I’m old enough to remember the outcry over Elvis. The appearance of the hip-swivelling singer was for some a harbinger of the downfall of society. We saw the same reaction to the emergence of Beatlemania. I can remember Mary Whitehouse and her opposition to the cultural revolution of the 60s which swept the West. And I can remember the derision, ridicule and even hatred she encountered. How we atheists laughed: ‘Those crazy Christians, just because they don’t like something they want to stop everyone else from enjoying it.’
Today the early 60s seem a time of almost idyllic innocence and few can seriously say Mrs Whitehouse’s slippery slope prophecy was wrong. Fast forward to 2024 and just about every social value of that time has been bulldozed out of the way: we live in a society where morally anything goes with perhaps the exception of paedophilia (for the moment), and those ‘crazy Christians’ can be arrested when sharing their faith or praying on the street.
Adult Cartoon 2024 has hardly begun and we find Amazon, the world’s premier retailer, highlighting a new product. The adult animated musical comedy Hazbin Hotel tells the story of the princess of Hell, Charlie Morningstar. Hell has an overpopulation problem, an all-too-believable premise. So once a year Adam and the angels descend from heaven to cull demons. To avoid this, tender-hearted Charlie decides to solve Hell’s overpopulation problem: she will open a halfway house where demons can be rehabilitated and by working hard at their morality can go to heaven.
The backstory is that when God created the Earth, he created Adam with Lilith, not Eve, to be his companion. But that awful unreconstructed patriarch Adam tried to boss feminist Lilith around, and she wasn’t having any of that. She voluntarily left the Garden of Eden because she wasn’t prepared to tolerate patriarchal domination.
Lucifer is not the satanic creature of the Bible, rather he is a happy go lucky ‘dreamer’, a free-wheeling non-conformist who got on the wrong side of grumpy old God and his thuggish enforcers, the angels. When the pair met Lucifer was attracted to Lilith’s independence and the pair fell in love.
This made God angry and he imprisoned them in Hell. Here Lucifer, being male, became depressed and took to his bed, but being female, ‘Lilith thrived’. Then God, in what we are assured was a ‘truly heartless move’, made war on Hell, destroying demons in an annual ‘extermination raid’. Charlie Morningstar, Lucifer and Lilith’s lesbian daughter, runs a halfway house in Hell trying to rehabilitate outcast demons and make them acceptable to heaven.
We have Amazon, one of the most powerful companies on the planet, producing a cartoon series denigrating God whilst celebrating a happy Lucifer and Lilith, who is portrayed as a kind of patron saint of feminism. The myth of Lilith holds that she was Adam’s first wife while Eve was her replacement. Although historically Lilith was considered evil for becoming a demon, in recent years she has become an icon of feminism. The mythical Lilith has been transformed into a female symbol for autonomy, sexual choice, and control of one’s own destiny.
Pop Culture The devil is an increasingly accepted subject in pop culture. When queer singer Sam Smith appeared in satanic costume, his fans rushed to defend him. This is no new phenomenon. There is academic literature showing how in pre-Revolutionary Russia there was an increasing interest in the demonic amongst the population generally, especially amongst the elites.
We could look at this as secularists and dismiss it as a sign of the decadence of the late Romanov court and its influence. We could also point to it as an example of the failure of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, it is true that the cultural elites of Russia, who did not necessarily believe Lucifer actually existed, nevertheless admired the rebelliousness he symbolised and saw him as heroic, an independent rebel to be admired. This is significant in attempting to understand the way in which the Russian elites supported the revolutionaries who would ultimately destroy them in the most brutal manner.
On the other hand remembering Ephesians 6:12, ‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’, a Christian might hold that those dabblers in the occult opened the door to the forces of chaos and destruction which in the Revolution destroyed everything before them.
However we view the influence of the popularity of the demonic in late imperial Russia, it is troubling that demonology is becoming ever more prevalent in mainstream culture in the West today. That Amazon is producing an ‘adult’ cartoon series which portrays Lucifer and Lilith as free-spirited victims of an absolutist mean spirited God is disturbing. Amazon would not be doing this if they didn’t think there was a profitable market for it.
Whether or not we believe in the existence of the satanic, we have to be aware of the implications for the stability of society when we celebrate the disruptive, the overthrow of cultural norms and the relentless pursuit of the transnormative and ‘alternative’.
What is the Christian reaction? We should have more to say than ‘Have nothing to do with this.’ Whatever else you say, please do not say, ‘It was ever thus – people overreacted to Elvis way back when.’
A Grain of Sand 
Sir
‘What is the Christian reaction?’
We do not begin with Amazon; nor the BBC Complaints department; nor the Secretary of State for Culture and Media – we begin on a Sunday morning in the local church.
The revelation is that the Church is the salt of society. If it fails to be the preservative then society will trample upon it and throw it into the fire. This is now happening. No one can deny this ; neither secularist nor Christian.
Our first task must be to dismiss female pastors, leaders and vicars: the Kingdom of Heaven is a monarchy and not a democracy. Failure to take remedial action is having catastrophic consequences: working-class men will not listen to the female voice as it is perceived as having no ‘command authority’: examine the fall in the male audience for Saturday’s ‘Football Focus’ program (the same has happened in the Church). Even female football commentators in the media know this: listen to their voices as they struggle to emulate a deep bass and ‘whiskey & tobacco’ hoarseness. Comic!
Moreover, if sex is irrelevant for the priesthood then why should sexual orientation be relevant? You can see the implications. And why stop there? What about the transgendered, eh?
‘As for My people, children are their oppressors,
And women rule over them.
O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err,
And destroy the way of your paths.’
Isaiah 3:12
Is there a task for the elderly and wise female believer in the local fellowship? Of course there is: teach the younger women how to behave and dress with modesty; teach the younger women not to be alone with a man (the failure to do this has induced the ‘MeToo#’ ). That if a man burns, instruct him to marry: ‘no sex without marriage’ would be a revolutionary slogan in an era of meaningless sex, casual rape and the escalation of sex assaults at school (my junior school, built in 1898, had separate entrances for boys and girls (can you think why your forefathers insisted upon the segregation of the sexes? Separate toilets for boys and girls too!).
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The local church is the key to a reformation in the life of the church overall and through that society.
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Agree with everything Dee Singh says, but what a mountain to climb – it brings home the impossibility of reformation to us in our own strength. Prayer is the only way.
The resurgence of the demonic as a force openly flirted with certainly isn’t good. In this country Satan used to be positively coy. He did not court public notice, rather encouraged even those most in his pocket to mock the notion of his llteral existence.
If he’s now throwing off concealment, what can that portend?
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A very good question.
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One thing it shows is that people did NOT overreact to Elvis, way back when. There might have been better hope if they had.
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‘If he’s now throwing off concealment, what can that portend?’
I think it means that he is about to reveal himself in possession of a human body (probably in Berlin).
‘Further, he [Hitler in his bunker] had given the order to break-out; Linge [his butler] was to join one of the groups and try to get to the west. Linge asked for what they should now fight and Hitler replied, “For the coming man”‘
(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Linge (I have viewed the episode myself on The World at War II series. Linge does present that testimony)).
Daniel 2:43 has been misinterpreted for a long time – only because the time was not near for it to be unlocked: men are having sex with robotic women (working models should be on sale within five years). Their ‘intelligence’ (to please each man) comes from Artificial Intelligence. In my view, it is vital for the Anti-Christ to control the Internet and therefore control each individual’s money and personal data. His future dictatorship will not control nations through arrests, bullets, barbed wire, barking dogs, guards and prisons.
Last year the US Congress held its first official inquiry into UFOs (now UAPs). I can categorically say that they and also no other country holds any UFO crashed craft nor ‘alien’ bodies. These craft are real (‘chariots of the gods’) but are immaterial. The Soviet scientists who did much work on this issue (during the 1970s – 1990s) became demonically possessed. It is only a matter of time before American and British scientists working on this undergo the same possession.
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There is no indication that Hitler was forecasting the coming of the anti-Christ, rather that he was implying that another human leader like himself would com along to complete his vile project.
Whilst I agree that they internet carries dangers I also believe that particularising any specific period of history, especially the present, as the fulfilment of prophecy is dangerous without any evidence greater than speculation.
What evidence is there that UFOs, if they exist, are immaterial and that Soviet scientists became demon possessed?
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I don’t see anything strange in what is happening in our society and indeed our world.
What I find strange is that the majority of genuine believers have no defense. Amazon produces something like that (among the many other assaults on truth) and I ask: what do so many believers have as a filter? Most western believers refuse to study the whole bible because much of it is too hard to stomach!
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“too hard to stomach” – Truth is painful, but less painful than the results of deceit. Too bad more of us refuse to understand that. It’s so much easier to allow ourselves to be distracted by cute kitten videos.
Anything worth having is worth working for. Hard work never hurt anyone.
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Campbell – on the one hand Hitler did say he had seen this man of the future and he would be cruel and hard etc, and I see no reason why the devil would not have given such a man an evil vision of the future. On the other hand, I think we increasingly need to sink ourselves into the bible and God’s view of the future (the Millenium) and the end times, rather than looking at the various human based views. All the other predictions and the “oh I know what that means it’s so and so – my idea must be right” need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
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