Illimunati groups infiltration into the churches?
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Anyone here got news that the secret societies already influencing sg churches way of life?
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beware of false defectors to spread misinformation !
the church has been infiltrated by Jews for hundreds of years thanks to the Spanish Inquisition...............
seems that the real big boss of bosses is the BLACK POPE................chief of the Jesuits, the same guys that colonized the world in the name of God......................the real reason is for wealth and power...........as usual.
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I feel that churches now is more than social hangout during weekends than any real spiritual fulfilment nowadays....the power of the occult is indeed at work:(
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There is more information on Illimunati groups infiltration into churches here:
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And thats like how many thousand years ago ? Applicable in Sg ?
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TS finding scapegoat to blame for the way Churches are being run today?
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Originally posted by Catknight:
I feel that churches now is more than social hangout during weekends than any real spiritual fulfilment nowadays....the power of the occult is indeed at work:(
You're going to the wrong church...try small churches.
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The Path of Illumination
"The Illuminati called their string of markers 'The Path of Illumination,' and anyone who wanted to join the brotherhood had to follow it all the way to the end. A kind of test."
-- Dan Brown, Angels and Demons, 151.
Dan Brown's Angels and Demons postulates that the Illuminati, a secret society, had a secret path, "The Path of Illumination." As the protagonists, Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra, follow the path, they find their way to the next step by showing their aptitude for deciphering hints and making clever inferences. They grow in knowledge of Illuminati secrets.The theme of secrets crops up here and there in human history. Why do people find secrets so attractive? For one thing, we are aware of our limitations and our lack of knowledge. We do not know the innermost secrets of life and of the universe. And some of us keenly wish that we did. Science nowadays seems to be unraveling more and more secrets. But can it give us the most valuable secrets about persons, the secrets of who we are and what it means to be a person?
Secrets also have an attraction precisely because they are secret—not everyone knows. If you possess a secret, you belong to a privileged inner group, and you have power and fellowship within that group that outsiders do not possess.
Because a secret is inaccessible, it is a kind of prize. If you discover it you can also take pride in the discovery. You found it out; others, less worthy, did not. As we follow Dan Brown's story and identify with the protagonists, we can feel a kind of secondary pride over their successes in unraveling the secrets.
Secrets in Religion
In Dan Brown's story the secrets of the Illuminati intersect in fascinating ways with the secrets of religion. Most of the action takes place in the context of Vatican City, which is not only a territory with restricted access, but has its secrets: a secret conclave; a secret space where the antimatter sits; secret archives to which even the expert Robert Langdon has been denied access many times. Religion is naturally associated with secrecy, not only because it may have secret formulas and secret records, but because that which is holy is felt to be inaccessible to human beings. Only people with special qualifications and special rituals may entry holy spaces.
Human religions are largely built on the assumption that the holy exists and that it is secret. We are barred and cannot gain access.
The Bible claims to be a holy document, delivered by the God of all holiness. But it is radically different. It announces that all the man-made secretive offerings of access to the holy are counterfeit. Human religion is about man seeking the secrets of God. The biblical message is about God coming to seek out man, in spite of his flight from the true God.
Consequently, the biblical message is not a secret. It is open. "By open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God" (2 Corinthians 4:2). What is the message? There are many open summaries of it in the Bible:
... that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, ...
"in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their traspasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:19).
The biblical way is easy, because we do not need special passwords, special cleverness, or special human insight. But for the same reason, it is hard! It is hard because no one can any longer take pride in his achievement or his insight. "No human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Corinthians 1:29).
At the heart of the invitation in the Bible is the person of Christ. His resurrection from the dead implies that he is alive today. And what he said while on earth is still true: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father [God] except through me" (John 14:6). Jesus Christ gives us access to God, access to his holiness. And it is not a secret!
The true path
It is striking, is it not, that Jesus claims to be both the way and the truth. When he says that he is the way he means that he is the true path leading to the light of God. He is the path of illumination in the true sense. When he says that he is the truth, he implies that illumination, the knowledge of the truth, comes through him. In the Bible he also claims to be "the light of the world" (John 8:12), which corresponds to the metaphor of illumination used by the Illuminati.
Are these similarities mere coincidence? I think not. Dan Brown's book is meant to be light-hearted and fun to read at one level. But it touches on our deeper longings. We want a path in life that will lead us somewhere, hopefully to satisfaction and joy and peace. We want illumination and truth that will satisfy our minds and our sense of being in the dark about what is most important. If we long deeply enough for these things, we are tempted to invent stories and pseudo-truths that will satisfy us. We invent counterfeits of the truth that is found in God himself. Such inventions result in counterfeit religion. The good news of the Bible is that God himself has come to seek us out and to make himself known through his own Son: the Son says, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father [God]" (John 14:9).
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So dan brown is god ?
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they are also in music industry... eg: lady gaga
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double post
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A critique of dan brown
THE BLASPHEMY AND DECEPTION OF THE DA VINCI CODE
by Jeffrey Khoo and Suan-Yew QuekCaveat
Satan is a liar and a deceiver (John 8:44, Rev 12:9). Dan Brown’s bestselling novel—The Da Vinci Code(Bantam Press, 2003; 593 pages)—is the latest Satanic attack against our Lord Jesus Christ and His inerrant Word. Brown seductively weaves a highly imaginative story in a vain attempt to prove that the Jesus believed by Christians today is not the same Jesus who lived in the first century. According to The Da Vinci Code, the true historical Jesus was only an ordinary man and not God at all.
The book is a most seductive and deceptive novel replete with hidden codes, murder, sex and intrigue. It seeks to debunk the common notion that the Holy Grail is the Cup of the Last Supper of Christ. The author asserts that the painting by Leonardo Da Vinci of the Last Supper reveals that the Holy Grail refers actually to Mary Magdalene who he says is the wife of Jesus Christ. Mary Magdalene is said to be pregnant when she was with Christ at His resurrection. Not only that, this lineage of Christ and Mary Magdalene continues to this very day. This is blasphemy in the highest degree.
Brown’s attacks on Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures are not new. His blasphemous and deceptive views have been propounded for decades within the four walls of modernistic universities and liberal seminaries. Brown distills the academic jargon and weaves the views of liberalism into a mystery novel for the general audience, and for the money no less.
The Blasphemy of The Da Vinci Code
In his book, Brown attacks the inspiration, preservation, and canonicity of the Scriptures. The Bible he says, “is a product of man, … Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book. … [T]housands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, … Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.”
As far as Brown is concerned, the historical and factual gospels have been destroyed in the 4th century. What remains today are the spurious and fictitious Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that promote a mythical, godlike Jesus. So, all this while, Christians have been reading the wrong Gospels and believing in a false Jesus!
Truth of God’s Perfection
Does Brown’s unbelief make the faith of God without effect? “God forbid; yea, let God be true, but every man a liar” (Rom 3:4).
How do we know that the Bible today is truly the Word of God, perfect and without mistakes? Simply because God says so! The declaration, “Thus saith the LORD,” or “Hear the Word of the LORD,” or “The LORD spake … saying,” appears over 3,000 times in the Bible. Be not deceived, the Bible is altogether God’s Word, not man’s word. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God (theopneustos, literally, “God-breathed”) and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim 3:16-17). The Bible was written over a span of 1,500 years by more than 40 different writers, and despite all its diversity, its miraculous unity is obvious. It goes without saying that though the Bible has many writers, it has but one Author—God Himself. That every one of the OT prophecies concerning Christ’s first coming has been fulfilled precisely proves the Bible’s authenticity (eg, Isa 7:14 cf Matt 1:22-23).
How do we know that the Scriptures that we have today are the true ones, and not those that have been lost for over a thousand years? We know this because God promised to preserve His words perfectly and perpetually. Psalm 12:6-7 says, “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” Jesus Himself promised, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one title shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt 5:18). “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt 24:35, Mark 13:31, Luke 21:33). “The Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).
The true Bible can be easily identified. It is the one that has an unbroken lineage, fully and continuously preserved by God down through the ages, and always in the possession of His people. Thus, the perfect and true Scriptures are not in the lately found Alexandrian manuscripts underlying the modern corrupt versions (which incidentally present a less than divine Jesus preferred by Brown), nor are they in the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi codices (Gnostic manuscripts from Egypt) as mentioned by Brown, but in the long-existing, time-tested and Christ-honouring Hebrew and Greek Scriptures underlying the good old Authorised Version.
Certainty of Christian Conviction
How can we be absolutely sure that the Scriptures we hold in our hands today are truly the infallible and inerrant Word of God? Faith is the answer! “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Heb 11:6). The logic of faith is the key to certainty. God says it, that settles it, we believe it! We do not see to believe; we believe in order to see.
The Apostle Peter told the Church to trust in “a more sure word of prophecy”—the Holy Scriptures—as written by eyewitnesses: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man (and certainly not by the will of Constantine): but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet 1:20-21).
If we are truly born again and the Spirit of God dwells within us, we cannot but know and believe the Truth of God’s Word. The Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:17). “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth … He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:13-14). “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 2:27).
Historical and scientific evidences that prove the Scriptures may be helpful, but ultimately, the only basis of our faith and practice must be the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone. The Perfect Bible (and we have it today and know where it is) is our supreme final authority. Sola Scriptura!
In The Da Vinci Code, it is Satan’s voice one hears. True Christians will not follow. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they shall follow me: and I give unto them eternal life” (John 10:27-28).
We have experienced the good news and resurrection power of Christ in our life, and we cannot deny that our Lord and Saviour is indeed 100% God and 100% Man, and that His Word is 100% inspired and 100% preserved.
It goes without saying that The Da Vinci Code is truly Fiction. The Bible, on the other hand, is purely Fact. We have a Perfect Canon and a Perfect Text. May we never add to it, nor subtract from it (Rev 22:18-19), but love it and obey it (1 John 2:3-6)! “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Ps 11:3).1
The Deception of The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a Satanic masterpiece. It is utterly deceptive, and particularly so in Chapter 55. In this chapter, one finds the two talking snakes, Teabing and Langdon, seducing Sophie with their sophistry. Alas, the helpless lass is mesmerised, and the serpentine duo go for the jugular with their venom of lies.
Deception #1: Da Vinci’s Fresco Tells the Truth, Not the Bible
The Da Vinci Code assumes that Leonardo was telling the truth concerning who Jesus was and what happened in His life. Teabing pontificates, “In fact, Da Vinci painted the true Grail.” At the end of the chapter, Teabing again presses the point that Da Vinci’s fresco is truthful and not the Bible, “You will be shocked to learn what anomalies Da Vinci included here that most scholars either do not see or simply choose to ignore. This fresco [of the Last Supper], in fact, is the entire key to the Holy Grail mystery.”
Refutation #1
It must be said that Da Vinci, born in 1452 and died in 1519, was not an eyewitness to the Last Supper. How can his painting then be regarded as an authoritative depiction of that event? We should rather trust in eyewitness accounts. Matthew and John who were there recorded what happened during the Last Supper in their respective Gospels. The truth is not in the painting of Da Vinci, but in the testimonies of Matthew and John, and of Peter and Paul as found in Mark and Luke, who wrote under divine inspiration (2 Tim 3:16, 2 Pet 1:20-21).
One proof that Da Vinci’s fresco is historically unreliable is that he painted Jesus and His disciples dining at a long and high table with some sitting down and others standing up. The people in those days did not have their meals in such a way. In those days, they had their meals in a reclining posture. This fact is accurately reported in the Four Gospels where we find Jesus and His disciples reclining on mattresses around a low table during the Last Supper (cf John 13:23, 25).
Deception #2: If You Believe in the Bible, You Must be Stupid
In order to cause Sophie to doubt, Teabing made her read a couple of Da Vinci’s sayings that demean believers of the supernatural and miraculous. Quotation of Da Vinci #1 reads, “Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude.” In other words, Sophie is made to think that anyone who believes that the Bible is a supernatural God-given Book, and that the miracles recorded therein are true, must be simple-minded and stupid.
Refutation #2
People ought to realise that Da Vinci is but a creature, and not the Creator. Da Vinci is dead, but Jesus is alive (1 Cor 15:1-20). As such, it is not what Da Vinci says in his paintings that we should worry about, but what Jesus the risen Lord says in His Word.
Who are the fools in God’s eyes? They are those who deny His existence and His miracles. Twice in the Psalms, God says, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Pss 14:1, 53:1). The judgement of such fools as spoken of in Romans 1:18-22 applies to Teabing, Langdon, and not forgetting the author Brown himself, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” The truly blind are they who deny the miracle of creation, even the Creator God—the Lord Jesus Christ—Himself (John 1:3, Col 1:16).
Deception #3: If You Believe in the Bible, You Must be Blind
Quotation of Da Vinci #2 states, “Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!” Teabing could be quoting Da Vinci out of context. Whatever the case may be, Teabing is trying to tell Sophie, “Don’t be blind! Don’t be misled! Stop believing in the Bible! Stop following Christ!”
Refutation #3
Da Vinci says “Blinding ignorance does mislead us,” and so it does. Jesus speaks against “blinding ignorance” as well, and calls on all to seek and know the truth. “Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa 55:6-9).
From where do we seek the Lord? “Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail” (Isa 34:16). Why the book of the Lord? Because “The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes” (Ps 19:7-8).
How should we seek the Lord? We should seek Him by faith, “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Heb 11:6). We do not see in order to believe, we believe in order to see. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). We should seek Him with great reverence, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7). “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Prov 9:10).
Deception #4: The Bible is a Product of Man, Not of God
Teabing tells Sophie, “The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book. … More than eightygospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them.” Teabing lies to Sophie, “The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great. … Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.”
Refutation #4
It is not true that the Four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were 4th century inventions of Constantine and the Nicaean Council. The Four Gospels were written in AD 40-50 shortly after Christ rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. The Early Church Fathers—Papias (in AD 110) and Irenaeus (in AD 180)—mentioned them by name and affirmed their Apostolic origins. It is thus not the over 80 gospels that Teabing mentioned that were the early and authentic Gospels but the Four that we have in the Canonical Scriptures today, totally inspired and entirely preserved to this day.
It must be pointed out that the over 80 gospels that Teabing regards as authentic do not paint Jesus as a mere mortal at all, but super-divine in a fairy-tale manner that can only come from the corrupt imaginations of unregenerate men. As a matter of fact, these false gospels deify Mary more than they do Jesus which eventually led to the Mary-worship that we see in the Roman Catholic Church today. It is no wonder that God’s people have always rejected those 80 gospels as spurious. A born-again, Spirit-indwelt Christian (John 14:16-17, 1 John 2:27) when reading about the boyhood of Jesus in these false gospels can easily tell that they are myths and not truth (read The Lost Books of the Bible, especially 1 Infancy 14-15, about Jesus being bitten by a mad and demonised Judas, and Jesus being a proud and boastful show-off).
Teabing’s claims that Constantine (1) was “a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed,” and that he (2) financed a new Bible in AD 327 to consolidate his power as emperor, are lies. The truth is: (1) Constantine lived from AD 285-337, and became a Christian in AD 312—i.e. 25 years before his death! (2) The NT Canon as we know it today existed since the first century. By God’s special providence, it was the Council of Carthage of AD 397 and not the Council of Nicaea AD 327 that settled the NT Canon; this happened 60 years after Constantine’s death!
Brown says that the New Testament Canon is a human fabrication and thus should be dismissed or replaced. This attack must be refuted. It is vital that Biblical Christianity holds fast to the ancient Biblical Canon without change. The word “canon” refers to a measuring rod by which things are kept straight. It is used metaphorically in 2 Corinthians 10:12-18 to designate God’s rule over our lives. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:12-18 wrote, “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. But we will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule(canon) which God hath distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you. For we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure, as though we reached not unto you: for we are come as far as to you also in preaching the gospel of Christ: Not boasting of things without our measure, that is, of other men’s labours; but having hope, when your faith is increased, that we shall be enlarged by you according to our rule abundantly, To preach the gospel in the regions beyond you, and not to boast in another man’s line (canon) of things made ready to our hand. But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth.” The canonicity of the Bible is thus “the quality or character of the Scriptures by which they are our rule of faith and life, as the infallible Word of God. As such, the Biblical Canon constitutes the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures.
The Church did not make the words of man to become the words of God as Brown asserts. The Word of God stands on its own, and declares itself to be the Word of God. The Bible is its own infallible authority. There is no higher authority than the Word of God itself. This is an acceptable tautological argument. In defense of this truth, J O Buswell correctly observed that “all factual existential statements may be regarded as circular. Why is a fact a fact, and why is it regarded as a fact? The only answer is, because it is a fact.”2 The Westminster Confession of Faith likewise states, “The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.”3
The Word of God was canonised the moment it was written. The canonicity of Scripture finds its basis in the inspiration of Scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” The Church at that time received the canonical words of the Apostles as the very words of God and not the words of man. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 states, “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.” When heresies like Marcionism and Montanism arose, the pastors of the early church realised the need to identify the Canon so that their parishioners may know for sure the names and the number of the divinely inspired books. The Council of Laodicea (AD 363) listed the present number of 27 New Testament books. Athanasius also mentioned 27 in his Easter letter of AD 367 and these were recognised as the Canon at the Council of Hippo (AD 393) and the Third Synod of Carthage (AD 397). Since then, the New Testament Canon of 27 books was confirmed and fixed. The New Testament pseudepigrapha were all rejected as spurious and not as Holy Scripture. The identification of the Canon is the result of the special providential work of God through His Spirit-guided Church (John 16:13-14).
But Teabing says that the Scriptures “evolved,” and there is no such thing as a definitive version of the book. This is nonsense. The biblical doctrine of the Verbal Plenary Inspiration (VPI) and Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP) of the Scriptures tells us that we have an absolutely perfect and definitive Bible today as found in the infallible and inerrant Hebrew and Greek Scriptures underlying the Authorised King James Version. E F Hills rightly said that the logic of faith is the key to such a certainty, “You must begin with Christ and the Gospel and proceed according to the logic of faith. This will lead you to the Traditional text, the Textus Receptus and the King James Version.”4
Deception #5: Jesus was Only a Man, and Not God at All
Teabing says, “Jesus Christ was a historical figure … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal. … Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea. … A relatively close vote at that. … Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power.”
Refutation #5
The Council of Nicaea was convened to hear the case of Arius, a priest from Alexandria, who taught that Jesus was only half God and not fully God. Arius said that Jesus (1) was a creature and thus not the Creator, (2) had a beginning and thus not eternal, (3) was different from and not the same as God Himself. But God raised up a defender of the faith in Athanasius. In the Council of Nicaea, Athanasius argued from the Scriptures that the Lord Jesus Christ was fully God and fully Man (John 1:1, 14; Col 2:9; 1 Tim 3:16), eternally begotten of the Father, not created (John 1:3, 3:16, 18, 10:30; 1 John 4:9). Arius was declared a heretic. The vote was hardly close—315 for Athanasius and only 3 for Arius. Arius was defrocked and excommunicated.
Furthermore, Teabing’s claim that the deity of Christ was a New Testament invention is not true at all! It was not the New Testament that first spoke of the deity of Christ but the Old Testament. “We have also a more sure word of prophecy” (2 Pet 1:19). The Old Testament prophetic Scripture had already made mention of a coming Messiah who would be none other than God Himself. Isaiah 7:14 was one such prophecy, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Jesus Himself fulfilled this prophecy in 5 BC as announced by the angel Gabriel. Jesus was Immanuel, “God with us” (Matt 1:22-23). It is significant to note that Isaiah’s prophecy of the virgin-born Son of God was given 750 years before Jesus came. It goes without saying that the lie that Jesus was never God but made God by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 was not Constantine’s invention, but Teabing’s.
Today, Arius’ teaching is found in a cult called the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and in the corrupt modern versions of the Bible (like the NIV) that are based on the Alexandrian text. It would be no surprise if Arius and his followers had altered the inspired text to create their own text to undermine the deity of Christ. It is indeed troubling to note that in the NIV, 1 Timothy 3:16 should read falsely, “He appeared in a body,” which undermines His deity and humanity. The true reading is, “God was manifest in the flesh” (as accurately and faithfully translated from the original by the KJV) which tells us that Christ is Theanthropos—100% God and 100% Man. Deception abounds today not only in the cults that claim to be “Christian,” but also in the modern versions that claim to be “Holy Bible.”
Warning
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron” (1 Tim 4:1-2). In the face of such dangers, what must Christians do? The Apostle Paul exhorts, “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1 Tim 4:16).
May the Lord protect His Church from falling into Satan’s trap of deception.
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its plain obvious that bible was written by alot of ancient people, no question. even the concept of god was created by ancient men, make no mistake on this. I have said this many a time.
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beware of conspiracy theories?
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I won't be surprised that there are secret societies or underground groups that extert influence not just on religion in general but even other aspects of society. However, it won't be as how Dan Brown described it. I have heard about this Illuminati before, and I feel in this age people will fuel conspiracy theories, whether it is real or unreal. If this group or others like it are real, like I said I personally am not surprised. It will not be easy however to know the truth about them, with long established networks and vast resources.
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It seems far feteched that 13 families control our world....maybe cause it seems cause we don't believe it their ultimate success
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Originally posted by Rooney9:
its plain obvious that bible was written by alot of ancient people, no question. even the concept of god was created by ancient men, make no mistake on this. I have said this many a time.
nope. VPI / VPP means clearly that the bible is written by man, totally inspired by God and well preserved till now
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Originally posted by Catknight:
It seems far feteched that 13 families control our world....maybe cause it seems cause we don't believe it their ultimate success
must be that 13 bloodlines of illumanti junk floating around the web. a lot of nut jobs spreading crap on web these days.
all nothing but useless rubbish.
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Here's what really happening in the U.S, not some illumanti fuck shit from some online nut:
CONFESSIONS OF A WALL ST. NIHILIST: FORGET ABOUT GOLDMAN SACHS, OUR ENTIRE ECONOMY IS BUILT ON FRAUDBy Mark Ames
This article first appeared in The New York Press.
There was a strange moment last week during President Obama’s speech at Cooper Union. There he was, groveling before a cast of Wall Street villains including Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, begging them to “Look into your heart!” like John Turturro’s character in Miller’s Crossing…when out of the blue, the POTUS dropped this bombshell: “The only people who ought to fear the kind of oversight and transparency that we’re proposing are those whose conduct will fail this scrutiny.”
The Big Secret, of course, is that every living creature within a 100-mile radius of Cooper Union would fail “this scrutiny”—or that scrutiny, or any scrutiny, period. Not just in a 100-mile radius, but wherever there are still signs of economic life beating in these 50 United States, the mere whiff of scrutiny would work like nerve gas on what’s left of the economy. Because in the 21st century, fraud is as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet Volts—fraud’s all we got left, Doc. Scare off the fraud with Obama’s “scrutiny,” and the entire pyramid scheme collapses in a heap of smoldering savings accounts.
That’s how an acquaintance of mine, a partner in a private equity firm, put it: “Whoever pops this fraud bubble is going to have to escape on the next flight out, faster than the Bin Laden Bunch fled Kentucky in their chartered jets after 9/11.”
And that’s why this SEC suit accusing Goldman Sachs of fraud is really just a negotiating bluff to give Obama’s people some leverage—or it’s supposed to be, anyway—according to the PE guy. He dismissed all the speculation that the fraud investigations would turn on other obvious villains like Deutsche, Merrill, Paulson & Co., the Rahm Emmanuel-linked Magnetar and so on.
“You don’t get it, Ames. Even Khuzami, the SEC guy in charge of the Goldman case, is a fraud; the fucker was Deutsche’s general counsel when they pulled the same CDO scam as Goldman. You have no idea how deep this goes.”
And it’s clear that a lot more people here are aware of how fundamentally rotten things are but they’re not willing to face the big fraudonomics bummer yet, preferring instead to stick with specific accusations.
My position on this was, “Good, throw the book at those crooks too, I don’t see what the problem is here.”
This was exactly what I argued a week ago, during a verbal slapfight with that acquaintance of mine. We were making a scene in a Midtown yuppie restaurant, arguing over just how much damage Wall Street had caused, and what to do about it.%u202F
His position was indefensible, and he knew it, so he switched tactics:
“OK Ames, which bankers would you throw the book at? Because you’re arguing that they’re all guilty. So which ones do you go after? Two of them? Three? Half of them?”
“Every last one of them. Lock ’em up in one of their private prisons.”
“Not gonna happen, Che.”
“Che? Me? Listen, Scarface, I’m about law and order. Don’t any of you PE degenerates believe in that anymore?”
“OK, here’s the deal, Che. I’m going to walk you through this nice and slow so that even an agave-sweetened hippie like you can understand this. Stick with me, this is gonna be a little complicated. Ready?” And so he began.
“Let’s say the government decides one day, ‘You know, we oughta listen to Che here, let’s throw the book at every firm and every executive that our people can make a case against. Because you know, gosh, it’s all about rule of law and blind justice, just like Che says.’ OK, so now this means indicting just about every serious player in finance, so they take down Goldman Sachs, they take down Citigroup, JP Morgan, BofA… and they also serve all the big funds who are at least as guilty, if not more. So they shut down Pimco, Blackrock, Citadel… maybe they indict Geithner and Summers, haul in some of Bush’s crooks… right?”
“Too bad they don’t serve popcorn here, this is getting good.”
“OK, now guess what you’ve just done? You’ve just caused the markets to completely tank. Remember what happened after the Lehman collapse? Remember how popular that made every politician in Washington? Still wondering why they coughed up a trillion bucks? They were scared for their lives; that’s why they voted for that bailout. You’d have done the same goddamn thing. But if we go after everyone guilty of fraud and theft, the market crash this country would see would make 2008 look like Sesame Street. Open that can of worms labeled ‘Fraud’ and the whole fucking economy collapses. You may as well prosecute people for masturbating. No one will know where the fraud investigation stops and who will be charged next—everyone will try to cash out, and the markets will tank to zero. And guess what happens when the markets tank to zero? Every fucking American with a retirement plan, or an investment portfolio, or a 401k—every state pension plan in the country, every teacher’s pension fund, every fireman’s pension—every last one of them will be wiped out. That’s what the Lehman collapse taught us.”
“Us? It didn’t teach anything but that this country is run by maniacs.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Ames– you’re even more clueless than the idiots who managed the Lehman collapse. I mean, didn’t everyone get it how badly those idiots screwed up with Lehman? It was the biggest screw-up this hemisphere has ever seen. You had Secretary Paulson and Fed Chief Bernanke scratching their asses not knowing what to do, so then they go, ‘OK, we’re supposed to be a free market economy, and we’re supposed to be the Republicans—let’s try something different for a change since nothing else is working. Let’s go out on a limb and actually give this “free market” thing a whirl. Who knows? Maybe the “free market” really works the way we always say it does. Nothing else seems to work, let’s let the free market decide Lehman’s fate. Maybe corporate-socialism isn’t the answer.’ So they hung Lehman out in the free-market, and BAM! The. Shit. Hit. The. Fan. No shit, dudes—the free market is for suckers, didn’t your daddy teach you idiots that? Not only did Lehman collapse—everything collapsed; confidence in the entire system collapsed. And here’s what I’m trying to explain to simpletons like you: Our economy is just a confidence game. Don’t ask me how it got this way, don’t care.”
I tried saying something insulting to him, but he just talked right over me, lurching forward baring his laser-whitened teeth.
“I’m sure you have the answer, you and Ron Paul and all the other pot-smoking libertarian do-gooders have it all figured out. But what I’m saying is, no confidence means end of the confidence game. That’s what Lehman showed. Every single player in finance suddenly had to face the fundamental problem—this whole fucking economy is built on fraud and lies and garbage. So when Lehman collapsed, every single player panicked, going, ‘If Lehman was nothing but a Ponzi scheme—and I know what I’m running is a Ponzi scheme—holy shit, that means everyone else is running a Ponzi scheme too! Run for the exits!’ No one trusted anyone else, everyone pulled out, and the entire global economy collapsed just like that. And that meant your parents, my parents, every teacher, every fireman, every person in the country going into retirement, every price on every asset—wiped out.
“And here’s what I’m trying to get you to understand: In the grown-up world, when an entire country’s savings accounts are wiped out because of some do-gooder and his law books and his Thomas Jefferson ‘What about free and fair markets?’ crap, that is a big problem—people don’t give a fuck about Jefferson and ‘free and fair markets,’ they just want their savings to be worth something. And people are right: Jefferson was an imbecile. He should have been a folk singer, not a Founding fucking Father. But that’s another issue that’s over your head—the point is, the guy who destroys this economy because it’s ‘the right thing to do’ will have to flee for his life, and whatever president or political party was in power when that decision was made will be out of power for the next 200 years. That’s why Washington panicked and passed ‘the bailout,’ they didn’t want to be the fools whom all the Ponzi victims blame for tanking the Ponzi scheme, so they broke the glass and pumped up a newer, bigger Ponzi scheme. It was an expensive 14 trillion dollar lesson in, ‘Stay the fuck away from free-market experiments, assholes!’ How naive are you people to actually believe that ‘free market’ crap? The problem is when people in power are stupid enough to listen to guys like you: all the do-gooder libertarians and the do-gooder free-market Republicans who forgot that they’re supposed to lie. Hello!”
“Libertarian, me? Since when was I ever a libertarian?”
“That’s my point: Fools like you don’t even know who you are anymore. They forgot that they’re supposed to lie about all that libertarian free-market shit, keep it far the fuck out of policy. But instead of just lying about free-markets while secretly propping up Lehman, the idiots actually tried pulling off a ‘free-market’ miracle, and we had to pay $14 trillion just to find out what I could have told them for no fee at all, which is: ‘Hey, assholes, you’re supposed to be hypocrites, OK? You’re supposed to be two-faced free-market liars, not libertarian Quakers! You’re not supposed to believe in anything—your job is to get up in front of the public and lie about free markets and the rest. Period.’
“That’s it, how fucking hard is it? Look, watch my face: Say one thing out of one side… and do the other out of the other side. Got that? Let everyone else whine and cry about, ‘Ooh, that’s not fair, ooh, that’s a bailout, that’s socialism, that’s corruption.’ That’s what losers do—they whine. You, for example, Che—you whine all the time, and look at you… Can you pay the bill for this meal? Is there a libertarian on earth who can afford to buy a decent meal in Manhattan? And now, look at me: I’m a hypocrite. Hell yes I am! I lie every day of my life, I lie to myself in my sleep. Hell, I’m lying to you right now, in fact I don’t even know what the fuck I’m saying anymore because I’m so used to lying. And yet—who’s the guy with the black card? Who’s the one who’s going to pick up the check tonight? Guys with power, guys like me, we lie. You got that? ‘Lie’ as in ‘My Lai’ the massacre—as in, ‘My Lai you long time, me so free-markety.’ You distract the dumbshits with free-market B.S. because hey, for whatever reason, that’s what the public likes to hear, it doesn’t really matter what lie you feed them so long as it’s the lie that puts them in a trance. And then behind the scenes, you do the very opposite: You fix the game, you cover up this problem here with those funds there, you move shit around, you skim budgets and you subsidize the system, you cover up the bad shit and once in a while throw a has-been to the wolves to keep the public entertained—that’s the way the system works, and anyone who’s an adult understands that. And everyone who doesn’t understand that can go form an online libertarian chat group and complain with all their little libertarian friends about free markets and Jekyll Island and ‘Wahhh! It’s not not fair, waahhhh!’”
“What’s with the libertarian accusation?”
“It’s just that you all sound the same to me. Libertarians, hippies—is there really a difference? You all whine alike: ‘It’s not fair, man! Ooh! You can’t do that, it’s fraud, it’s corruption, ooh no!’ Or: ‘It’s the income inequality, man; Goldman Sachs controls us all man; it’s socialism for the rich; it’s all too scary for my retarded 5-year-old libertarian brain!’ Seriously, anytime I meet libertarians like you—”
“Listen—I’m not a fucking libertarian, OK? I want free handouts. How clear do I have to make this? Me—handouts. Me—Big Government. I want to collectivize your productive cash, because I am a resentful parasite. Are you capable of processing a single word of what I’m saying to you, Spaz?”
“Uh-huh, sure, whatever. Here’s the thing: I think it’s great that you and your friends memorized Road to Serfdom in between Star Trek episodes—no really, I’m happy for you. Yeah, we’re all so proud. But here’s the thing: We grown-ups are really, really busy now trying to sort out the free-market mess you made with that Lehman move of yours. Yeah, so why don’t you run along to your libertarian chat rooms and have your little debates about Jekyll Island and the gold standard, because it really means a lot to us. And report back to me as soon as you have it all figured out, m’kay? Just get the fuck out of my face and leave the adults alone.”
It got a lot more vicious and personal than this, but when our verbal slap-fight ended—and he paid the bill—I thought about what he said, and it made a lot more sense. Fraud has become so endemic in this country that it’s woven its way into America’s DNA, forming a symbiotic relationship that can’t be undone without killing off the host. If they push it just a little too hard, the entire American economy could crash, asset values could tank, and that means tens of millions of extremely pissed off retirees and Baby Boomers. As the Wall Streeter put it: “Whoever is responsible for bursting this latest bubble by exposing all the fraud—and tanking all the markets—will not only be out of power for at least a generation, but they’ll all have to get radical reconstructive surgery on their faces and seek political asylum somewhere remote. No one wants to be that guy, and that’s why it’s not going to happen.”
That may be true, but all bubbles to eventually burst, all Ponzi schemes do collapse. The only question is when. For those of us not on the verge of retiring, the sooner we have this day of reckoning and get it over with, the better.
* * *
Fraudonomics: 10 Fun Fraud Facts
Ever since I got kicked out of Russia and forced back home, I’ve been collecting all kinds of news articles about fraud, in a document file titled “America Is Russia.” Here’s a little taste of the wonderful world of American Fraud:
1). Accounting Fraud: Last year, America’s leading banks were insolvent. They had tens or hundreds of billions in losses on their books, and the only way to wipe those losses out would be to either a) own up to the mess, raise enormous amounts of money on top of all the bailout money; or b) get out a big fat eraser, and wipe those losses off the books as if they never existed. The first option was nice and all, but a real hassle. So Geithner and Larry Summers chose Door Number Two: Accounting Fraud. They forced the FASB to accept a rule-change in the accounting methodology called “mark-to-model” which let banks decide how much their assets were worth, rather than letting the markets decide. So if for example a BofA owned a complex security called “Orion Butt Fungus” that was worth 5 pesos on the open market, but BofA was too broke to go out and raise 5 pesos to cover that loss, under the new accounting rules, the government told BofA that rather than pricing “Orion Butt Fungus” at what the market will actually pay for it, why not first ask, “How much would BofA like ‘Orion Butt Fungus’ to be worth, in a perfect world?’” If BofA answers, “Doyee, gee I dunno, how about $500 million?” then under the “mark-to-model” accounting rules, BofA could now value “Orion Butt Fungus” at $500 million, and voila! Their problems are over. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Suddenly, BofA looks like it knows how to pick winners! And no one’s going to second-guess them, because everyone else is mark-to-modeling their “Orion Butt Fungi” too! The end result: under the old rules, BofA would have had to raise money just to cover its debts, sort of like you and me have to do, and that’s just a lot of money going to waste. But now that its portfolio is so profitable, BofA has a much easier time raising money, which it uses to pay ginormous bonuses to its executives.
2). Big Pharma Fraud. Remember that scene early in Fight Club, when Edward Norton explained his job, when it was more profitable to let a car defect go and pay whatever lawsuit settlements come from the deaths, and when it’s better to recall the cars because the number of deaths will result in too many lawsuits? This is humanitarian do-gooder stuff compared to the savage real-world fraud-for-profit model that drives America’s drug companies. It’s really simple and it goes like this: the more fraud a drug company commits, so long as it’s off-the-scale fraud with the most horrible consequences for the victims, the drug company’s profits always outdo the criminal fines and lawsuits by factors of 20, 30, 100… It’s as simple as that. Because the billion in penalties here or the two billion in class action lawsuit settlements there are always far less than the tens of billions you earn from pushing harmful drugs on unsuspecting idiots. To wit: Between May 2004 and March 2010, a handful of top drug companies like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers paid over $7 billion in criminal penalties for bribing doctors to prescribe drugs for unapproved uses, with sometimes deadly consequences. However, as a Bloomberg report noted, the fines are always a fraction of the profits—Pfizer alone paid almost $3 billion in criminal fines since 2004, yet that was just one percent of their total revenues; Eli Lilly got busted bribing doctors to prescribe a schizophrenia drug, Zyprexa, to elderly patients suffering from dementia, even though company-run clinical trials showed an alarming death rate of 31 people out of 1,184 participants (double the placebo rate). Whatever—the market for elderly dementia patients meant billions in extra revenues. So Eli Lilly continued pushing Zyprexa on the elderly for another four years until it the Feds busted them. Eli Lilly got hit with $1.42 billion fine, but that was peanuts compared to the $36 billion it earned on Zyprexa sales from 2000-2008. To make it happen, the drug companies buy off all the checks and balances: lawsuits revealed the enormous bribes they pay to doctors, and even America’s medical journals are so corrupted by drug company influence that they’re no longer reliable as much more than hidden advertisements, according to a recent UCSF study. Medical journals are 5 times more likely to publish “positive” drug reviews than negative reviews, and one-quarter of all clinical trials are never published at all, leading doctors to prescribe drugs assuming they have all the information. The result: prescription drugs kill one American every five minutes …while Americans pay more for drugs than anyone in the world, spending a total of $12 billion on drugs in 1980 to spending $291 billion in 2008—a 1,700% increase. America is ranked only 17th in the world in life expectancy.
3). Alan Greenspan: Fraudonomics Maestro. America’s central banker from 1987-2006 once told a do-gooder regulator not to fuck with the bankers’ fraud schemes, because in Greenspan’s mind, fraud was not a crime and didn’t need to be regulated. Then Greenspan forced the regulator, Brooksley Born, to resign. Just in time for his next and final act as Central Bank chief: from 2001-2004, Greenspan pumped up the biggest housing bubble in human history by holding rates down to nothing, while touring the country promoting the glories of subprime and Alt-A mortgages. Then in late 2005, when the bubble was ready to burst, Greenspan tendered his resignation and switched over to the other side, signing lucrative contracts with three investment firms all of which bet big against gullible American homeowners, and reaped billions. First, Greenspan signed up to work for Deutsche Bank, which is being sued for securities fraud for selling an Abacus-like CDO to a Warren Buffett-owned bank, M&T; Greenspan also worked for Pimco, which earned $2 billion in a single day in September 2008, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nationalized with Greenspan’s lobbying help; and lastly, Greenspan went to work for Paulson & Co., the hedge fund that raked in $1 billion off the same Abacus CDO deal that brought the SEC fraud suit against Goldman Sachs. It’s an unusually perfect record for Greenspan, given his atrocious forecasting record at the Fed. It recalls the old Greenspan circa 1984-5, when he worked as a lobbyist for Charles Keating trying to push regulators off his back and vouching on the record for Keating’s character…Keating was eventually jailed for fraud in the worst savings and loan collapse of all.
4). Municipal Debt Fraud. America’s $2.8 trillion municipal bond market is rife with fraud of the sort you’d expect in an emerging tinpot economy: opacity rather than transparency, plenty of corruption and kickbacks, resulting in decimated budgets and services cutbacks in communities across the country. The problem all stems from way the bonds are issued these days: instead of holding open tenders, nearly all are the result of backroom deals. Back in 1970, only 15 percent of municipal bond contracts were awarded through no-bid contracts; last year, 85% of muni bond deals were assigned in no-bid, non-transparent agreements. Studies show that no-bid bonds invariably cost municipalities more than bonds resulting from open tenders. So far, fraud and corruption charges have been leveled against state employees and city councilors in Florida, New York, New Mexico, Alabama and California, to name a few. Muni bond defaults soared from just $348 million in 2007 to $7.4 billion in 2008—that’s an increase of 20 times– with growing numbers of cities, counties and states on the verge of bankruptcy.
5). Journalism fraud. The Washington Post got caught whoring out their venerable editorial staff to corporate lobbyists for anywhere from $25,000 to $250,000 a date, depending on the access. The Atlantic Monthly admitted to TalkingPointsMemo that it routinely sold access to its editorial staff for cash. As for business journalism, all sorts of articles and studies have asked the obvious question: “How did every mainstream business outlet miss the financial collapse of 2008?” Among all the self-flagellating mea-kinda-culpas, you won’t find the word “fraud” in their answer. Speaking of business journalism and fraud, The Business Insider, one of the top business news blogs, published a pair of articles defending Goldman Sachs against the SEC fraud charges. The author of the articles defending Goldman Sachs is Business Insider’s co-founder and editor, Henry Blodget. In 2003, Blodget himself was charged with securities fraud by the SEC for repeatedly misleading clients into buying stocks of companies that in private emails Blodget referred to as “piece of shit.” Under the terms of Blodget’s settlement with the SEC, he agreed to a lifetime ban from the securities industry, and he paid $4 million in fines and disgorgements. Since he is not barred from the world of business journalism, Blodget was able to post an article last Friday headlined: “HOLD EVERYTHING: The SEC’s Fraud Case Against Goldman Seems VERY Weak.”
6). Fraudonomics K-12. If you want your kid to grow up to succeed in a fraud-based economy, you need to teach him the ABC’s of cheating starting at a young age. This is one area where America’s schools aren’t failing their students. Cheating is so rampant in schools that nowadays if the student doesn’t cheat on his exam, chances are his teacher or administrator will cheat on his test for him. One in five elementary schools in Georgia are currently being investigated for tampering with the students’ standardized test scores—although suspicious patterns of erasing and remarking answers showed up in half of the state’s elementary schools. In California, as many as two-thirds of its public schools admitted to fudging its students’ standardized test scores. A survey of graduate school students found that 53 percent of business school grad students admitted to cheating, more than any other grad school discipline. Overall, up to 98 percent of college students today admit to cheating, compared to just 20 percent who cheated in 1940.
7). Boardroom Fraud. Corporate America’s boardrooms are stacked up these days in tight, intertwined relationships that turn public companies into crime scenes, plundering money from unsuspecting shareholders and divvying up the loot among the directors and top executives. In 2008, Chesapeake Energy’s stock price collapsed from $74 per share to $9.84, wiping out $33 billion in shareholder value. The CEO, Aubrey McClendon, gambled and lost 94% of his stock in the company on a margin call, personally losing about $2 billion. So what did the board of directors do? They voted to award McClendon $112 million for 2008, the highest of any CEO in America. Shareholders were outraged, calling it a “bailout,” and several pension funds tried suing Chesapeake, but the courts in Oklahoma blocked the lawsuits. That’s because Aubrey McClendon is sort of the George Bush of Oklahoma—a spoiled fuck-up with a rich and powerful granddaddy—Robert Kerr, former governor and senator, and founder of Kerr-McGee—meaning plenty of VIP connections for the loser grandkid. So on Chesapeake’s board, you had Aubrey’s cousin, Breene Kerr; Frank Keating, Republican ex-governor of Oklahoma whose son Chip (and Chip’s wife) works for Chesapeake; Don Nickles, Republican ex-Senator of Oklahoma who co-funded with Aubrey the Republican anti-gay marriage campaign in 2004; Richard Davidson, the former head of Union Pacific, whose corrupt board of directors lavished Davidson with tens of millions in bonuses and a $2.7 million per year pension when he retired… Now multiply a board of directors like this by the sum total of “Corporate America” and you get…a corrupt, tin-pot corporate culture masquerading as a civilized First World corporate culture. That’s us. (You can read about this problem in an excellent new book Money For Nothing: How The Failure of Corporate Boards is Ruining American Business and Costing Us Trillions.)
8). Corrupt credit rating agencies. The only way big institutional investors like pension funds could justify buying a piece of the Orion Butt Fungus CDO pie was if ratings agencies like S&P or Moody’s gave it a top-notch seal of approval: AAA rated, with a little star on the forehead for good behavior. And in the world of fraudonomics, good behavior looks like this email from a Standard & Poor ratings analyst in December 2006:
“Rating agencies continue to create an even bigger monster _ the CDO market. Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.”
The happy ending to this story is that a huge percentage of thieving scum like this emailer saw their hopes become reality: they got wealthy and retired before the CDO market crashed in a trillion-plus dollar heap of shit. And if they didn’t retire, even better—because bonuses in 2009 were soaring, thanks to the always-gullible American taxpayer.
9). Regulatory Fraud: In the OTS, OCC, Fed, pension benefit guaranty agency and of course the SEC, where whistleblowers were routinely ignored because the regulators were too busy painting their monitors while surfing sites like www.fuck-my-wife.com.
- 10). Judicial Fraud: Juvenile court judges in Pennsylvania took millions of dollars in kickbacks from privately run prisons in exchange for sentencing thousands of innocent kids to juvenile prison terms. Chronic on-the-bench masturbation is running rampant: an Oklahoma judge was accused of using a penis pump on the bench, while nearby in Texas, a Harris County judge masturbated and ejaculated on a defendant’s hand. Speaking of Texas, theentire juvenile prison system there was turned into a sex abuse racket involving Texas state officials–over 750 official complaints about prison administrators molesting or raping underaged inmates in all 13 juvenile facilities had been officially logged between 2000 and 2007.
- The list goes on and on. Hell, even our literature was corrupted with fraud: James Frey’s addiction “memoir” A Million Little Pieces turned out to be A Million Pieces of Bullshit, the biggest literary fraud of our time. Fooled readers sued, Oprah chewed him out and Frey is now a bestelling “fiction” author.
This is just scratching the surface, but you get the point. We’re way past the point of redemption. No wonder everyone’s dreaming of a violent apocalypse to wipe the slate clean, and take us away to another plane where everything would be better. Anything but this.
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