Headline News

100K Member Satanic Temple Opening Chapters All Across America To ‘Battle Christianity’

Since its founding, The Satanic Temple has waged a highly active campaign to demand greater separation between church and state, and to challenge the privileged relationship Christianity has with government.

Published

10 years ago

April 19, 2016

Geoffrey Grider

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SHARE NOW THE END BEGINS:

Since its founding, The Satanic Temple has waged a highly active campaign to demand greater separation between church and state, and to challenge the privileged relationship Christianity has with government.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” Ephesians 6:12,13,16 (KJV)

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;” 2 Thessalonians 2:3 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the Laodicean Christian church continues on it’s self-defeating path of preaching the powerless ‘love gospel’, and looking for their ‘blessing’ promised them by charlatans like Joel Osteen, Lou Engle, Rick Warren, and Kenneth Copeland, the Satanic Temple is on the rise. The prophesied darkness is coming as the Church of Jesus Christ continues it’s falling away into apostasy. The war is real, the battle is hot and the time is short, to the fight, Christian!

Robert Eggers’ period horror film “The Witch” has been one of the surprise hits of 2016. It’s even gained a second wind since its February 23 release: the first weekend of April it played on 666 screens around the country, raking in an additional USD$465,000.

The tale of a Puritan family turning on each other as they attempt to root out the supernatural evil plaguing their farm, the film won Eggers the award for best director at Sundance – and even frightened horror master Stephen King.

The Satanic Temple of Detroit: Unveiling of Baphomet

GRAPHIC WARNING: This is HARD CORE Devil worship, and it took place in Detroit on July 25, 2015 at the unveiling of the Baphomet monument. This is the spirit that is now rising in America as Laodicean Christianity is powerless to stop it. Please be prayed up before viewing this.

But neither of these accolades has generated as much buzz as an endorsement from The Satanic Temple (TST), a satanic political movement that first appeared in 2013.

In December, TST and A24 studios began collaborating on a four-city tour called The Sabbat Cycle, which consisted of screenings of the film followed by politically driven satanic rituals. The stated goal of The Sabbat Cycle was to inspire a “satanic revolution.”

TST believes that the separation of church and state is currently under attack by radical religious conservatives. They also believe there is a silent majority that opposes this agenda, but remains too apathetic to do anything about it.

The Sabbat Cycle was an attempt to raise political awareness by piggybacking on “The Witch”’s appeal. This is part of larger PR model the group has used since its inception, in which the shocking and the frightening are used to lure media attention to their cause.

As a religion scholar, I find TST fascinating. Not only do their campaigns raise serious questions about the First Amendment and religious pluralism, they also challenge the public to think about what counts as a “religion.”

To learn more, I attended the Sabbat Cycle at its Austin stop, and spoke with attendees about their religious and political views.

Political movement, religion or both?

A cornerstone of their campaign has been tongue-in-cheek “stunts” intended to show how government institutions favor Christianity in ways that would never be tolerated for other religions.

Pastor Joel Osteen’s Full Sermon “The Power of ‘I Am'”

Pay attention, Christians, this is the Christian CRAP being preached to people that think they are going to take on the forces of darkness and win. In a battle between powerless Joel Osteen and his followers against the Satanic Temple and their followers, who do YOU think would win?

TST first made headlines in 2013, when it held a rally in Florida, ostensibly to congratulate Governor Rick Scott for passing a bill that would allow students to read “inspirational messages of their choosing” at assemblies and sporting events.

While Scott probably envisioned the law permitting Christian students to offer public prayers and Bible readings, it could not, constitutionally, specify what sort of “inspirational messsages” were allowed – including satanic messages. And so the rally featured a sign declaring, “Hail Satan! Hail Rick Scott!”

Whether or not TST is a “real” religion has been a subject of debate. But some members insist that while the movement is atheistic, the group, like other religions, has a shared set of values, concerns and symbols (like Satan as a symbol of rebellion).

Religion or not, no one can question TST’s appeal or its sincerity about its political goals.

Today TST has 17 chapters in the United States and Europe and claims an estimated 100,000 members – a figure based on the purchase of membership cards and various forms of online support.

Masters of media attention

TST chapters across the country have launched campaigns demanding the same religious rights and privileges afforded to Christianity.

These have included the creation of satanic coloring books for distribution in schools in Florida and Colorado; bids to erect satanic “nativity scenes” on government property in Florida, Michigan and Indiana; offering prayers to Satan at a high school football game in Seattle; and demanding that a monument to the Ten Commandments at the Oklahoma State Capitol be accompanied by a monument to Baphomet (a goat-headed idol associated with witches’ sabbaths).

The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) reinforced the religious freedoms outlined in the First Amendment. When the Supreme Court ruled that RFRA applied only to the federal government and could not be applied to the states, many states passed their own versions of RFRA. Several of TST’s campaigns involve using RFRA laws to claim religious accommodations for satanists.

For example, since 2014 TST has invoked state RFRA laws in Michigan and Missouri to demand a religious exemption from laws dictating that those who seek an abortion need to review literature or endure a waiting period.

In January, TST’s Tucson chapter demanded that the Phoenix City Council include them in public prayers offered before their council meetings. The council responded with a new rule that only chaplains from the police and fire departments may offer the prayers before meetings. (TST has threatened to sue.)

Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman has argued that James Madison would have supported the Tucson satanists. Madison was concerned that individual rights could be threatened by a “tyranny of the majority,” and saw laws guaranteeing individual rights as “paper barriers” that offered no real protection. Only a diverse coalition of minorities could effectively check a majority and protect individual freedom.

“We do not seek followers, but collaborators”

It was exactly this sort of coalition that TST spokeswoman Jex Blackmore hoped to forge through events like the Sabbat Cycle.

In Austin, Texas, Blackmore took the stage before a screening of “The Witch” at the Alamo Drafthouse and explained that the film was a “microcosm of a patriarchal theocratic society that results in satanic revolution.” In Blackmore’s reading of the film, the titular witch was driven to witchcraft by Puritan oppression.

Afterward I got to chat with Drafthouse employee and film buff Laird Jimenez about this assessment. He noted that “escaping patriarchy” is currently part of a cultural zeitgeist that includes films like Oscar-winner “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which depicts women escaping – and then overthrowing – a patriarchal warlord.

Following the screening, everyone migrated to a bar and music venue called The Sidewinder, where TST held their ritual. Members from the Detroit and San Antonio chapters began setting up and handing out satanic American flags painted in only black and white. I mingled with a small crowd of Satanic sympathizers and the curious. Leather jackets, tattoos and pentagrams were in abundance.

During the ritual, a speaker played an excerpt from a speech by Baptist pastor Dr. Jeff Owens, in which Owens warned his congregation, “Satan does not want you to do what he wants you to do. Satan wants you to do what you want to do.” (Other eyewitness accounts of the ritual can be found here and here.) Owens had been warning that Satan uses people’s pride and selfish desires against them, but the ritual imposed its own interpretation onto his message: To TST, Satan represents moral autonomy and personal responsibility.

Blackmore eventually appeared from beneath a hood and took to a podium to deliver what can only be described as a “satanic jeremiad.” She warned that Christian theocrats were taking over America and that those present – atheists, satanists, fans of heavy metal and punk music – were allowing it to happen: “There’s too much apathy and not enough resistance!”

She told the audience, “We do not seek followers, but collaborators.”

Afterward I spoke with some young people from the crowd. One explained that he was attracted to Satanism because “It’s about knowledge,” not dogma.

Another, Jonathan – who identified as a witch – seemed the most likely to be sympathetic to TST’s politics. He said that when he attended high school in Virginia Beach, his classmates targeted him for openly identifying as a Pagan. Someone even pretended to be him and called in bomb threats to his school. The events attracted the attention of Detective Don Rimer, a notorious “occult crime expert,” who confiscated all of Jonathan’s books on witchcraft as evidence. There was an attempt to forcibly commit Jonathan to a mental institution.

I asked Jonathan if he thought TST was really a religion.

“Definitely,” he said, “Some people treat Christianity as a hobby. But no one thinks it’s not a real religion.”

Can the satanists win?

As the event wound down, I was able to interview Blackmore. Like Marx, Blackmore saw her revolution as inevitable: the Christian Right would naturally drive people to rebel against it.

She told me that she’d recently met a French journalist who said that nothing like TST could happen in France. The French model of laicité – a much more ingrained version of America’s professed separation of church and state – leaves nothing to rebel against. By contrast, TST wants to challenge the popular belief that America is a “Christian nation.”

Many TST members and allies I spoke to described strict Christian upbringings. In Blackmore’s assessment, progressive cities like Austin are paradoxically the most apathetic about resisting the Christian Right because people in progressive cities feel they are unaffected by religion-influenced laws. Blackmore saw “The Witch” as an opportunity to get more people involved and hasten their political revolution.

But Jonathan pointed out that this dialectic can swing both ways: revolution begets counterrevolution. For example, in the 1970s, the New Christian Right formed, in part, as a response to the perceived excesses of the 1960s.

Likewise, there is a risk that an openly satanic presence in American politics will energize the very forces TST opposes. Right wing news sites such as Breitbart.com and LifeSiteNewshave given TST heavy coverage precisely because their rhetoric can be used as fodder for antiabortion activists.

Conservative voices have claimed TST “proves” what they have said all along – that God is with them and their political opponents are literally demonic.

In many ways, TST is the heir to the “New Left” of the 1960s and such figures as Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg. Events like the “exorcism” of the Pentagon in 1967 demonstrated an understanding of ritual and semiotics: the strategic use of religious symbols could change what the Pentagon represented to the public.

But the New Left also intentionally straddled the line between prank and sincerity in order to draw media attention to their cause. It is contested today what effect the New Left actually had toward the goal of ending the Vietnam War and it is similarly unclear what effect TST might have on America’s political center of gravity.

Nonetheless, millennials now outnumber baby boomers. They’re a more diverse generation than their predecessors, and major changes to the political landscape seem inevitable.

Still, supporters like Jonathan remain skeptical of TST’s true viability.

“It’s not that they’re wrong,” he said, “But this is Austin, and look how many people came out? And how many people here are actually going to do anything?” source

Headline News

THE PROPHECY NEWS PODCAST: As The War With Iran Goes From Bad To Worse, Suddenly First Lady Melania Has A Lot To Say About Jeffrey Epstein And His Files

Published

1 day ago

April 10, 2026

Geoffrey Grider

SHARE NOW THE END BEGINS:

As Iran Dominates Headlines, First Lady Melania Trump’s Epstein Files Statement Looks Like A Strategic Attempt To Flood The Zone

They did not roll Melania Trump out to ‘fall on the sword’ yesterday by accident. They did it because the walls are closing in, the Iran narrative is cracking, and somebody inside that machine decided it was time to change the subject before the subject changed them. So out of the blue, First Lady Melania gets in front of the mic to disavow Jeffrey Epstein and his files. Are you crazy, why?? If Hollywood made a movie about all this stuff, no one would believe it. Yet, we’re here on Day 2,216 of 15 Days To Flatten The Curve.

“The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment.” Proverbs 12:19 (KJB)

On this episode of the Prophecy News Podcast, Franklin D. Roosevelt, our 32nd U.S. President, is widely credited with saying: “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” Apply that to what First Lady Melania said yesterday in a move that no one saw coming, and you have all the ingredients for an end times conspiracy thriller. Only in this movie, everything is real. At the same moment this Epstein firestorm is reigniting, the administration is under pressure over Iran, military escalation, and instability tied to the Strait of Hormuz. Is it all going so badly for Donald Trump that this type of a catastrophic reset was needed? Apparently so. From the political fixed perspective, this is classic ‘flood the zone, split the headlines, and force the public to look in two directions at once’ messaging. When an administration is wobbling abroad, it often reaches for spectacle at home. This is not conspiracy theory, this is happening in real-time. So the question is on everyone’s mind today is who made her do it? Maybe nobody had to “make” her. Maybe lawyers told her more material was coming. Maybe advisers told her silence was no longer safe. Maybe the White House understood that a First Lady denial would generate exactly the kind of emotional, chaotic coverage they needed. But whatever the internal trigger was, this much is plain: the statement was coordinated, timed, and deployed for effect. My conclusion is simple. This was not confession, this was not courage, this was containment. It was an attempt to draw a hard line before the facts drew one for them. It was an attempt to redirect a dangerous narrative before it metastasized. And it was an attempt to create just enough noise, outrage, and confusion to bury the deeper question: what else is still coming out, and who inside Trump world already knows it? That’s the real story, and today we give you everything you need to know, from every angle, to help you make sense of all of it in light of end times prophecy found inside your King James Bible.

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“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

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Headline News

It’s Time To Get Excited For The 2026 NTEB Camp Meeting Weekend In September Where Our Theme Is ‘Reaching The Lost In The Last Days’

Published

2 days ago

April 9, 2026

Geoffrey Grider

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The 2026 NTEB Camp Meeting Weekend Is Coming This September With Powerful Preaching, Sweet Fellowship And A Burden For Reaching The Lost In The Last Days

It’s time to get excited for the 2026 NTEB Camp Meeting Weekend this September, and if there was ever a time for God’s people to gather, get strengthened, and get serious about the work of the ministry, that time is now. The world is racing headlong into darkness, confusion, apostasy, and chaos, but the mission of the Church in this present age has not changed one bit. We are still commanded to preach the gospel, still called to be lights in a dark place, and still entrusted with the greatest message this world will ever hear. That is why the theme for this year’s camp meeting could not be more timely: “Reaching The Lost In The Last Days.”

“And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” Acts 16:9 (KJB)

This year it’s more than just a Camp Meeting, it is the burden of the hour. While much of professing Christianity is distracted by entertainment, programs, and compromise, we want to keep our eyes fixed on the work the Lord gave us to do. Souls are perishing, time is short, but the doors are still open, and the fields are white already to harvest. Now is the time to go, now is the time to witness, and now is the time to do all we can while it is yet day. This year’s missions-focused Camp Meeting will help you get there.

How To Register:

DATES:

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September 25th: Reception at the Bible Believers Bookstore, open all day, with refreshments from 2:00 – 5:00 PM.
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Spencer Smith: Director of Lighthouse Baptist Missions to Kenya and the Dominican Republic and filmmaker on YouTube
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Donald Trump

History Teaches Us That Wars That Are Won Like WWII End In Surrender, And Wars That Are Not Won End With ‘Peace Talks’ Like The Korean War And Vietnam

Published

2 days ago

April 9, 2026

Geoffrey Grider

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A nation that will not finish a war has no business starting one, as both Israel and America have done with Iran in Operation Epic Fury under Trump and Hegseth

For all the swagger coming out of Washington, the hard reality is this: if you are really winning, you do not usually find yourself scrambling toward peace talks while the smoke is still rising. Multiple reports today say Vice President JD Vance is set to lead the American delegation into talks with Iran in Pakistan this weekend, even as the ceasefire itself remains shaky and disputes over Lebanon, the Strait of Hormuz, and the very terms of the agreement threaten to blow the whole thing apart. Though they are battered and bruised, the regime in Iran is still standing, still controlling the Strait of Hormuz, and as such have every right to proclaim victory. It will be tough to celebrate our 250th anniversary of America with this black cloud hanging over our heads.

“Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.” Luke 14:29-30 (KJB)

And that is what makes this whole spectacle so sad and pathetic. Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are speaking the language of triumph while being dragged by events toward the peace table. Hegseth has been out there portraying Trump as a “president of peace,” even while the administration has lurched from threats of devastating force to a hurried two-week ceasefire and now to high-stakes negotiations. That is not the posture of settled victory. That is the posture of leaders trying to control the headline after losing control of the outcome.

America has seen this movie before. Korea did not end in victory, but in an armistice. Vietnam did not end in victory, but in an agreement that papered over defeat long enough for the final collapse to come. In both cases, politicians sold the public on the idea that talks at the table would secure what had not been secured on the battlefield. In both cases, the result was not lasting peace, but unfinished business and national humiliation. That is what happens when leaders start a war without the resolve to finish it.

Here we have Warmonger Pete gaslighting us by trying to make you believe that last night’s TACO moment is somehow an “ultimate victory” for America. Iran’s regime is still in place, they are charging $1 million per vessel in the SoH, and they now have all the time they need to… pic.twitter.com/F3Pcx75UHA

— Now The End Begins (@NowTheEndBegins) April 8, 2026

Now the same poison is back again, only this time it is mixed with branding, ego, and reckless decision-making. Trump’s great weakness has always been his addiction to public image. Everything must be dramatic, everything must be historic, everything must be framed as the greatest show on earth. Pete Hegseth, for all his tough-guy rhetoric, appears cut from the same cloth in this moment: full of chest-thumping declarations, full of boasts, full of victory talk, while the actual facts on the ground say something very different. Iran has not been marched into unconditional surrender. The regional fire has not been put out. The Strait of Hormuz remains a pressure point. Lebanon is still erupting. And yet these men want Americans to clap because they declared success on television.

Public swagger replaced strategic clarity. Boasts replaced discipline. Narrative replaced objective.

That is the reckless part of all this. They overtalked. They oversold. They ran ahead of reality. When leadership becomes more concerned with appearing strong than with thinking clearly, it creates exactly this kind of predicament. Men begin making impulsive declarations they later have to walk back. They draw lines they do not seem prepared to enforce to the finish. They promise outcomes they cannot yet guarantee. Then, when the pressure mounts and the enemy is still standing, they pivot to negotiations and pretend the pivot was the plan all along. But everybody can see it. If you have won, why are you rushing to talks? If the enemy has been broken, why is the ceasefire so fragile? If victory has already been achieved, why are basic terms still being disputed in public? These are not the questions that follow conquest. These are the questions that follow incompetence, miscalculation and drastic overreach.

I do believe, with all my heart, that according to Daniel 2:21, God put Donald Trump on the throne over America. I also believe that God put him there, not for blessing, but in judgment over a nation that has become very much like Babylon. Just look at all the global chaos now,… pic.twitter.com/CTUTupV6Py

— Now The End Begins (@NowTheEndBegins) April 7, 2026

And let’s be plain about it: peace talks before victory are often just decorated surrenders. They are where the political men who start the wars go to escape the consequences of their own rhetoric. They are where wars launched with thunder are quietly traded for ambiguous formulas, temporary pauses, and face-saving language. The enemy could not win outright, so he waits for the politicians to lose their nerve. Then he takes back at the negotiating table what he could not seize under fire. That is why this moment is so dangerous. The administration is boasting as though the war aims have been accomplished, while the facts suggest something far murkier: a pressured ceasefire, unresolved military and political issues, conflicting interpretations of the deal, and a fresh push for talks that could easily become the mechanism by which unfinished war is rebranded as peacemaking. Even reporting from today notes that Iran and the U.S. are advancing sharply different understandings of what comes next, and that the talks may determine whether hostilities resume or merely pause under a prettier name.

The Bible gives a sobering warning about halfway execution: “Cursed be he that doeth the work of the LORD deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.” Jeremiah 48:10 (KJB)

That verse is not a license for reckless violence, but it is a sharp warning against doing grave things weakly, deceitfully, or by halves. Once judgment is undertaken, to falter in purpose is to invite ruin. And in national life, that means if leaders commit a nation to war, then lose their nerve before victory is secured, they do not create peace. They create delay. They create instability. They create the staging ground for the next war. In fact, Trump just posted this to Truth Social: ” …In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!” The insanity is real and terrifying.

That is what makes the Trump-Hegseth performance so pitiful. They want the applause of victors without bearing the burden of actually securing victory. They want to sound like conquering generals while behaving like political operators boxed in by their own overstatements. They want America to believe that marching toward peace talks is proof of strength, even while the ceasefire wobbles and the enemy still retains leverage. That is not strength, that is managed embarrassment.

A nation that will not finish a war has no business starting one. And a leader who brags about victory while inching toward the negotiating table is not displaying resolve. He is advertising weakness under a banner of strength. Korea showed it. Vietnam showed it. And if this Iran crisis ends the same way, it will be one more chapter in the long American habit of mistaking talk for triumph, and retreat for peace.