End Times
Witchcraft Goes Mainstream As DC-Based ‘CityWitches’ Aims To Bring That Ol’ Black Magic To Your Town
Halloween is a celebration of the witch. You can have sexy witches, you can have scary witches, but it’s still a celebration of the witch.
Teighe Thorsen is a 29-year-old D.C. resident and witch who cofounded the group CityWitches in 2016.
“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God.” Deuteronomy 18:10-13 (KJV)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Have you noticed that over the last few years, the fake news media has been running lots of “positive and uplifting” stories on the witch and wiccan communities? And just coincidentally, of course, they always seem to be right in time for Halloween. Gone are the pointy hats and wart-filled noses. Today’s witch is a ‘boss babe’ who is looking to ‘enhance her positivist’ by ‘connecting with the universe’. And if along the way she needs to cast a spell or two, what’s the harm? In every dispensation and in every age, God is against the black art of witchcraft in all its various forms. Today’s witch wants to put distance between themselves and the Devil, but that won’t work. The Devil is in the details.
To celebrate Samhain, a Wiccan festival that falls on the evening of Oct. 31, Washington, D.C. resident Elizabeth Stephens usually prepares a pot of jambalaya to honor her late grandmother and a plate of roast beef in memory of her parents. She marks the festival with witches and fellow Wiccans, who offer their own dishes as a part of the day’s feast. The table they set becomes patterned with platters that were the favorites of family members and friends.
As a part of the celebration, a black cloth is held above the heads of the attendees and cut with a knife through the center, representing an opening between the spirit and material worlds. After some time has passed, participants encourage the spirits to return to their realm and the cut in the cloth is sewn.
Images of witches being veiled in darkness, casting spells over cauldrons endure, but a new generation of Wiccans and witches have established growing communities in D.C. and across the country.
Like other Wiccans and witches, Stephens has come “out of the broom closet” — a term that refers to publicly revealing one’s beliefs as a Wiccan or witch. They are fighting back against misinformation about Wiccans and witches.
Stephens said she loves Halloween.
“It’s a celebration of the witch. You can have sexy witches, you can have scary witches, but it’s still a celebration of the witch. Even if the witch isn’t shown in a positive light,” said Stephens, a 37-year-old Wiccan who also practices witchcraft.
Teighe Thorsen is a 29-year-old D.C. resident and witch who cofounded the group CityWitches in 2016.
Thorsen said she created the group, which includes Wiccans, Pagans and other occultists, as “a place where the alternate outcasts of magic can actually come together and talk.”
“We’re getting a lot of youth, a lot of people generally under 30, although not always, who are trying to find somewhere in their life that they actually have power,” she said. “They’re trying to find it in something that is non-dogmatic and something that is just their own — mystical, different, badass and empowering.”
Since starting CityWitches, Thorsen said she has seen an increase in interest from those inspired by her magic, including the rituals she writes on her Instagram, and a rise in members on the group’s Facebook page.
On her Instagram, Thorsen posts pictures of and describes in detail her magical practices. In one photo, she set up candles around a pentagram, with tarot cards, amethyst crystals and feathers surrounding the shrine. She occasionally posts photos of herself that show her colorful hair and amulets of jade and lapis lazuli.
Witches have repeatedly captured Americans’ imaginations. “The Craft” and the “Harry Potter” series are all hits, along with television shows like “American Horror Story: Coven.” But the visibility can create problems with perceptions. “This Halloween version of witchcraft” has made people assume about what Thorsen’s practices are, she said.
“Those are fantastical interpretations of what a witch is, but there is a little bit of truth to it,” Thorsen said. “There are things that you can do to affect certain results around you that most people won’t pick up on but you know how to do it.”
All magic involves completing certain things, like spells, to create certain consequences that a witch wants, Thorsen said.
“It [magic] is a tool for personal development and empowerment as well as for changing your environment, for helping the people around you, and fear is never welcome. Fear is the antithesis of forward momentum,” Thorsen said. “What I practice in magic is fearlessness.”
Whereas witchcraft includes magical practices that can change from witch to witch, Wicca is a religion with a set structure, according to Penny Verin-Shapiro, a professor in the anthropology department at California State University, Fresno. Verin-Shapiro spoke to Wiccans and witches, studying their separate systems of beliefs, for her 2014 book “Central Valley Pagans.”
Verin-Shapiro found in her interviews with Wiccans and witches that many of them didn’t seem to fit into the religions that they followed previously and stumbled on something that made them want to convert. She said that the influx of information on the internet has contributed to more individuals identifying themselves within modern-day witchcraft and Wicca.
“It’s [the internet] made it a lot easier to find out information that was hidden before and to find a group, if you want to a group to work with or to learn from,” Verin-Shapiro said. “There’s just a whole lot more information out there now that is easily accessed.”
Along with the availability of information, a more accepting attitude toward other religions has allowed Wiccans and witches to be more vocal and visible with their beliefs, according to Verin-Shapiro.
“The general public has become more accepting that not everybody has to be Christian, that there are many ways to worship,” she said. “So it has become easier for some people to come out of the broom closet.”
Being “out of the broom closet” hasn’t always been an option.
For centuries, the word “witch” was associated with witch trials, including the famous Salem witch trials in the 17th century, which accused some of practicing and performing magic.
Witchcraft didn’t begin and end with the witch trials. From Caribbean Santería to Italian Stregheria to various voodoo practices in West Africa and Louisiana, witches have discovered methods to magic and medicine within themselves in the past and present.
Modern-day witches have created their own collection of magic practices, inspired by centuries of witchcraft from across the world, according to Laura, a 58-year-old Wiccan high priestess who asked News4 to withhold her last name because she does not want her children to be harassed because of her beliefs. She said she has considered herself a witch for more than 30 years.
“Within every faith, you can find some sort or form of magic worker or belief in energy, in that you are able to work with the energy forces,” Laura said. “Not all of those people would have necessarily called themselves witches, of course. But they were working with the same constructs.”
Laura said she has been interested in magic since childhood. She found Wicca through a teacher, who said she could trace her teachers back to the founder of the modern-day Wiccan movement.
Gerald Gardner, a member of the Masons, combined elements from ceremonial magic and folk tradition into what he coined Wicca, which means “to bend,” according to Laura. She studied different degrees of mastery in Wicca to become a high priestess.
“For me, it is literally seeing the giant web of life and how every touch upon it affects something else in ways that are often unexpected,” Laura said.
From honoring an earth goddess with a mindfulness about one’s effect on the environment to an awareness about the three-fold law, which says that any action put out into the world comes back to someone three times, the Wicca that Laura follows teaches her that “we fully responsible for our own words and that includes what goes beyond ourselves.”
Laura said that her teachings and traditions in Wicca aren’t all necessarily followed by other Wiccans or witches, who may observe a completely separate set of customs.
“If you talk to five witches, you are going to get ten different answers,” she said.
Laura has heard others describe what they think her religion is about: dancing naked, worshiping the devil and sacrificing animals. Those ideas are far from the truth, she said. She said she knows a man who lost visitation rights to see his child because a judge misconstrued his beliefs with Satanism.
“I’ve had people not take me seriously. I’ve had people be very condescending to me. ‘Are you a good witch or a bad witch?’ kind of thing. I kind of looked at them and said … ‘Find out,” Laura said.
Stephens too said she has seen how stereotypes have seeped into how people understand her beliefs. Once, when she was reading a Wiccan book of spells at a McDonald’s, a cashier asked her about the book. While Stephens explained her faith, the cashier told her that “Evil never makes sense.”
“It was the worst experience that I’ve had as a witch,” Stephens said.
Still, in the coven of three other witches that she’s a part of, Stephens has found a family that she sees almost every week in Virginia.
“A lot of people think that we’re evil, that we’re spawn of Satan, that we worship the devil. We don’t even believe in hell, much less Satan,” Stephens said. “We’re people. We have as much variety within ourselves as a group as any other group.”
“We’re not all painted with one brush. There are witches that I would not associate with, but there are Christians that I would not associate with and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Sikhs,” she added. “Every faith has its own share of bad apples. But just because there are a few bad apples does not mean that we are all bad apples.” source
End Times
On This July 4th, The 248th Anniversary Of Our Independence From England, America Stands Leaderless In Dark And Dire Distress
This is the 248th, and perhaps, last 4th of July America will celebrate, but if you’re saved and born again, the future has never looked brighter
As a child growing up in the 1960’s, I have so many fond memories of July 4th, our annual Independence Day celebration. The fanfare and fireworks, the omnipresent displays of American enthusiasm, backyard cookouts and all-day swimming at the Old Swimming Hole. (Yes, it really was called that.) Those times are burned into my brain with all the warmth and intensity of a Kodak Technicolor snapshot, but they are desperately as far away from our present-day reality as if you were looking at them from the wrong end of a telescope. In 2024, America is a leaderless nation, in extreme distress, and rushing headlong into oblivion. It America were fireworks, you’re watching the grand finale.
“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Psalm 9:17 (KJB)
I want you to think for a moment, to really use your brain, and try and take the emotion out of the equation. What did God destroy both Sodom and Gomorrah for? For doing exactly what America does for the 30 days of Pride Month every June. Can you show me a presidential candidate, any candidate on either side, who as president will end Pride Month in America? You can’t. Adolf Hitler killed 12 million people during the Holocaust, an eye-popping figure to say the least. But that’s chump change compared to the 63,459, 781 babies killed in abortion in America since 1973. We rightly call Hitler a monster, and he certainly was that, but what about Americans who demand their ‘right to abortion’, and cry tears of joy when their state allows it? Are they not monsters as well? You tell me.
READ WHAT WE WROTE WAY BACK IN 2009 ABOUT THE COMING BETRAYAL OF AMERICA, IT HAS ARRIVED.
Did you watch the debates last week, what did you see? I saw the empty shell of a lost, mentally confused and physically spent Hell-bound sinner who sold his soul to become president, who has been used for the last 3.5 years by Barack Obama to conduct his third term. I saw exactly the America we warned you was coming all the way back in 2009 when we started this ministry. We are in the midst of the greatest deception ever perpetrated against a sovereign nation, and when you consider today is Day 1,571 of 15 Days To Flatten the Curve, that’s saying something. Speaking of that, can you tell me who initiated the lockdowns, was behind Operation Warp Speed, and the ‘Father of the mRNA vaccines’ that to date have killed over 3,000,000 people? Surprise, surprise, but Bill Gates is the wrong answer. I can see by this point you could use a little good news, so here it is.
America is being systematically dismantled by her enemies, it’s Cloward and Piven on steroids, that’s the bad news. But look off way in the distance, towards the east, there is movement that causes a stirring in your soul. Something is gathering, Someone is finishing His John 14 preparations, and if you’re saved you can feel it as strongly as you feel the glistening water drops that fall on your face in a summer rain. Jesus Christ will shortly ‘calleth his own sheep by name’ to ‘leadeth them out’, and up into the clouds we are going to go. It will be like the helicopter rescue operations in Vietnam where the soldiers were lifted up to safety in the heat of unbelievable battle, so close to the fire that the shoelace tips on their boots were melting as they went up. But we will go up. If you believe your King James Bible, that’s where we are on the end times timeline on this 248th, and perhaps, last 4th of July America will celebrate. But if you’re saved, the future has never looked brighter. TO THE FIGHT!!!
Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church
- HOW TO DONATE: Click here to view our WayGiver Funding page
When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.
But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORT…TO THE FIGHT!!!
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)
“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB
Biblical Archaeology
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas Is An Egyptian Forgery And Is Once Again Back In The Headlines With An ‘Amazing Discovery’ Designed To Deceive You
The unbiblical Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT) describes Jesus’ life from the ages of five to 12 and was written during the 2nd century in Egypt
Back in 2021, I wrote an article that was purely speculative, just a feeling I had at the time, that we should prepare ourselves for the day when they would ‘discover the bones of Jesus’, thus rendering the entire New Testament impotent. While that still has not happened, yet, still plenty of deception abounds to try and get you to lose your faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. One of these pieces of fakery is known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and they just discovered ‘exciting news’ about a lost manuscript recently discovered that you need to know. (insert eye-roll here)
“And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” 1 Corinthians 15:18,19 (KJB)
There is an excellent book called ‘Did The Catholic Church Give Us The Bible?’ from Chick Publications we sell at the Bookstore, and I highly recommend you get yourself a copy. It shows that there are two lines of manuscripts that produces two lines of Bibles. The first is the line of the preserved text, the Textus Receptus, where our King James Bible comes from. The second line comes from Alexandria in Egypt, and this is where the NIV, ESV, NLT, LSB and the Douay-Rheims used by the Roman Catholic Church comes from. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas comes from Egypt, is not scripture, does not belong in the Bible, and is not to be trusted with its silly stories like having the young Jesus making clay pigeons and then turning them into real birds. Don’t fall for it, that’s the memo.
Experts discover earliest record of Jesus’ childhood after deciphering 2,000-year-old Egyptian manuscript
FROM THE DAILY MAIL UK: The earliest known copy of an incredible story about Jesus performing a miracle as a child has been discovered scrawled on an ancient Egyptian manuscript. The 2,000-year-old papyrus – a material that predates paper – tells the lesser-known story of the ‘vivification of the sparrows,’ when the five-year-old Messiah is said to have turned clay pigeons into live birds, a tale also referred to as the ‘second miracle’.
The clumsiness of the handwriting led the researchers to believe it was likely written as part of a class exercise in a school or religious community in 4th or 5th Century Egypt, which was a Christian society in those times. The original story of Jesus’ miracle is thought to have been written around the 2nd Century as part of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a book detailing Jesus of Nazareth’s youth that was ultimately excluded from the Bible.
But until this discovery, the earliest written example of the gospel was from the 11th Century.
Until now, the papyrus had lay unnoticed at the Hamburg State and University Library in Hamburg, Germany. Experts told DailyMail.com they stumbled upon the papyri while analyzing manuscripts and noticed Jesus’ name in the text.
‘It was thought to be part of an everyday document, such as a private letter or a shopping list, because the handwriting seems so clumsy,’ Dr Lajos Berkes, a co-researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Theology at Humboldt-Universität said in a press release.
‘We first noticed the word “Jesus” in the text. Then, by comparing it with numerous other digitized papyri, we deciphered it letter by letter and quickly realized that it could not be an everyday document,’ he added.
But this gospel was omitted from the Bible because it was thought to be inauthentic. The Bible was also intended to focus solely on Jesus’ ministry, miracles and what led up to his dying on the cross. In the IGT story, Jesus is just five years old playing in a stream while molding 12 sparrows out of soft clay in the riverbed mud.
The papyrus fragment measured four by two inches and contained a total of 13 lines of a popular religious story from the IGT. Researchers said the story was likely written as part of a writing exercise in a school or monastery because of the clumsy handwriting, irregular lines and other signifiers.
‘Apart from what can be deduced from the general history of the collection, there is no evidence of how or when the papyrus was discovered,’ the researchers wrote in their article. READ MORE
Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church
- HOW TO DONATE: Click here to view our WayGiver Funding page
When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.
But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORT…TO THE FIGHT!!!
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)
“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB
Artificial Intelligence
OpenAI Disbands Safety Team That Was Put In Place So Artificial Intelligence Would Have Safeguards In Mad Rush To Bring About The Singularity
OpenAI on Friday confirmed that it has disbanded a team devoted to mitigating the long-term dangers of super-smart artificial intelligence.
The changes are happening so fast now that you might not even be aware that you are living in a science fiction futuristic movie where AI computer technology catches up with every day human life, beginning the process of taking over everything on every level. Your King James Bible has long shown you end times technology, you just didn’t know what it was when you read it. Now you do.
“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” Revelation 13:15 (KJB)
We live in the southernmost state in America, in the country, surrounded by bucolic views of gorgeous farmland with scenes that likely have not changed much in a century. Life appears to move slower down here, yet it does not. Everyday I get in my car to drive to work, up to 30 different microchips spring into action to allow the smooth-running of my Jeep. I go to make a phone call while I ride, but first must pass the facial recognition shield protecting my mobile device. Far overhead, a ring of thousands of satellites are circling the Earth, constantly monitoring activity far below. It is at that moment it hits me again that we are living in very modern times, in fact, living in the future that writers, artists and filmmakers said would one day arrive. It is here. Headlines announcing Air Force pilots encountering UFOs barely get a notice anymore, everyone knows ‘they’ are here now, it’s become commonplace. We are the generation that sees the merging of man and machine, but we are also the generation that boards Flight #777 on Titus213 Airlines. That’s what time it is.
OpenAI disbands team devoted to artificial intelligence risks
FROM YAHOO! TECH NEWS: OpenAI weeks ago began dissolving the so-called “superalignment” group, integrating members into other projects and research, according to the San Francisco-based firm. Company co-founder Ilya Sutskever and team co-leader Jan Leike announced their departures from the ChatGPT-maker this week.
The dismantling of an OpenAI team focused on keeping sophisticated artificial intelligence under control comes as such technology faces increased scrutiny from regulators and fears mount regarding its dangers.
“OpenAI must become a safety-first AGI (artificial general intelligence) company,” Leike wrote Friday in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Leike called on all OpenAI employees to “act with the gravitas” warranted by what they are building. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman responded to Leike’s post with one of his own, thanking him for his work at the company and saying he was sad to see Leike leave.
“He’s right we have a lot more to do,” Altman said. “We are committed to doing it.”
Altman promised more on the topic in the coming days. Sutskever said on X that he was leaving after almost a decade at OpenAI, whose “trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous.”
“I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial,” he added, referring to computer technology that seeks to perform as well as — or better than — human cognition.
Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, sat on the board that voted to remove fellow chief executive Altman in November last year.
The ousting threw the San Francisco-based startup into a tumult, with the OpenAI board hiring Altman back a few days later after staff and investors rebelled. OpenAI early this week released a higher-performing and even more human-like version of the artificial intelligence technology that underpins ChatGPT, making it free to all users.
“It feels like AI from the movies,” Altman said in a blog post.
Altman has previously pointed to the Scarlett Johansson character in the movie “Her,” where she voices an AI-based virtual assistant dating a man, as an inspiration for where he would like AI interactions to go.
The day will come when “digital brains will become as good and even better than our own,” Sutskever said during a talk at a TED AI summit in San Francisco late last year. “AGI will have a dramatic impact on every area of life.” READ MORE
Introducing GPT-4o
Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church
- HOW TO DONATE: Click here to view our WayGiver Funding page
When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.
But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORT…TO THE FIGHT!!!
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)
“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB
THE BIG STORY
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END TIMES
CHRISLAM
FALSE TEACHERS
THE METAVERSE
REAL UFOS
ISRAEL
THE MOTB
CATHOLIC CHURCH
FAKE NEWS
ABORTION
THE THIRD TEMPLE
BILL GATES
GEORGE SOROS
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