You probably heard ad nauseum the laughable claimed that the March for Our Lives-sponsored National School Walkout was not a “left/right” event. Well, there’s a reason that Leftists like Oprah and George Clooney donated half a million dollars to the walkout. There’s a reason that Leftists in Congress walked out to join teens—I mean, in addition to virtue-signaling and getting their faces in the press. There’s a reason that Leftists on CNN and MSNBC didn’t merely report the story but fawned all over the teens who spouted stuff while actually knowing little. When asked by Bret Baier, “So who’s the leader of the Democratic Party,” Leftist chair of the Democratic National Committee Tom Perez answered, “I think those young people today who were marching all over this country are incredible leaders.”

So much for “it’s not a left or right issue.”

You’ve probably heard ad nauseum the even more laughable claim that the March for Our Lives demonstration was an entirely student-led event. Although in each school, there likely was a student leader or leaders, this was not an entirely student-led event—not even close.

Buzzfeed reported on the involvement of disgraced former head of the DNC, U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who admitted that she had “been in touch with students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas since the day after the shooting, helping them connect to state legislators and plan their trip to Tallahassee last week.” Wasserman Schultz further admitted that “she advised them on communication strategy” and had “been in contact with Mark Kelly — Gabrielle Giffords’ husband and one of the founders of the Giffords foundation.”—an anti-gun organization.

Weeks before the walkout, “a spokesperson for Giffords told BuzzFeed News the organization ‘will be lending support in any way the students need, especially helping to operationalize these marches from logistics to programming.’”

Here’s more from Buzzfeed on the allegedly “student-led” protest:

MoveOn said it will encourage its millions of members to follow and promote the March for Our Lives movement on social media and attend the rally next month. The group said it had offered support in organizing logistics such as security and portable toilets.

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, which has not directly been in touch with the students, said it has been in contact and offered support to Giffords, which is spearheading the national coalition of groups working with March for Our Lives.

…

The American Federation of Teachers, which helped bus students and parents to Tallahassee multiple times last week, are now assisting with the March for Our Lives rally. The federation’s president told BuzzFeed News that they are also helping support next month’s march as well as helping to shape the vision and mission for the group once the rally is over.

“There are a lot of people who know how to put on a march in Washington and we are here to help support the teens with that experience in terms of logistics and strategy…” AFT President Randi Weingarten told BuzzFeed News. “We will be here for that ‘oh sh*t moment’ when they realize they need things like permits.”

Buzzfeed also discovered that the permit application submitted to the National Park Service for the rally at the National Mall “was submitted by Deena Katz, an LA-based television producer who serves as co-executive director of the Women’s March Los Angeles Foundation.”

Someone left the following comment on IFI’s Facebook page under an article in which I suggested that there are better ways for students to express feelings about school violence than leaving school during the day in clear violation of school policies that prohibit disruption of instructional time and normal school operations (Leftists—including Leftist administrators—demonstrate again their conviction that laws and policies are meant to be broken.):

Ironically the writer misses the point by making this a divisive issue instead of unifying. What I witnessed nearly brought me to tears. I saw hundreds of students standing or sitting in silence for 17 minutes! These are students who during the normal course of the day never ever stop talking Many I observed were in thoughtful prayer with hands folded, or writing messages or poems about the 17 people murdered. The school teachers and administrators did nothing to organize this!!!! I am proud to witness hundreds of students in thoughtful meditation or prayer, I also prayed during those 17 minutes that people unite instead of divide.

It was not I who made this a divisive issue. It was the Leftist Women’s March that organized this anti-gun protest and all the “progressives” who actually led the protest that made it a divisive issue. Those kids who were praying with folded hands could have stayed in school and prayed during their lunch periods and free periods. In fact, they can fold hands and pray every day at school. They can also write poems and meditate any time they’re free. But poetry-writing and meditating will do about as much to eradicate school violence as banning guns will do.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Final-Thoughts-on-School-Walkout.mp3

RESCHEDULED: IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

You probably heard ad nauseum the laughable claimed that the March for Our Lives-sponsored National School Walkout was not a “left/right” event. Well, there’s a reason that Leftists like Oprah and George Clooney donated half a million dollars to the walkout. There’s a reason that Leftists in Congress walked out to join teens—I mean, in addition to virtue-signaling and getting their faces in the press. There’s a reason that Leftists on CNN and MSNBC didn’t merely report the story but fawned all over the ignorant teens who spout stuff while actually knowing little…

READ MORE

The legal recognition of homoerotic unions as marriages goes by many names. Professor Anthony Esolen calls it “pseudogamy,” and Pastor Doug Wilson calls it “same-sex mirage.” Whatever you call it, don’t call it marriage because it ain’t.

Before same-sex faux-marriage was inflicted on the nation by five black-robed miscreants, cultural regressives insisted the legal recognition of intrinsically non-marital unions as marriages would affect no one, no way, no how. Everyone with an ounce of commonsense and a dollop of intelligence knew that was yet another lie. Once society formally ceases to recognize that marriage is something by jettisoning the central, most enduring constituent feature of marriage, it ceases to be anything. Or rather, it becomes an amorphous malleable blob that can be squished into any meaningless semi-form spiritualists, libertines, and narcissists can create.

And so, we now have “self-marriages.” Oprah, goddess and CEO of the self-love cult, must be in—er, well, somewhere warm and cozy.

For those who have been too busy serving the needs of others to have read about self-marriage, it is the newest anti-marriage fad. It entails all the trappings of a wedding without the central ingredient that gives marriage its salt, light, and beauty: a sexually complementary couple. Self-marriage is an oxymoronic, moronic ontological cipher.

Self-weddings include all the accouterments of real weddings: invitations, wedding attire, rings, vows, bouquets, floral arrangements, food, and celebrations—that is self-celebrations. I can only guess what happens on the wedding night.

Rather than committing oneself sacrificially to another who is “other,” celebrants commit themselves to idolatrous self-service and self-celebration. Whereas true marriage has both personal and public meaning, self-marriage has neither.

Erika Anderson is a 2^nd-time bride. This time ‘round, she married herself. Cosmopolitan Magazine describes Anderson’s special day:

On the rooftop of her Brooklyn apartment building this past spring, Erika Anderson put on a vintage-style white wedding dress, stood before a circle of her closest friends, and committed herself — to herself.

“I choose you today,” she said. Later she tossed the bouquet to friends and downed two shots of whiskey, one for herself and one for herself. She had planned the event for weeks, sending invitations, finding the perfect dress, writing her vows, buying rosé and fresh baguettes and fruit tarts from a French bakery. For the decor: an array of shot glasses emblazoned with the words “You and Me.” In each one, a red rose.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” she’d noted on the wedding invitations. “I had cold feet for 35 years. But then I decided it was time to settle down. To get myself a whole damn apartment. To celebrate birthday #36 by wearing an engagement ring and saying: YES TO ME. I even made a registry, because this is America.”

Anderson was married before but divorced when she was 30 because she and her husband “grew apart” after college. I wonder what will happen if she and herself have a similarly tenuous commitment to their marriage vows.

For those brides and their beloveds who can’t manage together to plan their wedding, there are websites to help. One such website is Self-Marriage Ceremonies where self-lovers can sign up to receive premarital counseling in the form of pre-recorded inspirational messages, questionnaires, and vow-writing guidance all for a mere $200.

For those who need additional guidance, Self-Marriage Ceremonies’ founder Dominique Youkhehpaz is available for private sessions at the discounted rate of $50 per 2-hour session (usually $75).

Youkhehpaz started her business in 2011 during Burning Man, an annual event that bills itself as dedicated to “community, art self-expression, and self-reliance.” I think they forgot “self-love.”

Burning Man’s motto is “a culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers.” Someone should tell dreamer Youkhehpaz that it’s actually not possible to marry oneself.

It’s fitting that Self-Marriage Ceremonies got its start at Burning Man. While Burning Man was the brainchild of Larry Evans and was initially held in San Francisco, it was moved to its current location in in Black Rock Desert in Nevada by John Law, who conceived of it as “Dadaist temporary autonomous zone.” Dadaism was a post WWI rebellious, irreverent art movement that rejected aesthetically pleasing imagery, convention, logic, and reason. Instead, Dadaist artists valued “nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest.”

Though the self-marriage movement is utterly nonsensical and irrational, a visit to the I Married Me website would make Dadaists and Jack Handy cringe. Here are some of the deep thoughts Marcel Duchamp and Jack Handy would find:

• You Should Totally Marry Yourself
• Choose Love
• Hell Yeah I’m Awesome
• To Honor Myself Is To Understand And Acknowledge That I Am Worthy
• You Are A Reason to Celebrate

Self-lovers can get the entire self-wedding kit and caboodle for the amazing bargain-basement price of $230! Imagine that. All it costs to celebrate your solemn commitment to and celebration of yourself is 230 smackers. Forget those starving children in Sudan. You’ll be contributing so much more to the world if you spend $230 (plus the cost of the actual ceremony and reception) if you marry yourself.

Dada artist Francis Picabia offered this description of Dadaism: “DADA…smells of nothing, it is nothing, nothing, nothing.”

The same could be said of self-marriage.

While these non-marriages are intended to exalt the self, in reality engaging in such empty, nonsensical  rituals that mock true marriage reflect the irrational and self-abasing nature of our anti-culture.

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When most Americans hear the term “New Age” they might think of a little boutique that sells cotton caftans, CDs of sitar music, and multicolored assortments of crystals. It all seems to point to dubious fashion sense and outdated home decor, but nothing ominous, nothing harmful. Yet, in reality, the New Age movement has had a serious negative impact on many unsuspecting people.

People who have never set foot inside a New Age store, people who would laugh at the thought of pretty rocks containing healing powers — these same people are enthusiastically and blindly embracing dangerous New Age philosophies, all because of their admiration and devotion to the powerful and popular woman who is advancing these beliefs.

Who has become the High Priestess of the New Age Movement? Who is this woman who commands the respect of millions, whose stamp of approval can make or break a book, movie, or political candidate? She is the host of the highest rated talk show in television history, a magazine publisher, and an Academy Award nominated actress. She is Chicago’s very own, Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah Winfrey has been described as the richest African-American of the 20th century, the most philanthropic African-American of all time, the world’s only black billionaire — and perhaps most tellingly — the most influential woman in the world.

Oprah definitely has influence. Her television talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, is seen weekly by an audience of 49 million viewers in the United States. Additionally, millions more worldwide watch Oprah in the 117 countries in which her show is broadcast. With apologies to Madison Avenue and E. F. Hutton, when Oprah talks, people listen. And what Oprah’s audience is hearing now is her ringing endorsement of Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

Virtually everyone in America knows Oprah’s name, and most are familiar with her daily television program. But many are unaware of the depth of the spiritual lies she is promoting, and how many needy people are buying this false hope through Oprah’s celebrity. Please watch the following video to get a better idea of the lies she is selling her audience (you can also click this link):

While Oprah has professed to be a Christian, the principles in Tolle’s book are definitely not based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. In keeping with the subtitle of the book, the reader is encouraged to be “focused on the purpose of your Being here on earth.” Not surprisingly, nowhere does Tolle’s vision of one’s life purpose have anything in common with man’s purpose in relationship to God, certainly not as it is expressed in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The very first question of the catechism asks: “What is the chief end of man?” and the answer is: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” Revelation 4:11 and 1 Peter 2:9 beautifully support the veracity of this historic church document. Nothing in Scripture even remotely supports Tolle’s contentions.

Tolle asserts that there is no death; that in fact man does not have a life, but he is life. Clearly this statement completely denies the truth of God’s Word found in John 14:6, as Jesus tells Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” As Christians we know that “he who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” 1 John 5:12

In light of Scriptural Truth, what kind of life can Tolle claim?

A New Earth does acknowledge the existence of God/god, but not God as any Christian would recognize Him. Tolle envisions his god, not as an entity in a particular place, but as “the essence, the intelligence, the animating life essence behind all life forms.” This essence does not appear to include a Son, for again, there is no mention of Jesus, the Son of God.

As a self-proclaimed Christian, how can Oprah countenance this false teaching? Even more troubling, how can she continue to promote such false teaching, knowing that millions of people look to her and are influenced by her words and viewpoints? Sadly, Oprah seems to have left the narrow path that leads to righteousness and, instead, she has started down the broad road that leads to destruction.

Oprah has publicly denied on her television program that Jesus, as the Son of God, is the only way to God (John 14:6). In her mind, there couldn’t possibly be just one way, but rather many diverse ways to God. In taking this position, she has rejected the authority of the Word of the Living God and embraced the distortions and lies of New Age charlatans and false teachers. Rather than Lord and Savior, Christ has become for Oprah “a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall.” (1 Peter 8a) These New Age lies she promotes are deadly!

Oprah believes that God does not govern the affairs of mankind, nor does she believe in sin, the devil — but rather that “we are our own saviors” (directly contradicting Luke 9:23, which Jesus says; “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” [emphsis added]). On her hit talk show, she has openly expressed her opposition to Jesus as being the true savior.

Earlier this year, her friend Marianne Williamson began teaching the 365 lessons from the New Age Bible, A Course in Miracles, on Oprah’s XM Satellite Radio. Page 147 of the Course Text teaches that we are “God”: “The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself.”

Oprah has also promoted the New Age book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Page 164 in The Secret states: “You are God in a physical body.”

And now, Oprah is launching an online course with metaphysical teacher Eckhart Tolle based on his book The New Earth: Awakening to Your Soul’s Purpose. In Tolle’s earlier book, The Power of Now, he teaches blasphemy — claiming that we are “God.”

While Oprah is free to believe whatever she wants, it is horrifying that so many souls are being led astray as they follow her lead. This incredibly influential woman could be a powerful ambassador for Christ, but instead, she is being used by Satan to peddle the “spiritual crack” of New Age teaching that leads to addiction, death, and eternal damnation.

As Christ’s return draws closer, we must stand firm in our faith, sure in what we believe and know to be true. Paul’s charge to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2-5 is a charge to Christ followers today as well:

“preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to bear witness to the Truth of the Gospel in our circles of influence. Unlike Oprah, we may not be able to reach millions, but by the power and grace of God, we can reach out in obedience, confidence, and faith to the people who He places in our lives.