Sunday, December 11, 2016

"The Exorcist" and then some


Gina Davis as the possessed hostess with the mostest from Fox network's The Exorcist

I have become a big fan of Fox Network's TV series The Exorcist - I saw The Exorcist in a movie theater when it first came out. I guess it was the 70s, although I can barely remember anything about it because, at the time, I was stoned out of my mind on weed. It was, after all, the 70s. Over the years, I never really did think about the movie, nor did I follow the career ups and downs of its star, actor Linda Blair. Neither did I remember the basic plot of the film, or even the characters. But when I started watching the TV version of it, it piqued my interest enough to Google it, and the narrative for the TV connection quickly emerged - same demons, different family, with a plot twist of the Pope coming to Chicago where Regan McNeil, the original object of demonic possession, has gone incognito -  changed her name and started her own family. The demon - who originally went after her is now trying to get her back through one of her daughters - Cacey. Sorry if a spoiler alert should have been posted, but this show has been on TV for several months and is now into the 9th episode of season one as of this draft. The demon never achieved full integration with Regan, which has incensed it all of these years. Integration is full-on permanent possession; which is why the priest in the original movie took the demon onto himself and then plunged out the window to his death (again getting this from Internet research in present time), so as to not allow the demon full integration with Regan, the pre-teen in the movie.
You may be wondering why I wrote the movie off shortly after it came out (to enormous fanfare, I might add), only to be fascinated by the TV reiteration. It is because in the 40-some year interlude, I went new age and occultic, became a professional psychic, experienced the reality of the demonic realm, sought help from a Christian deliverance expert, became a born again Christian in 2013 and since then have been committed to exposing the unfruitful works of darkness in a way that God chooses, although I have not been that good at detecting how that looks, as far as I can tell.
A little more back story: When I became a Christian I did not really know any other Christians. Some people I knew invited me to their church, which wasn't really that close to where I lived, but I did start out there, and then after a few months, some people stood up at the service and announced that they would be starting a new church in my area, which I went to for awhile. I could not really relate to the emphasis of the new church: reproducing all the other "outreach" programs that churches in the area do - meals at Thanksgiving, school supplies for kids - these are all things that churches do to fulfill their community services mission statements and keep receiving their 501c status and tax breaks. I have been inclined to observe that many of these programs are more for the churches to fulfill their mission statements than they are addressing the really pressing needs of the underprivileged and poor, such as a system that has an unequal distribution of wealth and privilege based on nepotism, classism and political corruption that makes policies and laws wherein the vulnerable can be exploited and stolen from at every turn. They'd rather you donate to give away reams of turkeys and pumpkin pies, coats, school supplies and cheap plastic trinkets.  I actually went to services where the preacher said "God wants you to be rich," and "God wants you to have a big house." This sounded, to me, suspiciously like new age prosperity consciousness and when I mentioned this (big mistake) I was told curtly that it was not.
I also went to a "progressive" church for awhile where the good-looking, young, well spoken minister made fun of his fundamentalist upbringing during almost every Sunday "message" (not called sermons in the modern churches), once going so far as to show a slide of a little brick church with a white steeple, that he said "almost made him sick to look at;" made fun of the fundamentalist injunction to read the Bible daily as a means to deepen Christian spirituality, and made a point of advocating for the rights of the LGBT (there was no Q at that time) community and encouraging the congregation to reach out to the gay community almost every week. He said he called fundamentalists "fundies" and could also "smell them in the room," because he'd come up with them. Unbeknownst to that minister, I'd been calling them fundies for almost twenty years, way before I became born again, and I had  never had anywhere close to the amount of sneering disdain this guy had for them, and I'd come up Catholic. So you see, as a person newly committed to following the teachings of Jesus Christ, I was totally perplexed and confused by Christians. This was deeply disappointing to me, since I went to these churches to learn about living a Christian life and to understand the Bible better. The younger churches want to distance themselves from old-school fundamentalists, who are considered ridiculous and uncool, so they seem to settle for a theology of bland elitism,focusing on trending themes in the popular culture.
I thought I would be meeting Christians and going to groups where I could get into topics such as: Do Christians believe that the modern State of Israel is the same Israel/chosen people that is referred to in the Old Testament? Is it?
Do people see a relationship between the abomination of the desolation and the transhumanist/transgenderist agenda that is taking place currently in our society. Do they?
I can't tell, and I have never heard any of these topics coming up in a church or Bible group. If people do think that the Bible is a true prophetic narrative leading up to the current (end) times, then how are they relating it to their current belief systems and day-to-day lives. . How?
Yes, I digress and will continually digress as time goes on and I return to writing these blogs, which I did once before beginning in 2012. I have to come to terms with the fact that I am probably never going to have a Christian   community where I am discussing these types of things.But you know where they are discussing interesting topics related to Christianity and Bible prophecy?  On mainstream TV shows.
Back to "The Exorcist" TV series. I believe it is superior to the original movie, because whoever is writing it understands the way the occult works, the Biblical narrative of the Fall, the way we live in a culture created by the Fallen for the purpose of dominating the earth with them (the Fallen) at the top of the food chain -exterminating the natural human being (the abomination of the desolation) - all the while indulging the physical senses to the nth degree - the earthly paradise that God created for human beings. Hollywood - the name now encompasses not just film, but TV and independent productions being initiated within all the commercial money generating, money extracting studio systems that are in place (Hulu, Netflix, et al.) It is now general and common knowledge that Hollywood is a factory of occult ideas, memes and practices that it disseminates in a variety of ways: subliminal; trendsetting; putting value shifting homilies and ideas into the mainstream via repetitive use of symbols to embed in the psyche, etc. However, there are people who understand and are writing from both sides of the spiritual war disseminating through Hollywood, and telling it like it is, even if in a trendy, horror-genre way. I think some of these people are writing for The Exorcist.
Angela's demon explains to Casey why they torment her family