which commandments are these?

Just any commands and instructions invented by Reformers and their doctrinal descendants? Just teachings of differing and doctrinally disagreeing denominations; or the cultic controls of the first sect of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, being the original schismatic--having departed from the “faith [religious truth] which was once delivered” by Christ and the Apostles [Jude 1:3].

Yes, just what commandments do Christ’s saints keep? Almost to the last verses in Revelation he makes it plain—AGAIN!

“Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loves and makes a lie” [Rev 22:14-15].

WHAT COMMANDMENTS FORBID THE SINFUL BEHAVIOURS OUTLINED ABOVE? THE TEN COMMANDMENTS! Note those sins:

· Dogs [a euphemism for Sodomites],

· Liars [ministers who teach false doctrines—AND LOVE to observe THOSE LIES!—inter alia, Christmas, Easter, Sunday observance]

· Idol worshipers [people who adhere to those false doctrines, the vomit and intoxicating drink of Isa 28:7-8, dished up by the verbal tricksters on the doctrinal tables of the various sects and Christian cults (immortality of the soul, everlasting burning in hell, Calvinistic “once-saved-always-saved”), etc.],

· Murderers [infanticide, injecticide, homicide],

· Sorcerers [Greek, pharmakos... (Let me refrain!!)].

James 2:10 categorically states: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” Luther's remonstrations about James being an "epistle of straw" shall be called to remembrance before the Divine Tribunal; the great white throne of judgement!

Again, can there be any question in any sane, logically thinking mind as to which commandments are being referenced? James, by way of clarification as to which law he is referring to states in verse 11: “For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.” THEREFORE, James concludes in verse 12 that God’s people must LIVE “as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty” [James 2:10-12]. Did you notice, the LAW is LIBERTY, NOT BONDAGE!

CONSIDER: Why would James, half-brother to Christ, state that believers will be judged by “the Perfect law of liberty” if that law has been abrogated, “done away” and thus no longer applIcable?

On what basis will Christ judge us? By a law which he, so the word conjurers declare, abolished at his death? Not only are the prestidigitational preachers highly disingenuous, but utterly illogical and absurdly irrational.

The 131 times grace is used in the King James Version, in whatever context, cannot nullify the texts demanding obedience to the commandments!

Like unto their Chief Legerdemainists, Luther, Calvin, et al., modern antinomian biblical conjurers operate as textual prestidigitational hucksters. Though clever and nimble of mind and engaging in veritable vraisemblance, their theology still remains hermeneutical hocus-pocus.

Like their trickster counterparts they are smart; deft of doctrine, mind and tongue; able to weave a confused and complex curtain of concealment and deceit around the truth embedded within scripture, of which they have not been given the right or privilege to comprehend.

Luther is a case in point. He opined that James wrote “an epistle of straw”, implying it would be burned up in hell in the judgment [1Cor 3:12-16] and therefore of no consequence to the Christian. Thus, Christians should disregard what James wrote. Ignore the James epistle. Luther, like the Catholic Church he condemned, placed himself above the canon of scripture. Like the Catholic Church he condemned he shall have to give account for his foolishness!

Absurdities abound among the theological word-conjurers and architects and designers of doctrinal dementia. The protesting reformers conjure by words and nifty manipulation of scripture. Skewed scriptural exegetics result from the rejection of the law of the Eternal by presumptuous “higher critical” posturing.

Luther and his cohorts have created a temple of doom for untold millions over the last half-millennium. In searching for the wisdom of God—ostensibly—they merely succeeded in creating their own lion’s den with a roaring predator whose mouth angels cannot shut.

The history of hate-filled Christianity that murder its own; that foment wars; that protect sex perverts who rape and molest initiates and congregants; that give glory, entitlement and authority to demented power hungry politically ambitious eccentrics and vaingloriously puffed-up egoists; that religiously immerse itself in dark demonic ritualism and primeval paganism, speaks for itself!

By prestidigitational preaching -- plain deception, trickery, and juggling of words extracted from seminal research; biblical verbal conjuring, syntax sophistry, and elaborate syntagma, orderly arranged in neat bundles of dogma and disciplines -- by such, great impressions are made upon the faithful, the believing, and the superstitious subordinates. And the money continues to roll in ... and the private preacher-jets keep on flying high!

Those who have infiltrated the body of Christ—past and present—using their verbal artifice, their profoundly pretentious spoken ploys, their deceptive doctrinal constructs, their deceits and duplicities, their cunning trickery and demon craft are spoken of by Paul at 1Timothy 1:6-7. He says they are those who have “turned aside [from the truth] unto vain jangling [babbling; empty, meaningless talk] desiring to be teachers of the law” [Old Testament]. TBN, Daystar, the so-called God Channel, et al., are loaded with such of which Paul says, they understand nothing!

The fact that Christ, Paul, John, James and all the Apostles insist upon the keeping of the Ten Commandments, betokening righteous living seems to escape Churchianity completely. Keeping the “law of righteousness” [Rom 9:31] is a gospel imperative! But, of course, you deceiving accusers, it cannot justify any man! [Gal 2:16.]

The scriptural tricksters seize upon various texts to “prove” that the law has been done away and that Christians live under grace and grace alone. Grace does not stand apart from law. Law keeping is embedded in grace.

Consider Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where we find the famous declaration: “by grace are you saved through faith” [Eph 2:8]. Yet in chapter 4 Paul is very clear that “grace-saved” people keep the commandments!

He condemns sexual “lasciviousness” [v. 19a, command 7] and greed [v. 19b, command 10]; “put off lying” [v. 25, command 9]; and then, “sin not” [v. 26, sin being the transgression of the entire Ten Commandments (1John 3:4)].

Have the antinomianists never read Romans 2:13? “… the doers of the law shall be justified.”

But justification is not salvation! It’s part of the salvific process. Living the sanctified life—that is, living in obedience to the law of Yehovah, is an element in the salvation process. [And, let’s not forget about “enduring to the end!”]

Yehovah did not reveal all the deep secrets of eternal life to man in Eden. Some secrets remained hidden “from the foundation of the earth” [that is, from the time of Abel, Luke 11:50-51] until the time of the new covenant ecclesia was established by Christ through the apostles.

Paul confirms this in Rom 16:25-26 when he notes that “the revelation of the mystery … was kept secret since the world began, but is now made manifest…by the scriptures of the prophets [the OLD Testament], according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.”

As faith requires obedience, so does The Law. As the song says: “You can’t have one without the other!”

May we all be delivered from the twisted tongue trickery and deception of the gold-gouging prestidigitational preachers; be protected from the spirit of lawlessness cloaked in verbal sophistry, and be preserved in the grace of Christ unto eternal salvation. Maranatha!