ONE OF THE GREAT BLIGHTS of modern life is the vast amount of wacky material on the internet. This is especially the case with so-called “Christian” material. I come across so much on the internet that barely even merits the title of “drivel”. Whether it is doctrinal or prophetic, the vast majority is erroneous to a greater or lesser degree and has plainly been thrown together by extremely unstable people in a frenzied output of substandard blether. It seems that many of today’s professing Christians rely on very little depth or veracity when seeking to expound on either Scripture or wider research matters. There is a tendency to indulge in ‘prophetic’ sensationalism and pseudo-spiritual pyrotechnics. This is why I frequently find myself saying to people who come to me wanting to sound out various ideas they have discovered online: “Forget the internet. It is full of bunkum and nonsense. The Scriptures alone say what there is to know. So find one or two in-depth Bible teachers who are solid and grounded, and who do not subscribe to any -isms or bandwagons, and bounce your questions off them”. Often, I observe that they just carry on with parroting the stuff they encounter online, believing it all to be bona fide simply because it’s online. It seems that people are not prepared to do intensive research of primary sources. They just want a quick-fix answer using secondary or even tertiary sources for all their questions. And any old bozo on the internet will do. The internet is the greatest provider of instant gratification concerning quick-fix, bite-sized material with very little substance. It also undermines the work of the genuine teacher who tries so hard to present truth to a rebellious world (and church).

Into the midst of this morass of madness, I would like to inject some sanity. We are in the same territory here as the difference between the knee-jerk conspiracy nuts of today and the old-style conspiracy researchers of yesteryear. There is an unfathomable gulf between them. As the world hurtles increasingly into a toxic mixture of superficiality and deception, in the same way that so many do not want to do the work necessary in their process of sanctification, so many also do not want to do the work necessary to come to a profound understanding of whatever subject it is on which they are working.  In short, they want to have their ears tickled with a feather instead of having their souls stirred altogether.

I have a personal anecdote to throw into the mix here. I am not sharing this in vanity — perish the thought! — but to show how hard work and solidity is far more likely to produce Black Forest Gateau rather than minced Baloney (if you will forgive the analogy). Between 1986 and 1992, I was writing a book which eventually had the title, “The Serpent and the Cross: Religious Corruption in an Evil Age”. It is an in-depth study into how the church and the world became overwhelmed with, and infiltrated by, outright occultism and New Age esotericism in the realms of science, psychology and religion, starting from the original Gnosticism of the first century AD and working its way through to the neo-Gnosticism (“New Spirituality”) of the present time. In the days when I was writing this book, 1986-1992, there was no such thing as the internet, so I had to use good old-fashioned sleuthing to find the primary source material that I required. This meant using such lost methods of research as going to a library (remember that?). My favourite library of all for my research was the Bodleian Library in Oxford. I spent so many hours, days and weeks in there that it became my second home when I was not engaged in other necessary activities. At the current time, after amalgamating with other choice local libraries, the library has 8 million books and 153 miles of storage. When I was there in the late 80s/early 90s, it only had between 6 and 7 million. But I could have any publication I wanted that has ever been published at my disposal in about half an hour. There were no mass-produced laptops then or phone cameras, so I had to take all notes and quotes by hand before transferring them onto my very primitive desktop computer at home using Samna (then Lotus) Ami Pro software. Those were the days! That was how the nearly 700-page “Serpent and the Cross” was created. Solid research of primary sources and hard slog in notetaking and typing. When one works in that way, one develops standards — high standards which one cannot transgress. So when I see the drivel to which so many are subjected today on the internet, I am absolutely horrified. I know, probably many would say, “Move out of the way, old man, your day is finished”. And they would be right on all counts.

Well, this little “diatribe” (is that what it is?) is a kind of excuse to encourage you to get hold of my book. You can buy it on Amazon as a real physical book! In case you are wondering, I am only doing this because I think you will find the information foundationally useful. I do not make any money from sales. When the publisher was alive in the 1990s, I used to make one pound per copy sold as royalties after it was published in 1994, and every six months I would receive a cheque. But not anymore. So I am not plugging the book out of any pecuniary motive but purely because I believe in it. While it is not written in the more personal, informal style in which I write today, I think it is a primer in occult infiltration and thus in the particular work of Satan down the centuries. I see that on Amazon, it is described as “an encyclopaedic expose of the historical development and modern growth of the new Gnosticism”. Here is the link on three Amazon sites. On Amazon UK, the price is less than 10 British pounds. Unfortunately, on Amazon in the US, it is the ridiculous price of $46. But if you think that is a price worth paying for a 640-page book, I have put the link below. On Amazon Canada, it is $31 Canadian dollars.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Serpent-Cross-Religious-Corruption-Evil/dp/0952304104/

https://www.amazon.com/Serpent-Cross-Alan-Morrison/dp/0952304104/

https://www.amazon.ca/Serpent-Cross-Religious-Corruption-Evil/dp/0952304104/

If you follow through on that, I hope you will find it to be immensely helpful in kindling the desire for more than soundbites and superficiality. We are entering some dark times now and — along with succour in the Spirit — self-education is one of the keys to stability and spiritual growth. Many blessings to you from me…

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]