THE MERGER OF BAPHOMETS INTO MAINSTREAM CHRISTIANITY
Mainstream Christianity and what is acceptable to Christians is changing rapidly. The merger of baphomets into mainstream Christianity is yet another example.
What is a Baphomet? Six months ago, my response would have been, “IDK.”
I have now served the same Southern Baptist church, Vanguard Church, in the same city for the past twenty-five years.
I am a Southern Baptist, a graduate of Liberty University, and Dallas Theological Seminary. The Word of God informs everything about my life. I am currently on my 94th reading of the Bible.
Why do I tell you all this? Mostly so you won’t think I am a kook as I tell you this experience and story, I had over the past six months.
In September of 2021 the Vanguard Pastoral Leadership Team and the Elders went away to Breckenridge, CO for our annual retreat. The second night of our retreat, I was awakened in the night, troubled in my spirit, I rolled over and looked across the bedroom. To the left of the bed in the dark I could see two figures standing at the foot of my bed. The room was dark, but the outline of the figures was darker. I could see their bodies, shoulders, and specifically their heads. It was horrifying. I thought I was imagining it, so I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, I could still see them and more importantly I could feel them.
I have had experiences where I have awakened in the night and felt evil in my room. I feared opening my eyes because I didn’t want to see what was there. But never anything like this.
As I lay there terrified, I didn’t know what to do. So, I prayed. I said, “Lord, what do I do?”
I felt like the Lord said, “Get up, walk through them, go to the bathroom, and come back.” So, I did, with my heart racing, I got up, walked through them, went to the bathroom, and when I came back, they were gone.
I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t, so I got up and started working on sermon preparation for the next year.
A few months later, I was scrolling Facebook and saw a post by Lauren Daigle wearing a beautiful dress at the Dove Awards in Nashville. The dress had a myriad of images, and one caught my attention. I scrolled through the comments and one person said the images on her dress represented a Baphomet. I had never heard that term, but it looked like what I saw that night in Breckenridge.
I looked up the word Baphomet. Here is what I found:
The French occultist Éliphas Lévi created the Baphomet that has become a recognized occult icon. The Baphomet is imagined as a “Sabbatic Goat”—a hermaphroditic winged human figure with the head and feet of a goat that is adorned with numerous esoteric symbols. Lévi describes the meaning of each element of the drawing, which is defined by its profound and pervasive duality. British occultist Aleister Crowley also adopted Baphomet, notably in his “Gnostic Mass.” More recently, the Satanic Temple commissioned a statue of Baphomet, which was unveiled in 2015 and then moved to various places as a protest against displays of Ten Commandments monuments in public spaces.
It is both human and animal, male and female, good and evil. In the Old Testament it was referred to as a goat demon in Leviticus 17:7. Thus, this has been a battle between God and the Enemy for thousands of years. And now mainstream Christianity is welcoming these images and ideas into its theology and practice. The exclusivity of the Gospel, the creation of only two genders, and the mixing of good and evil together in images in society and social culture continue to be an emergence of ideas that do not go together in a biblical world view.
Some have speculated on Lauren’s social media pages as to whether she knows what those symbols on her dress at the Dove award meant. Many excuse it because of the good she is doing. Others raise important questions about the emergence of paganism, the acceptance of these emerging ideas, and the subtle repercussions that will leave long term effects on the purity of the Gospel and His Church.
It saddens me to observe the ever so subtle but pervasive emergence of God’s holiness with the carnality of our society and the heart-cries for “love” “kindness” and “’acceptance” of the emergence of these things. We are sadly normalizing the holiness of God with the carnality of methods that make us acceptable to a society that has abandoned the holiness of Christ.
Just this past month, Pastor Steven Furtick, and his wife Holly Furtick came out in support of their teenage son’s rap lyrics that promote guns, money, and sex devoid of God’s Biblical directives. Here is the link: https://www.christianpost.com/news/steven-furtick-criticized-for-sons-rap.html
Both Elevation Church Worship under the leadership of Pastor Steven Furtick and the Christian music of Lauren Daigle seem to be subtly but slowly moving our “Christian Culture” toward an emergence of images, practices, and acceptance of both Christianity and witchcraft.
As these movements move our Christian culture closer to blurred lines, Jesus stands bidding us, “Come back!”
The Lord said to me that night, “You will experience some of the darkest dark in the days ahead, don’t go around, go through it.”
For years now Christians have excused the actions of Pastor Steven Furtick, his wife Holly Furtick, and Lauren Daigle as, “You misunderstand them.” Slowly but surely, it is coming into focus that they represent a mainstream Christian culture that is emerging that does not represent the God of the Bible.
Galatians 6:7 says, Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.
Resist the merger of these practices and images being combined with the Gospel of Jesus.
It is not Biblical!
Blessings,
Pastor Kelly
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