Ekerk’s Spiritual Movie Critics
The Corleone Jesus
Bear in mind the following Scripture while you read this conversation.
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. (Revelation 22:18-19).
In recent years Ekerk has developed into a very formidable boffin regarding its movie reviews. Two of its most eminent movie critics are Roedolf Botha and Siegried Louw.
Their topmost luminous talent is to find something of Biblical proportions in almost every movie they have seen, even those that have thoroughly worldly blockbuster themes extolling the occult and crime, the kind even the mafioso like Michael Corleone and his henchmen would be ashamed to watch.
Are Ekerk’s boffin’s ashamed of their secularization of the Word of God and using movie clips to externalize more precisely the Word of God? I have seen some of their photos on the Internet and none of them ever sporting red cheeks or ears typifying shame. Is that a surprise? Hardly, as we shall see in this conversation.
It is obvious that both the gentlemen mentioned are avid movie bugs (“fliekvlooie” in Afrikaans). But that’s not the issue here. What seems to be their main objective is to immaculately scrutinize the dialogue in movies to see whether they can find something actors say or do that is remotely familiar with Scripture.
Voila! They are so skillful in doing this that they usually come up with something to link to Scripture every single time. Here are two examples.
In his article entitled “Gnashing teeth is not going to help” on Ekerk’s site, Roedolf Botha ever so eloquently quotes the mafia boss, Michael Corleone (The Godfather Part III, 1990), saying to one of his hit men, “Don’t hate your enemies, it affects your judgment.”
The irony is that Corleone murdered his enemies and literally loved them to death. In fact, A few weeks after Vito’s death, Michael struck fast and hard. Barzini, Greene, Tattaglia, Stracci, and Cuneo were killed in rapid succession by Corleone’s henchmen while Michael stood at the baptism ceremony for his nephew, Carlo’s son, betraying Vito’s peace-submit-vow. Murder by peace sounds so much like the Antichrist (Daniel 8:25).
Aha, but of course, the baptism scene of Corleone’s nephew in the Roman Catholic Church hallows his killing spree. Despite these horrendous blood-spilling scenes on the screen, our eminent Ekerk pastor, Roedolf Botha, uses Corleone’s advice to one of his hitmen to dig up some sort of similar scene in God’s Word.
And, with a flick of his magic wand Botha skilfully weaves Jesus Christ’s words in Matthew 5:43-48 into Corleone’s malicious advice, “Don’t hate your enemies, it affects your judgment.”
So, in a nutshell, Botha uses Corleone’s malevolent maxim to verify Jesus’ words in Matthew 5, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
To conclude this section of the conversation I beg to ask the question: is this tantamount to adding or taking away from the Word of God? Indeed, Corleone plus Jesus is undoubtfully adding to God’s Word.
Certainly, Botha’s quoting of Corleone in The Godfather III is stranger than fiction. He raps those over the knuckles who allegedly walk around with a hidden hatred in their hearts of ESKOM, the government, certain political parties, or simply people walking in the streets.
Fancy that, Botha has the divine ability to discern hidden things in the hearts of men. Nonetheless, he failed to see the hidden hatred in Corleone’s heart and virtuously compares it to Jesus Christ’s words in Matthew 5:43-48. Blasphemy is a mild word compared to what Botha has written.
The Avatar Jesus
As the Americans love to say, “You aint seen nuttin yet” because the next movie bug’s theatrical shenanigans are much worse than that of Botha. So, without further ado, let’s examine Siegfried Louw’s article “Avatar, The Way of Water.”
Siegfried Louw is undoubtedly the most gifted Avatarian who has ever graced South African soil. No less attuned to the Hollywoodization of Biblical passages than Roedolf Botha, Siegfried Louw finds parallels between witchcraft (yep, that’s what the movie “Avatar, The Way of Water” presents to viewers) and Peter’s first epistle. You really need a HUGE imagination to make such a comparison.
So, let’s kick off with Louw’s summary of the comparison between the unholy and the holy. Please remember that Stephan Joubert once said that everything is holy, which includes even the most despicable satanic enterprises on earth, and of course, movies like “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
In fact, it is so holy that Avatarians in the likes of Siegfried Louw can hallow the Hindu and witchcraft movie “Avatar, The Way of Water” and magically turn it into a mirror image of everything Peter wrote in his epistle to the Jews scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.
Louw marvels at the similarities between “Avatar, The Way of Water” to the extent that he covertly wonders whether James Cameron had read Peter’s first epistle.
Of course, what he suggests is that the movie is solidly based on Scripture. Is it? Instead, as we shall see, it is firmly based on Hinduism and Water Witchcraft.
Here now are the three messages in the storyline of “Avatar, The Way of Water” that supposedly reflect biblical faith, according to Siegfried Louw.
- A radical change or new beginning is always possible.
Here Louw tries to conjure up a parallel between the move of the main characters to a new home and the early church’s dispersion triggered by persecution into various regions.
There is a vast difference between the persecution of Christians for their belief in Jesus Christ as their only Saviour from sin and the worship of the Hindu gods, Vishnu and Shakti. In Hinduism, an Avatar is predominantly associated with Lord Vishnu (the Preserver in the Hindu trinity), though there are also avatars of other deities like Shiva, Shakti, etc.
An avatar is a manifestation or incarnation of a fragment of God on Earth. This means the avatar is not the actual god but a part of the supreme god.
The most common perception is that only lord Vishnu is born in avatar forms like Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Parshurama, Matsya, etc.
However, Hindu scriptures suggest that according to the need of the society, any deity can appear in the form of an avatar (like Shiva took an avatar of Hanuman).
An Avatar is born in a home of a pure, karmic but ordinary father and mother. Avatars arrive in human bodies which are mortal like others but the avatar himself is aware of his divinity and his mission on earth.
Avatars may do their task miraculously or may use others to accomplish their tasks. Avatars are best explained from the following verse of the Bhagavad Gita,
“Whenever there is decay of righteousness and a rise of unrighteousness in the society, I manifest myself again for the protection of the good and the destruction of the evil…which in turn would lead to a time of peace and righteousness…”
Could it be that Louw gleaned the idea that “A radical change or new beginning is always possible” from the Hindu Scripture the Bhagavad Gita? I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
The Theosophist Alice Bailey who was inspired by a demon named Djwahl Kuhl wrote in her book “The Reappearance of the Christ” the following on the meaning of Avatars.
The word “Avatar” is a Sanskrit word, meaning literally “coming down from far away.” Ava (as prefix to verbs and verbal nouns) expresses the idea of “off, away, down.” Avataram (comparative) farther away. The root AV seems at all times to denote the idea of protection from above, and is used in compounds, in words referring to protections by kings or rulers; in regard to the gods, it means accepted favourably when a sacrifice is offered. With the result that the root word can be said to mean “Coming down with the approval of the higher source from which it came and with benefit to the place at which it arrives.” (From Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit Dictionary.)
Such an one was the Christ; He was twice an Avatar because He not only struck the keynote of the new age (over two thousand years ago) but He also, in some mysterious and incomprehensible manner, embodied in Himself the divine Principle of Love; He was the first to reveal to men the true nature of God. The invocative cry of humanity (the second of the incentives producing a divine Emergence) is potent in effect because the souls of men, particularly in concerted action, have in them something which is akin to the divine nature of the Avatar. We are all Gods, all the children of the One Father, as the latest of the Avatars, the Christ, has told us. It is that divine centre in every human heart which, when awakened into activity, can call forth response from the high Place where the Coming One awaits His hour of appearance. It is only the united demand of humanity, its “massed intent,” which can precipitate the descent (as it is called) of an Avatar.
THE REAPPEARANCE OF THE CHRIST BY ALICE A. BAILEY. THE DOCTRINE OF THE COMING ONE. Western Teaching. THE DOCTRINE OF AVATARS. Eastern Teaching).
Perhaps you have noticed that Siegfried Louw and Ekerk are not promoting the biblical Jesus Christ but a Cosmic Christ that is welcome in all religions with different names. It makes Ekerk the most superb Hollywoodian ecumenical Centre for the studies of another Jesus, another Gospel, and another spirit in the entire universe.
- “In-comers” often unlock new possibilities.”
The key phrase in this part of Louw’s discourse is, “Imagine for just a moment what ‘new people’ can teach us how to unearth the things we need to discover now.” What does Louw mean by “new people” and “the things we need to discover now?”
Firstly, he disparages and frowns upon the old ways God commands us to follow in Jeremiah 6:16, “Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.”
Louw, Botha, and Joubert have joined the crowds in their rebellion when they said, “We will not walk therein” apparently because of their aversion to finding rest for their souls. They prefer to wallow in paths that provide a false rest, such as “new people” who have an Avatarian dislike of the old ways.
What does Louw mean by “new people?” Are they people of other faiths, who, as Stephan Joubert once declared also have truths embroiled in their teachings, Louw’s “new people?” The only new people God accepts are those who have been made new creations through a biblical faith in Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Therefore, the new Avatarian people who supposedly have the ability to help us find the things we need to discover now are a wholesale farce. God has already spoken through his prophets and his twelve apostles, and lastly and finally through his Son, Jesus Christ. (Hebrews 1:1-2).
Anyone who dares to find new, yet undiscovered ways through the help of “new people,” are swimming in dangerous murky waters (The Way of Water) and will eventually drown in muddy waters poisoned by treachery, lies, and deception unless they repent of their evil ways.
Yet there is hope, according to Siegfried Louw, when he postulates that —
- Younger people are often guides for older people.
Now, before we dive into possible avenues to unravel this silly statement, we need to examine what the Word of God says about children (younger people). There are more than 101 verses in Scripture that admonish children to obey their parents and not a single one where parents are commanded to allow their children to guide their parents, unless, of course, you are a movie bug who loves to sit through watching fables. (2 Timothy 4:4).
This is how Siegfried Louw describes a scene where parents allow children to guide them.
There is an emotional moment in the movie where the younger folk literally save the older folks’ lives. Deep down in the dark water one of the kids brings light with her. She knows the escape route. Her parents can trust her and follow her. She found a way out of which they did not know. Nevertheless, she needed their advice and wisdom in other facets of life. I thought it was something special. Old and young need each other. New ways to live and do are in the ascendance today. Those new ways come easily for the younger generation because it is part and parcel of the world in which they are growing up. Nonetheless, they still need wisdom and empathy when other facets of life come into play. How great it would have been if believers consistently learned from one another. Why should age and old habits hinder us to learn new things? (Emphasis added).
I can guarantee that Louw would not listen to me when I point out to him certain things in his above discourse.
- His appeal to find new ways cleverly suggests that the Way God provided mankind is not sufficient and old hat. (John 14:6). You may venture to find new ways to build huge constructions and devise new engineering methods, or new ways to enhance computerized and digital paraphernalia but never to find new ways to interpret God’s Word. And here’s the reason, “for ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.” (Psalm 119:89).
- His assertion that the younger folk are more comfortable with the new ways because it is part and parcel of the ways of the world, proves that he, at worst, does not know God or, at best, refuses to agree with God who solemnly declares, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15).
The fantasy-inclined movies (fables) have an immense influence on our kids today and people like Louw, Botha, and Joubert are trying to find new ways to present the Gospel so that our kids may watch these movies through heavily tinted spiritual sunglasses (or is it 3D glasses), blinding them to the truth in God’s Word.
This is a sure recipe for disaster because they are not leading our youth to the Christ of the Bible but to an occult-ridden false Christ whose aim it is to lead them to hell. (Proverbs 14:12).
By the way, parents are sternly warned “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6). This is not “the way of water” but “the way of God” to deal with parents who are a stumbling block for their kids.
Suffice it to say that Roedolf Botha, Siegfried Louw, and Stephan Joubert are merely implementing Lucifer’s ten-point plan which the UN has since adopted, via the demon Djwal Kuhl and its medium Alice Bailey. Point number 8 of the plan is of particular interest to this article and reads as follows.
Use the media to promote and change mankind’s mindset.
Alice Bailey said the greatest channel you need to use to change human attitudes is the media. Use the press, the radio, TV, and cinema. You can tell today how successful they have been in implementing the plan over the last 50 years via media as well as advertising agencies, billboards, and magazines.
Source
Not “Living Water” but “Deadly Water”
It goes without saying that plain water is not only beneficial but absolutely necessary for mankind to exist. Humans, animals, and plants cannot live and thrive without it. Water is a gracious gift of God. However, when Satan began to apply witchcraft and other magical practices to it it became a poisonous, filthy fluid killing untold souls. This is what a water witch, Annwyn Avalon, says about the magical properties of water.
Throughout history, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of named water deities and spirits—and just as many obscure and unnamed ones— have appeared in myth and legend, and folklore is full of tales of magic wells, talking wells, water nymphs, great sea gods, and more. Witches have long been associated with these water spirits and their supernatural powers—take, for instance, folk practitioners who dowsed for water using a forked branch. But there are many other types of water magic and water witchcraft. Being a water person myself, I set out to explore water magic as a craft, and discovered a host of magical practices based around the sea, wells, springs, rivers, and Other bodies of water.
Water Witchcraft — Annwyn Avalon
What Louw really means with “new people” is the pursuit of new religions or new ways of interpreting the Gospel to suit the modern-day younger people. No wonder Paul prophesied that “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
The Avatar series by James Cameron is unquestionably one of these last days fables. Cynthia Erb provides in her study “A Spiritual Blockbuster: Avatar, Environmentalism and the New Religions” the following insightful facts about Avatar.
OVER THE PAST TEN YEARS, religious studies scholars have used newly acquired knowledge of film history and theory to support pathbreaking research in the area of religion and film. Although valuable work on religion and film has emerged in media studies, the field’s coverage of this topic has not kept pace with religious studies. I believe media studies scholars should look to religious studies methods for ways of constructing interdisciplinary projects in this area. In this spirit, I take up work on the new religions to survey changes in the way Hollywood addresses religion and new religions are religions that have emerged in the recent past. Scholars define them according to different time frames: the past century. the post—world War Il period. Or the post-1960s period. I am using a prevalent model that defines the new religions as religions that have emerged since the 1960s. This is a moment that corresponds roughly to the emergence of the New American Cinema. I argue that sociological shifts chronicled in work on the new religions help to explain changes in the way religion and spirituality appear in contemporary Hollywood.
The focus on new religions supports new ways of conceiving relations between religion and film. But I am not thinking of the new religions as fringe phenomena. On the contrary, I argue in this article that the new religions help us to understand that religion and spirituality play a foundational role in contemporary commercial filmmaking. New religious aspects appear in numerous contemporary blockbusters, including Avatar (James Cameron 2009)— my primary example. In the first part of this article, I lay out the area of the new religions, concentrating on a large shift away from formal religion and forms of spirituality that are often personal and nontheistic. This part maps a wide context for a type of film I call the spiritual blockbuster.
In part 2 I look at Avatar within the specific context of film and ecology. Environmentalism has a long history, but I focus on movements such as deep ecology, Earth First!, and ecofeminism, which emerged in the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970 and which have been called new religious movements. These movements fall under the umbrella of dark green religion—a term recently coined by Bron Taylor. Bron Taylor has produced extensive cultural research linking religion to many forms of environmentalism, suggests that when one studies contemporary environmentalist culture, one can detect the emergence of a dark green religion with members bound by an absolute commitment to nature as sacred and with common beliefs in animism and Gaia (Dark 13—41). Bron Taylor chooses many examples from contemporary cinema. Avatar clearly participates in this dark green religion. But for some the question remains: what does it mean for a blockbuster to take up activist discourses?
Dark Green Religion
Chris Klassen of the Wlfrid Laurier University in Ontario Canada, says the following about the “Dark Green Religion” in the movie Avatar, entitled “Avatar, Dark Green Religion, and the Technological Construction of Nature.”
James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) exploded onto screens with a vision of splendour aided by a highly advanced system of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and 3D technology. Many viewers were awed by the world and worldview they encountered on Pandora, the main locus of action in the film. A significant element of appeal was the spiritual interaction of the indigenous peoples of Pandora, the Na’vi, with the rest of their ‘natural’ world. Bron Taylor and Adrian Ivakhiv point out that Avatar’s depiction of Na’vi religion ‘ventures deeply into the terrain described variously by such terms as animism, pantheism, panentheism, paganism, ecospirituality, and “dark green religion”’[1]
As a representation of dark green religion, it must ultimately fail as it can only promote a kinship to a fictional ‘nature’. This failure is caused by a confusion of the referential index presented in this film—leading to an optical illusion of nature and ultimately a dark green religion based on fantasy. [fables). . . .
Bron Taylor makes a distinction between green religion and dark green religion. . . .
The concept of dark green religion, then, modifies a generalized term of nature religion—a term that scholars such as Catherine Albanese have been able to use for a wide variety of religious movements oriented towards nature. Dark green religion, according to Taylor, is not only oriented towards nature, it preferences nature.[2] Whereas Albanese allows for both a drive towards mastery and harmony with nature in her formulation of nature religion, Taylor’s dark green religion is fundamentally about harmony.
Pointing to the explanatory potential in his formulation, Taylor explores a wide variety of examples that he sees as exemplifying dark green religion. From transcendentalism to surfing culture, from Disney’s Animal Kingdom to Jane Goodall, Taylor remarks on a growing popularity of nature spirituality that can be seen as dark green. The popularity of nature-‐based religion and/or spirituality has been noted by scholars of both religion and popular culture. In religious studies much of the work on nature-‐based religion has focused on contemporary paganism or feminist goddess worship as growing new religious movements.[3] In these traditions deity, in either the pagan polytheistic forms or the monotheistic Goddess, is imminent within the physical realm and ritual revolves around seasonal cycles and natural processes, particularly of the female reproductive body. Many contemporary pagans and goddess worshippers (and at times these categories are conflated) also would identify strongly with ecofeminist concerns. Ecofeminism posits a philosophical, historical, and psychological connection between the treatment of the natural world and the treatment of women. [4] Conceptualizing the natural world as goddess(es) or the feminine divine, thus, becomes a part of contemporary pagans’ and feminist goddess worshippers’ environmental activism.
It has been my contention for many years that Ekerk would eventually drown in the muddy waters of the occult and be completely submerged in magical and mystified fables under the guise of Christian spirituality. Another promoter of goddess and nature worship is Liezel Lüneburg who often writes articles for Ekerk.
Modern-day Nicolaitans
Jesus Christ who appeared in a vision to John on the island of Patmos, commanded him to write to the seven churches in Asia Minor. They were:
- Ephesus Church. The church, whose ruins are in Ephesus in Izmir, occupies an important place in the history of Christianity. …
- Smyrna (Izmir).
- Pergamon (Bergama).
- Thyatira
- Sardis
- Philadelphia
- Laodikeia
Of interest to us in the light of what has been written about Ekerk’s occult-infested movie critics, is the churches at Ephesus and Pergamum, and especially the influence the Nicolaitans had on them. Revelation 2: 6, 15 has a very strong and serious warning for those who love the Lord Jesus, and that is to hate what He hates. If you do not hate what Jesus hates, something might just be wrong with your relationship with Him.
Nicolas is first mentioned in Acts 6:5 as a “proselyte from Antioch.” Unlike the other six deacons who were all from pure ancestral lines, he came from a pagan background where occult activities reigned supreme. He remained a free thinker even after he embraced Christianity and was open to new ideas and concepts. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The Nicolaitans taught that everything is holy and therefore there was no need for Christians to live separated (holy) lives. Hence their intermingling of God’s Word and the occult was to them of very little importance, let alone their stubborn disobedience of God’s command, “Be ye holy for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:15-16). Once again it sounds familiar, especially in light of what Siegfried Louw wrote about the younger folk. Here, again, is what he said,
. . . new ways come easily for the younger generation because it is part and parcel of the world in which they are growing up. Nonetheless, they still need wisdom and empathy when other facets of life come into play. How great it would have been if believers consistently learned from one another. Why should age and old habits hinder us to learn new things?
This, in essence, was the “doctrine” of the Nicolaitans that Jesus abhorred and hated. It led to a shallow kind of Christianity that had no power and was without conviction — a worldly type of Christianity. It is a Christianity that Jesus described as salt that has lost its savor. (Matthew 5:13).
The only thing worthy to say of them is, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Need I say, stay away from Ekerk if your desire is to live a holy life unto the Lord Jesus Christ?
As Siegfried Louw said, “How great it would have been if believers consistently learned from one another.” I sincerely hope he learned something from this article and repents of his evil to pursue new things via the occult and magic.
For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine and accurate instruction [that challenges them with God’s truth]; but wanting to have their ears tickled [with something pleasing], they will accumulate for themselves [many] teachers [one after another, chosen] to satisfy their own desires and to support the errors they hold, and will turn their ears away from the truth and will wander off into myths and man-made fictions [and will accept the unacceptable]. (2 Timothy 4:4, AMP).
Wow, now fancy that. Ekerk is fulfilling prophecy to the letter and proves that the Bible is indeed the very Word of God.
New religions
Are you looking for a new religion and “new people who can teach us how to unearth the things we need to discover now.” Take your pick from a list Wikipedia provided here.
See previous article on first Avatar movie here
[1] Bron Taylor and Adrian Ivakhiv, ‘Opening Pandora’s Film’, The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, vol. 4, no. 4, 2010, p. 390.
[2] Catherine L. Albanese, Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1990
[3] On contemporary paganism, see Graham Harvey, Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth, New York University Press, Washington Square, 1997; Joanne Pearson, Richard Roberts, and Chris Klassen—Dark Green Religion 87
Geoffrey Samuel (eds), Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1998; Helen A. Berger, Evan A. Leach and Leigh S. Shaffer, Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 2003; Chris Klassen, Storied Selves: Shaping Identity in Feminist Witchcraft, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2008. For feminist goddess worship, see Cynthia Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America, Crossroads, New York, 1993; Johanna Stuckey, Feminist Spirituality: An Introduction to Feminist Theology in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Feminist Goddess Worship, Centre for Feminist Research, Toronto, 1998; Paul Reid-‐Bowen, Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Theology, Ashgate Publishing, London, 2007.
[4] See Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993; Catriona Sandilands, The Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1999; Karen J. Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What it is and Why it Matters, Rowmand & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2000
