Speaking Like A Dragon: Revelation 13: 11, and the Dialectic

[tulsa 2011]

Speaking Like A Dragon: Revelation 13: 11, and the Dialectic


Revelation 13: 11 says the second beast has two horns like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon. "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon."
A lamb has two horns? How does the dragon speak? In Genesis 3 the "serpent" "was more subtle than any beast in the field," and he used the dialectic on Eve, saying in effect lets talk about you eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. "Lets have a dialog." "And come to a consensus." The big mistake that Eve made was to enter into a dialog with Satan. When Christ was tempted by Satan (Matthew 4: 4-10), he did not dialog with him, but answered "It is written," citing absolute truths from scripture. So Satan was defeated when he tried to work the dialectic on Jesus Christ.
God's way of communicating has always been the didactic, not the dialectic. When Satan tempted Christ in Matthew 4: 3-11, the dialectic didn't work on Jesus. It didn't move him one inch off his absolute truth. He answered the devil with the didactic, "It is written" (Matthew 4: 10).

Hegel and then Marx and Freud decided that there is no God and began to say there is no absolute truth and no absolute morality. Everything is an opinion. Remember the "Hegelian dialectic?" Remember "dialectical materialism" in Marxism? Transformational Marxism came into the United States in the fifties in the form of the Frankfurt School who posed mostly as psychiatrists and psychologists. They operated from the major universities. And other influences came in, again from psychology as a number of change agents in that field began to operate. In the forties and fifties the group dynamics movement made use of the dialectic.

One major understanding that came out of the group dynamics movement of the forties and fifties in social psychology was that in order to use small groups to change attitudes and behavior the groups must be cohesive, or united in attitudes. This understanding that small groups must become cohesive in order to be effective in changing people was used in the sixties by the clinical psychologists and others who led encounter groups.

Then in the sixties clinical psychologists and others in the encounter group movement used the dialectic as an attitude change procedure. It soon spread to the academic world, to government, to politics especially, and by the media, and it was taken up by Christian leaders - and by the Christian seminaries where it is taught perhaps not totally intentional, but who knows?

An interesting guy who is a combination of scholar and remnant evangelist, Dean Gotcher, has for a number of years been exposing the harmful effects of the dialectic. Gotcher had been trained in Christian education and once attended a Christian seminary for a while. But one day, after his professor had been spending a lot of time on some theologian, Gotcher got up in the class and asked why they were spending so much time on this theologian rather than studying the word of God. There was nothing but silence from the professor and the class. Gotcher got up and walked out, never to return to a Christian seminary. He went on the road and has been giving talks on the dialectic and related topics for many years, mostly outside of the churches, though sometimes small churches invite him to speak to them.

The dialectic can be understood in a face to face small group setting. In a sixties type encounter group, a clinical psychologist like Carl Rogers was the facilitator whose role was to use the dialectic to change the attitudes and behavior of the group. The dialectic used by a trained facilitator works best when the group members have a relationship with the group and with the facilitator. So an important role slot in the dialectic is that of the facilitator. And the facilitator can better move a target person in the group and/or the group as a whole in the direction he wants them to move, in changing their attitudes, beliefs or behavior when the group is cohesive and members have a relationship with the group. In a cohesive group where the members have a relationship with the group, the members derive pleasure from acceptance by that group. The facilitator's role is to use relationships to move group members off their absolute truths, or absolute morality into relative truths and relative morality, in other words to bring in an antithesis to compromise the thesis of the group members.

William Coulson was under Carl Rogers at the University of Wisconsin in the early sixties, and followed Rogers to southern California where they and a number of other facilitators ran encounter groups for the nuns of the Sacred Heart of Mary, and, as Coulson later admitted, they destroyed the Sacred Heart of Mary with their ideology and dialectic procedure. Coulson became a repentant psychologist, an unusual role. I talked with him on the phone a couple of years ago, and he is aware of the influence of the Frankfurt School and how several American psychologists became allied with the change agents of that group, including Carl Rogers.

Here is the list of the change agents or social engineers, mostly in psychology or psychiatry, who Dean Gotcher has studied and talked about:

Abraham Maslow
Carl Rogers
Irvin Yalom
Theodor Adorno
Erick Fromm
Norman O. Brown
Herbert Marcuse

Theodore Adorno and Herbert Marcuse were members of the Frankfurt School who came to the U.S. from Germany and were welcomed in our major universities. The other change agents are American psychologists or psychiatrists, though Normon O. Brown was not strictly a psychologist like Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, or Erick Fromm, though Brown was into psychoanalysis. He was a Marxist and interested in poetry and mythology. Irvin Yalom was a psychiatrist. William Coulson told me that Abraham Maslow, the psychologist at Brandeis University, "hung out with the Frankfurters," apparently meaning he personally knew Herbert Marcuse, who was at Brandeis. I know nothing about Carl Rogers having any association with the Marxist Frankfurters, though somehow his theories moved in a Transformational Marxist direction. Rogers was one of my professors at the University of Wisconsin in the sixties.

"Small groups are the most effective way of closing the back door of
your church." Rick Warren

A facilitator wants to bring the group members to a synthesis or group consensus, which moves them toward relative morality and relative truth. The facilitator relies upon feelings to move the group members off their positions into accepting those of the facilitator. A relationship can be used by a dialectic facilitator when the target person in the group, and the group as a whole, feels good about being accepted by the group and feels bad when rejected.

In a small face to face group the facilitator can use a number of different ways to move a target group member and/or the entire group away from that person or that group's starting positions into a compromise. The facilitator can start by agreeing in some way with the position of the target member and then once he has that person's trust, can begin to bring in gradually statements that do not agree with the target's initial position. The facilitator can ridicule, insult and be nasty with the target person in order to cause that person to feel rejected by the group with whom he or she has a relationship. A facilitator might sometimes misrepresent the position of the target person in order to cause him or her to become confused, or angry and want to resolve the confusion and anger and be accepted again by the group. The facilitator must have developed a relationship with the majority in the group for this more nasty procedure to work.

The dialectic can be used in Christian or secular Internet forums almost as well as in face to face groups, and without a trained facilitator. To some extent, having lived within a society and church system that uses the dialectic as its main form of dialogue, many learn something anyway about being a facilitator of the dialectic. In Christian dialogue, the person who wants to cause others to accept his interpretation of scripture or wants to defend his position against another or others who do not agree, may use the dialectic. And - so the Christian who uses the dialectic speaks like a dragon, but appears like a lamb, a Christian. Often those claiming to be Christians make use of the dialectic form of quarreling to argue in some way against the absolute truth or absolute morality of scripture.

The dialectic often appears in an argument against the absolute truth of the world of God. In John 10: 16 Christ says "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." Romans 12: 5 says "So we, being many.are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another."

Christian Zionists, when shown John 10: 16 and Romans 12: 5, will often use a form of the dialectic and try to compromise the absolute truth of John 10: 16, that in Christ there is one fold, one flock and one Body of Christ, not two. If John 10: 16 were a prophecy about Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles becoming one Body of Christ in the future, this would have been fulfilled in Acts 10 when the Gentiles were first called by God. And - the key Greek verb in John 10: 16, "agagein, "I must bring" is in the aorist infinitive. See: http://www.lectionarystudies.<wbr>com/.../studyn/easter3bgn.html

And - see: http://www.kypros.org/<wbr>LearnGreek/mod/forum/discuss.<wbr>php...

The aorist infinitive is the aorist tense in Greek. The aorist tense does not express a time for the action indicated. If John 10: 16 were a prophecy for the future the verb ago, to bring, would be in the future tense. For example, the First Person, Future, Active, Indicative, Singular of "ago" would be "agam." The English might not clearly express the future tense of ago. In John 10: 16 ago is not in the future tense, but in the aorist tense.

 

[tulsa 2011]

The absolute truth given to us in scripture by God the Holy Spirit is
fact. But facts, as the thesis in a debate, can threaten people's
relationships. And people have strong feelings about their
relationships. Many Christians have strong feelings toward their
churches, their pastors and priests, and have loved ones in their
congregations.

When truth conflicts with feelings, the feelings are the anti-thesis.
Among the movements within American psychology of the fifties and
sixties that the Transformational Marxism led by the professors of the
German Frankfurt School made use of was the self psychology of Carl R.
Rogers and A.H. Maslow. Carl Rogers taught that feelings are most
important, and are more important than knowing or cognitive
competence. Rogers always referred his clients back to "what do you
feel?"

When the feelings of relationships with theologies, with
denominations, churches and people in these structures conflict with
the facts of scripture, then the dialectic process of argument against
the facts often begins.

Remember that Lewis S. Chafer said that dispensationalism has
"...changed the Bible from being a mass of more or less conflicting
writings into a classified and easily assimilated revelation of both
the earthly and heavenly purposes of God, which reach on into eternity
to come.." Part of what Chafer thought was "a mass of more or less
conflicting writings" is the contradictions between the doctrines of
the Old Covenant and those of the New Covenant. Hebrews 10: 9 says
"He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second." Christ
did away with the Old Covenant and established the New Covenant, in
which physical Israel was transformed.

The theology of Darby, Scofield and Chafer leads people
away from seeing the answer to this apparent contradiction because the
theology does not acknowledge that in the change from the Old Covenant
to the New, Israel was re-defined by God and the chosen people are no
longer physical Israel but that Israel of I Peter 2: 5-9 which is a
spiritual house. The chosen people, or chosen generation, in I Peter
2: 9 are the Christians.

Physical Israel was transformed into the spiritual house of I Peter 2:
5, which can also be called Israel reborn in Jesus Christ, the Israel
of God (Galatians 6: 16) and all Israel of Romans 11: 26. God turned
Israel upside down. But the theology of Darby et al has tried to turn
it back the way it was before God turned it upside down.

The followers of John Darby, C.I. Scofield and Lewis S. Chafer, who founded
Dallas Theological Seminary, have developed a relationship with Christian
Zionism as a tradition of men. This relationship of affection toward their
theology and their churches and denominations who teach the theology leads
them to reject and argue against scriptures - as absolute truth from God -
that do not agree with their rejection of the change that Jesus Christ
brought to Old Testament Israel. In addition, the followers of Christian
Zionism have a relationship with this tradition of men because its of the
natural man, and following Talmudic Judaism, Christian Zionism deals with
that which is literal, of man, of the flesh, and not spiritual things which
the natural man does not understand (I Corinthians 2: 14).

So, the pre-tribulation rapture is not the fundamental error of
dispensationalism or Christian Zionism. The fundamental error is that the
system rejects the change from the physical to the spiritual in the doing
away of the Old Covenant and bringing in the New Covenant. "He taketh away
the first, that he may establish the second." Hebrews 10: 9

Hebrews 10: 9 is a didactic statement, not an opinion. It does not say
Christ took away some of the Old Covenant but not all, or that he is going
to take it away entirely sometime in the future, maybe at the end of the
dispensatrionalist tribulation period.

To try to compromise Hebrews 10: 9 and teach that Christ did not take away
all of the Old Covenant and/or that he is to take it all away sometime in
the future is a quarrel of the dialectic. Its dialectic because there are
two sides to the argument, the truth and that which is not the truth. And
remember what II Thessalonians 2: 10-12 says about having a love for the
truth and salvation. You cannot have a love for the truth if you do not
know what it is.

Then, dispensationalism claims that God has two peoples, Israel, meaning
Old Covenant Israel, which has not existed since 70 A.D. and Talmudic
Judaism replaced it, and the Capital C Church, which is the meeting of born
again Israel. But Christ says, as absolute truth, in John 10: 16 that
there are other sheep which he must bring, and there is one fold, not two.
Paul says in Romans 12: 5 that we being many are one body in Christ.

Again, dispensationalism tries to compromise this absolute truth of
scripture, that there is one Body of Christ, not two. The dialectic again
is operating in this attempt to compromise absolute truth, to find some
loophole in it, or some scriptures which are thought to contradict this
truth - to drive the dialectic compromising process through.

Then dispensationalism teaches that the kingdom of God is to be a literal
earthly kingdom run by Old Covenant Israel, or the Jews, where Gentiles are
let in as sort of second class citizens.

"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should
come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with
observation:" Luke 17:20

"Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of
God is within you." Luke 17: 21

"Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of
this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to
the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence." John 18: 36

To say that the kingdom of God - the kingdom of Heaven - is a literal
earthly kingdom is a quarrel of the dialectic, against scripture and which
again tries to compromise the absolute truth of scripture.

However, false doctrine does not have to be taught only by
the dialectic. It can be taught by the didactic process as is done
when there is no one around to bring up the truth of scripture and the
false prophets are in control. I remember a number of years ago some
of the people I knew then, when we were first learning about the
danger of the dialectic from Dean Gotcher, were saying that John Hagee
preaches by use of the dialectic. Actually, this is a wrong
observation, as Gotcher himself said to me in an E Mail. Hagee
probably would use the dialectic if his doctrines were challenged by
someone who consistently tries to follow scripture. But in his
preaching of his false doctrines, John Hagee was using the didactic.
Its just that what he was preaching was false. When Hagee is
preaching in his San Antonio pulpit, no one in the congregation is
allowed to get up and tell Hegee and the congregation that Hagee is
not following scripture. So Hegee's preaching is didactic, not
dialectic, though false doctrine never overthrows the truth of
scripture.

I want to get back to the history of the development of the dialectic
as an attitude, belief and behavior changing process. The dialectic
is a process; it will process you, if you do not know how to deal with
it in your own mind. In the 19th century and in the Soviet takeover
of Russia and other nations of the Soviet Union, in the early 20th century, the dialectic was a
tool in Marxism. But then along came the German Frankfurt School who
mixed Marx with Freud. Later, in the United States the Frankfurters,
especially Theodore W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, allowed several
American psychologists and a psychiatrist or two to become allied with
them as change agents, now called social engineers. The dialectic,
after the forties and fifties, was psychologized, it became
psychological Marxism. Remember that Marxism seeks to overthrow the
individualistic self-reliant personality and culture of the West,
especially in the U.S. which has had some influence from our own West.
Marxism replaces self-reliant individualism with a collectivism.

Only after listening to Dean Gotcher for a while have I fully realized
that Satan was the first "psychotherapist" or facilitator of the
dialectic which took
over much of man's fleshly nature, which includes self-esteem as
pride, as Gotcher emphasizes, "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of
the eyes, and the pride of life" I John 2: 16.

In being born again in
Christ, we should put our lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and
pride back under the direction of the Lord, and not under what we
think is our direction but is mostly that of Satan. In fact, the Lord
does not think much of our self-esteem or pride. The Hegelian and
Marxist dialectic, as developed by the Frankfurt School people posing
as psychologists and by American shrinks like Carl Rogers and Abraham
Maslow, and in the early encounter group, builds up and makes the lust
of the flesh and the pride of life so dominant and valued that Satan
stirred up in Eve in Genesis 3: 1-6.

Psychology over-emphasizes and makes all important man's flesh, and
follows or supports the Transformational Marxist bent which wants to
overthrow God as the Father figure and wants to diminish the family
because the traditional family has been the foundation of
Christianity, and its patriatrical paradigm, "it is written," "two
plus two is always four and cannot be another number," etc.
Psychoanalysis from Freud stressed the flesh and advocated a revolt
against the Father authority figure. Behaviorism in psychology, from
Wundt, to John B. Watson and to B.F. Skinner with his Skinner box psychology
all pointed toward a reduced man who is nothing but desires, feelings
and conditioning. Wilhelm Wundt did not deal with classical
and operant conditioning as did John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner.
Wundt did early work on sensory psychology, which was another form of
psychological reductionism.

The dialectic as it developed out of American psychology, with its
Marxist bent, is a procedure for changing people, and their culture
from one of absolute truths and absolute morals to relative truths and
morals. It is part of a culture of the flesh, and this makes it
deadly for the Christian Gospel and the change of men from the state
of the natural man to people having the mind of Christ in them.

Christian Zionism or dispensationalism depends
in part upon the the dialectic, because its promoters and defenders
use the dialectic when they are challenged by scripture which does not
agree with the theology.. And like psychologized Marxism, out
of which the dialectic was perfected in the forties, fifties, sixties
and seventies, Christian Zionism does not like what its followers call
"spiritualizing." In honoring what they claim is Old Covenant Israel,
but is Talmudic Judaism, a continuation of the religion of the
Pharisees, Christian Zionists lean toward their own understanding
(Proverbs 3: 5), and strongly believe in that which is literal and
physical, though they claim to be of the Capital C Church, as the Body
of Christ. That Church, as a translation of the Greek ekklesia, a calling out to a meeting, an assembly,
gathering or congregation, is not the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is made up of only the elect.

 

[downtoearth]

Outstanding work tulsa. May God use it for His purpose and His glory ... and bring understanding of His (absolute) truth and completeness in Jesus Christ to those where there is none.