Part 2: Animal Magnetism

by Pastor Mark Downey

This is a peculiar expression which has taken on so many applications that it may mean one thing to one person and something else to another. But if we go back to the original concept, we can see how it usurps the Word of God. Some of you may think animal magnetism is the romantic relationship between men and women, and others may think it has something to do with unexplainable animal behavior such as migratory sea turtles or birds traveling from one hemisphere to the other. Whenever we don't know exactly how God's creation works, inevitably, some wise guy will try to fill in the blanks. This can easily lead to an apostasy of the imagination. The adversaries of Christianity want you to fall away from reality in your mind. Thus, from all sorts of unusual phenomena in living organisms, they try to dissociate people from God. In the last message, The Illusions of Government, mention was made of Matthew 24:24, where false messiahs would get attention from their giving of great signs and wonders. Today, I'd like to separate the miracles of God from the miracles of snake oil salesmen. Animal magnetism has an interesting resonance and reverberation; in other words, a cause and effect or something that motivates. Let's not forget "every word proceeding through the mouth of God" does the same thing. Lord knows, there are a lot of cheap imitations. The Holy Spirit is the great motivator that moves Christians into the divine plan of action. It separates us from, not towards, evil.

Lately, we've witnessed the inaction of the Christian Patriot community, or the Christian Identity movement. With this message, I hope we can identify why that is so. My first impression of what animal magnetism is can be summed up with the combined thoughts regarding life and magnets. Adamic man is an animal with the inclusion of being given the Spirit of God, which separates us from all other living creatures. When I was a child, like most children, I played with magnets and was entranced with the invisible force of attraction. There's a whole branch of science that deals with the properties of magnetism. As Christians, we associate such phenomena to God.

There's another definition of magnetism, however, that is not scientific that deals with other powers of attraction. In my old parched 1836 Webster's, we find this definition of animal magnetism: "A supposed agent of a peculiar and mysterious nature, said to have a powerful influence on the patient when acted upon by contact or voluntary emotion on the part of the operator." What does 'supposed' mean? It means an assumption and we know that an assumption is something unproven, but may require a vivid imagination. If we go to my Webster's Seventh Collegiate, we find the new and improved definition saying animal magnetism is "a force held to reside in some individuals by which a strong quasi-hypnotic influence can be exerted". "Can be"? Like it's a done deal? "Some individuals"? Like false messiahs?

Let me give you the genesis of how this satanic deception began in relatively recent history. Going back to 1775, we find the term animal magnetism coined by Anton Mesmer. From this man we get the word 'mesmerize', which is a synonym of hypnotize. This Austrian mystic studied theology and medicine, and believed that the stars influenced the health of human beings by way of a subtle and invisible fluid permeating the universe. He became convinced that there was a healing and magnetic power in his own hands with a cosmic force. Mesmer was known for his remarkable success with people suffering from hysteria, although medical experts in Vienna accused him of practicing magic and the authorities ordered him to leave the country. His popularity continued in France, while respected doctors called him an impostor and a charlatan. In 1784, the French government appointed a commission of physicians and scientists to investigate Mesmer's activities, which included patients sitting around a large vat filled with a mixture of various substances, holding onto metal rods at the top of the vat, until they experienced symptoms of violent convulsions, crying and laughter, followed by an extreme lack of energy. Many claimed to be cured of their afflictions after such treatment.

Many say modern occultism started with the Mesmer technique quickly evolving into a Pandora's Box of paranormal phenomena. Presently, astrology is still ardently studied among the New Age occultists who strongly believe that the locations and movements of the planets do affect personal temperaments and events. It is the jealous practice of dabbling in the divine, i.e. divination, in defiance of God's claim to absolute cause and effect. It's no surprise then, that the ancient mystery religions invoking the gods of nature for curative helps and protections was embodied within Mesmerism.

In 1785, the French Royal Academy of Sciences concluded that animal magnetism, Mesmerism and hypnotic suggestion had no credibility in terms of healing, and went further by condemning its practitioners of having an unbridled imagination, having no mental discipline, being exploited with the wonders of bewitching superstitions. Benjamin Franklin was a celebrated member of the commission and soberly pointed out that enthusiasts of hypnotism may be sincere, but the cures and convulsions that they produce actually spring from their subjects' fervid imaginations and that the wonder of the thing has more in common with ignorance and fear than with intellectual discovery. One definition of imagination is the mental ability to create new images or ideas from previous experiences or knowledge.

In Genesis 6:5, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." There's nothing wrong with having an imagination; it's only when we allow our minds to wander away from God. "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Romans 12:2). "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord" (Ps. 19:14). "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (II Cor. 10:5). God gives us the intellect to invent for good. Our race leads the way in civilization with inventions, but we are also plagued with idolatry.

There is light and darkness, good and evil, all of which God creates (Isaiah 45:7). What man has falsely done is to delegate these powers to persons, places or things other than God, because they don't know God very well. But the Lord knows them and He knows us. How can God be God if there's this wild card in life that would suggest being the cause of any effect. God is the Master of dialectics. Man can play god with dialectical materialism, wagging the dog and engage in mass mind control, but none of it acts independently outside of God's sovereignty. God knows there will be other plans to take dominion of the world. He writes about it in His Book. "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" (Rev. 19:10). Didn't Jesus say "Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars"? Since the beginning of man we, as a race, have been at war with our Creator. God didn't make us to be at war with Him. He made us to be conformed. He did not make us God, a duplicate of Himself, but He did give us a slice of the divine pie, with the prohibitions of forbidden fruits. God made everything, but that doesn't mean we have to partake of everything. God made the pig and the rat. That doesn't mean we have to eat them because they're meat. There's a good example of animal magnetism every year. Our people are attracted to a ham dinner at Christmas time. Is this part of God's plan? No! Does He know this is predestined? Of course. In fact, He's taken preemptive measures for it, telling us the wages of sin is death. You disobey God and it's a very predictable thing. Did you ever stop to think that God doesn't need money. He's never had a dime in His pocket. Yet, he provides us with an economic system for prosperity, warning us about the root of all evil, which is the love of mammon.

The problem in our society today is that our people are attracted to darkness and easily persuaded of evil. Let me remind you again of what the jew Karl Marx said, "Take away the heritage of a people, and they are easily persuaded." How do we allow our heritage to be taken away? Well, like a little bit a leaven, it leaveneth the whole loaf. Watch the pendulum ... going back and forth ... your eyes are getting heavy .... you're falling into a deep sleep .... deeper and deeper. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." God forbid, what happens when our subconscious mind is tampered with; when our imagination is running amuck? What was the first hypnotic suggestion in the Bible? "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil ... ye shall NOT surely die." Was this the truth or satanic deception? It was a damn lie! And since the Fall of Adam, we've had a lot of dead people buried and turning up tulips.

If you're told by a mesmerizer that you're a frog, do you jump into the saucepan for a swim? Paul really helps us get close to the truth in II Thes. 2:9-12:

"Even him, whose coming is after the working of satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believe not the truth but have pleasure in unrighteousness."

Why can't people stick to the simple truths of scripture? Because this animal magnetism is a corollary to James 1:14, "Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed." It sounds pretty hopeless, until we realize in our mind and mouth that there is an alternative to what I John 2:16 calls "all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life", when we pray 'lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil' and when we become 'doers of the Word' and not just deceiving ourselves by only hearing the Word. We've been fooled into subjecting ourselves to the wrong higher powers.

The trance-formation has been a massage of the media slowly turning up the heat from simmer to boiling. That frog needs a helping hand to get out of his fix. By fix I mean the predicament that we seem to be locked into. You know, magnets are not only drawn together, they are also drawn apart. Likewise, there is a polarity in belief systems as to what heals people. Big Brother protects the public from snake oil and quackery. The FDA protects us with the most modern scientific screening of medical products (said sarcastically). But, there are some companies that squeeze through the cracks and find their economic niche in modern equivalents to Mesmer's animal magnetism.

One such company is Nikken USA. If it sounds Japanese, it's because it was started by an Oriental. So, right from the get-go, there is a defiance against the admonition of Jeremiah 10:2, "Learn not the way of the heathen." What is it they claim? They borrow a little bit of science from Karl Gauss, the father of magnetic measurement, which is about as far as science has gotten; and then attach the pseudoscientific appellation of 'biomagnetism', explained not so well by Albert Roy Davis as a new "law" of physics. The author says a division of magnetic energies exist at the separate poles of magnets and that both poles of any magnet are not the same. Depending upon which pole of the magnet you subject a living organism to, you can affect how it lives. Their basic credo is: whatever happens, magnets caused it. They don't promise specific results or how, where or when they will occur. The effects of magnets on injuries have never been measured scientifically, i.e., controlled studies properly reproducing experiments time after time with the same success. Biomagnetism has not been proven either helpful or harmful in terms of therapeutic value any more than a witch doctor rattling bones in front of his patient.

The big question today is, why are these supposed panaceas replacing our faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"? It's not just the obvious nonsense of magnets acting as a termite upon the house of God, it is the prophetic predators within the Holy of Holies; in other words, wolves in sheep's clothing drooling at the thought of raping your minds to the point that no man might buy or sell unless he has the mark of the beast. This can only be accomplished with the gradual repetition of satanic deception. Christian Identity folks are already familiar with the gory details of what Mystery Babylon has done in the last 200 years. Even still, we need to be vigilant against anything that would spoil the integrity of God's Word. Some may think I'm the spoiler and say all manner of evil against me falsely, thinking they're doing service to God. So how do we know I'm not trying to deceive you? For one thing, I'm not in the business of predicting the future. But the more I know about God's absolutes of cause and effect, the better I can identify satanic cause and effect.

The principle for testing a prophet could be applied to anyone teaching others the truth or lies and is found in Deut. 18:20-22:

"But the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the word with the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously."

In Christian Identity, we identify what has come to pass. In I John 4:1, "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world." Try the spirits doesn't mean drinking an adult beverage, but rather to test a person's theology, although many in Judeo-churchianity seem to be drunk as a skunk with their stinking doctrines of devils; devils, not being spooks, but rather professional liars, in the business to mesmerize an entire nation.

The war on Iraq is not just about oil. It is about the New World Order's god, satan. The word Satan means false accuser and if they can successfully accuse anyone falsely for anything, they can garnish all the oil and money, lusts of the flesh and eye that they want. If God knows the number of hairs on a person's head (and He does, according to Mt. 10:30), He also "knows the hearts of all the children of men" I Kings 8:39, and knows who will be attracted to the power of those who bear false witness from the beginning to the end. God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.

No one knows if their name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. But we are given a clue in Revelation 3:5 that those who overcometh will not have their names blotted out of the Book of Life. Conversely, those who do not overcome may be in for a big, big surprise. As I conclude this message, let us ponder Matthew 7:22-33:

"Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity."

We should depart from them as well. There is no U.S. law against impersonating a Christian or masquerading as an Israelite. But there is a law written in our hearts prohibiting the trick or treats of animal magnetism. The lawlessness of rampant fraud is what produces all the murders, lies and theft around us. Next time we shall examine satanic deception and the magick of occult societies. In the meantime, keep your imaginations straight and narrow.