I'm not sure where I should have put this, so feel free to move it if another forum is more appropriate.
It is fine, where it is, either that or the debate forum.
I currently have plans on making a book that deals with cryptozoology (the study of mythical/unconfirmed animals also called "cryptids"). My main focus is going to be the visual depiction of these cryptids. Most of these creatures are, of course, either hoaxes, misidentifications, folklore, or real flesh-and-blood animals.
They shift a person's attention from the real world to a more titillating realm created by those who write the myths and steer the imagination. They tempt Christians fans to re-imagine both God and themselves in the new context - thus bending the old realities to fit the new myths. They desensitize their fans to mystical images and symbols of evil. And they stir a craving for more intense excitement of the same kind.
Eventually the real world of nature, families, work and Biblical truth becomes too boring to be enjoyed. Who cares about truth and facts when myths and fantasies seem far more exhilarating?
The apostle Paul almost two millennia ago,
2 Timothy 4:3-5 For the time is coming when [people] will not tolerate (endure) sound and wholesome instruction, but, having ears itching [for something pleasing and gratifying], they will gather to themselves one teacher after another to a considerable number, chosen to satisfy their own liking and to foster the errors they hold,
4 And will turn aside from hearing the truth and wander off into myths and man-made fictions.
5 As for you, be calm and cool and steady, accept and suffer unflinchingly every hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fully perform all the duties of your ministry.
Today's postmodern world has little tolerance for Biblical watchfulness. Instead, it embraces its mythical heroes with a driving passion that often eclipses both family and reality. The more shocking, crude and ugly, the more cool and captivating the product. Hollywood and toy makers know that well.
These [creatures] that show up in archeology and what we would call mythology were not just figments of the imagination. They were literal physical demonic entities that appeared to civilizations of the past. These types of demigods or demonic beings were represented as part human and part animal in their characteristics like this bird-human of the Assyrians. They can be horse-and-human like centaurs. Or fish-and-human like the god Dagon of the Philistines ... or part jaguar and part human.
Notice that tongue hanging out over the chin which is a universal symbol of demonic possession. One of the most popular combinations is human and serpent. You can find them on the toy shelves. It's not surprising that pagan religions worshiped serpents and dragons, for the Bible tells us in Revelation 12 that the old serpent, the dragon, is Satan the devil.
The Bible prophesies that demonic activities will escalate before and during the reign of the Antichrist. Could the multiplication of demonic-looking, alien images be part of Satan's plan to prepare us for these awful future events? Even for an invasion of demons?
Don't laugh. There is plenty of evidence that a sizable percentage of UFO sightings, alien abductions, crop circles and other extraterrestrial manifestations fit into the realm of the supernatural. But God's Word shows us the truths behind those illusions.
Revelation 9:1-11 THEN THE fifth angel blew [his] trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth; and to the angel was given the key of the shaft of the Abyss (the bottomless pit).
2 He opened the long shaft of the Abyss (the bottomless pit), and smoke like the smoke of a huge furnace puffed out of the long shaft, so that the sun and the atmosphere were darkened by the smoke from the long shaft.
3 Then out of the smoke locusts came forth on the earth, and such power was granted them as the power the earth's scorpions have.
4 They were told not to injure the herbage of the earth nor any green thing nor any tree, but only [to attack] such human beings as do not have the seal (mark) of God on their foreheads.
5 They were not permitted to kill them, but to torment (distress, vex) them for five months; and the pain caused them was like the torture of a scorpion when it stings a person.
6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it; and they will yearn to die, but death evades and flees from them.
7 The locusts resembled horses equipped for battle. On their heads was something like golden crowns. Their faces resembled the faces of people.
8 They had hair like the hair of women, and their teeth were like lions' teeth.
9 Their breastplates (scales) resembled breastplates made of iron, and the [whirring] noise made by their wings was like the roar of a vast number of horse-drawn chariots going at full speed into battle.
10 They have tails like scorpions, and they have stings, and in their tails lies their ability to hurt men for [the] five months.
11 Over them as king they have the angel of the Abyss (of the bottomless pit). In Hebrew his name is Abaddon [destruction], but in Greek he is called Apollyon [destroyer].
cont'd next post
