A spiritual warning for all: a re-post

This is a message from my Sister-in-Christ, Leah Baguinon, and post it on facebook. With permission, she's let me post it here for you to see.

Get The Beam Out Of Your Own Eye

Who can deny, with all of this overwhelming evidence, from the most reliable of sources, that the days of the great American dream are swiftly coming to a close, as well, the end of days for mortal man and the soon return of Yahshua our Messiah.
This is a short message from our Commander-In-Chief, but His short messages are greater and more meaningful than the longest message that any man could give.

Yahweh
   As always, my message to you is to consider your ways before Me, and repent where necessary, because time is so swiftly running out. This goes for those of you who call yourselves My "Christians" also, and to you most importantly, as you are too pre-occupied with everyone else's sins and the sins of the world and not your own.
Being given nearly 2000 years, you have yet to build up My congregation according to My blueprint. There is no all things common among you and there is great inequality and the grossest kind of pride, false humility, envy, strife, contentions and even excused sexual immorality in your midst.

   You cloak your own sins by pointing fingers at the unbelievers, not realizing that they are not who I am most concerned. What good would it do if all the unbelievers stopped being unbelievers - AND SUBSCRIBED TO YOUR APOSTATE BRAND OF CHRISTIANITY?

   Many of you worship your long held errant beliefs and peer-pressured traditions, you worship pastors, church leaders, corrupted counselors and the status-quo, not Me.

   You call yourselves saints, but the definition of the word saint means SET APART, but you are not set apart, but aligned with the same flawed and errant thinking that is rampant upon the earth in these the darkest of times.

   Be quiet and stand still - consider your ways before you speak in your defense. Many of your hearts are not right with your brothers, yet you are so quick to want to accuse others of their sins, who are not even of My fold, neither are they subjected to the laws of My Kingdom, as you are, but will be judged according to their works, as they have no part in My gift of grace to you.

   You desire to picket and protest the sins of the unbelievers, but you need to be picketing and protesting your own churches, for therein lies the grossest of sins—disobedience and an unwillingness to build up My congregations according to the blueprint set forth in the Book of Acts!

   The edict states, If MY PEOPLE WHICH ARE CALLED BY MY NAME (not everyone else) would turn from THEIR wicked ways, I, NOT YOUR GOVERNMENT, would heal their land, but you have made your government your false god, thus I have, as I have spoken, turned you over to your false idol, and now you are beginning to see the wickedness of your idol and you are now living in fear of what you have created.

   You have subjugated yourself to the beast and its lies, and what is worse, you defend the lies out of fear of being branded a saint - BEING SET APART. If you deny me before men, out of fear, I will deny YOU when we meet face to face.

   Get the BEAM out of your own eye, before you try to remove the splinter from everyone else's or you will suffer with the unbelievers, because that is what you truly are.

   I urgently advise all of you to read Revelations 18 and Jeremiah 51 and repent quickly. Turn to me in sincerity that I may guide you through the coming days of GROSS darkness.

   You may have helped create the beast that now stalks and oppresses you, but I, NOT YOU, will destroy the beast for my names sake and for the sake of those who love me. When that day comes whose side shall YOU be on? Shall you continue to defend the kingdom of Satan or remember your citizenship in my Kingdom and be warriors for righteousness and not darkness?

He Is Not A Jew Who Is One Outwardly
   NOW LET ME BE PERFECTLY CLEAR to those of you who bow your heads and bend the knee to the Pharisees that run and control Israel. Israel, the land mass IS NOT MY PROPHETIC CLOCK as you have been told. YOU ARE MY ISRAEL OF WHICH THE PROPHECIES SPEAK - YOU ARE MY PROPHETIC CLOCK, YOU ARE MY CHOSEN PEOPLE, NOT ISRAEL!
Who has bewitched you into thinking that I still show favor to the landmass of Israel and the bloodline of the Pharisees? Is it not written in your scriptures, "That he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he is a Jew who is one INWARDLY?"

For he is not a Jew (Yahudim), which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew (Yahudim), which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
- Romans 2:28-29

   The word JEW is an abomination of the name YAHUDIM, followers of Yahuweh. You are not my followers if you reject the teachings of Yahshua whom I sent, thus you are not a JEW, though you may claim to be so by your bloodline, yet JEW is not a race, but a belief in the teachings of Yahuweh. Thus because you claim to be Israeli-Hebrew does not excuse you from the law of salvation to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

   Yahshua is coming for His Bride - not the Greeks nor the Jews, but an ISRAEL made up of every nation, kindred and tongue. He is coming for THE ISRAEL OF GOD, NOT MAN.

   You are my chosen people - AND NONE ELSE! Stop allowing yourselves to be manipulated by the Pharisees who claim that you owe them obeisance because they are the seed of Abraham. Did not Yahshua say to these vipers and hypocrites...

I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.
- John 8:37-38

Did not John the baptist speak these words against the very spirit that you are being manipulated to bow down before:

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:
And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
- Matthew 3:7-10

   How much plainer can it be written in your word for you to begin to turn away from the lies and deception of these obvious end time deceivers who teach contrary to my word, that you would give your support and substance to the very Sanhedrin spirit that crucified Yahshua, errantly thinking that this pleases me?

   Call upon Me my wayward and whoring betrothed with a new and urgent fervor, and I, even as I made of Hosea an example, shall embrace you as my betrothed once again, and I shall forgive your harlotry and wash you clean, as judgment is at the door and many of you are still playing church in a building scheduled for demolition.

Thoughts on Quantic Dreams' "Kara"

abort:
In strictly modern American sense, reference to a procedure that brings forth a human fetus before it is ready to be born on its own time, normally to be killed off.
Other actual definitions: (to fail, cease, or stop at an early or premature stage), (to develop incompletely)

There's a chance you've heard of this tech demo at a recent video game convention, called "Kara," which literally creates a video game model as though a robot. Part by part, internally to externally. With every part brought to its being (I'll refer to "it" as "her" since she's being made into a female body anyway), a disembodied voice asks her to do certain things to see if she's working properly. When the voice asks her to tell the audience what she does, she makes a list of things she does... one of which involves being a sexual slave. When the production is complete, and she's having flesh color added to her being, and she gets a bra and panties, she finds out she's only a product, which shocks and dismays her. "I'm a product." The voice affirms it and asks what else could she have been.
"I thought-"
"You thought?"
Then the voice commands the production to disassemble her, which truly frightens her, and she asks why she's being taken apart, and the voice says that she wasn't designed to think, she was designed to do, and that thinking indicates she must have a glitch in her system, something that's unacceptable. Things finally come to a denouement when she yells out "I'M AFRAID!" All the equipment suddenly halts. She asks to be remade into what she was and the voice relents, even if reluctantly, and tells Kara to behave, that he doesn't want any customer complaints.
That whole film is 7 minutes long, and does more than just show off the latest CGI developments for video game development companies, it also has a deep story dealing with what life is. The video I watched, I noticed a lot of people comparing the short but deeply thoughtful story to the overly lengthy and very shallow storyline of the Twilight series. I won't say "Now I'm not saying..." because truth is, as much as I enjoy horror stories (including some vampire stories), I truly hate Twilight. I couldn't read even half of the first book, and could barely suffer watching the first three films. Why? Not just animation (it had good bits of cinematic techniques and technology), but the story is very shallow, to the point of a needless reduction and remake of vampires. Too much style, nowhere near enough substance for a horror fan (and occassional romance fan, I'll shamelessly admit) to enjoy. This seven-minute production seems to have referred not only to abortion, however. That line about being a "sex slave" brought to mind what people expect in pornography. Specific body styles, a certain look, the ability to say empty nothings, able to handle literally anything any number of men can do to them. If you've ever seen the movie Taxi Driver, I'll use a familiar line, "If you were happy, I wouldn't be able to use you." Jodie Foster's first film and she was a child prostitute (aka, an illegal prostitute being underage), and her pimp tells her that he can't use her if she enjoys being basically raped. There are many secrets the industry never wants revealed lest the industry comes to a halt- which is what the ex-stars wants to happen (including Shelley Lubben and Jenna Jameson, believe it or not, they've both got books outt here about the devastating reality they lived through), but we're all taught that, since they're human, they'll get over it and enjoy it, right? That's what all the movies say. What about when a robot is being designed to fulfill her "master's" wishes? And she becomes self-aware? Even having the ability to cry actual, liquid tears? Will we pay attention? Or still be, as I call it, "social robots"?
As I like to tell people when they question my faith, "I'd rather be a Jesus Freak than a social robot." This tech demo does illustrate mankind's selfishness and the contrast with people who don't want self-aware people.
Check it out, let me know what you think.

Oh, last note: if you think you can get onto David Cage (the director of Quantic Dreams) about the use of teh word "abort" in the tech demo, remember, he's not American, he's French, our hooker-loose standards of speech is horrendous compared to other languages.

The little things that can happen

It seems there's little in little Alva, Oklahoma. A Wal-Mart that's just barely over half the size of a supercenter (which I've been hired as an overnight stocker), a small theater/video rental store, a pharmacy with soda fountain, and a youth center that opens 3-5:30 pm where kids can (gossip) play video games, go online, skateboard, play sports, and pig out with food that, like the soda fountain at Holder's, is like Ohio- no tax on it.
Yet it's at that last place, called the eXtreme Building, that something really amazing happened (in the scope of this small town, 5 miles square) this past Wednesday- a concert featuring radio-steady Christian prog-rock band Fireflight with a couple guest stars- Cory Lamb and Rapture Ruckus. I was asked by the youth pastor, Jeremy Little, to help out with the band set-up. As much as I love Fireflight's music (they're not my favorite, but nonetheless, I love their stuff [my faves are As I Lay Dying, Skillet, and Demon Hunter]), why would I pass up a priviliged opportunity? So I came by expecting to help out. That I did, and so much more. Warning, I didn't treat the members of each band like some rock gods, I did greet them, hung out, and asked stuff. Not like "Where do you get the inspiration for your songs?" or "Where do you get your instruments?" Rather, stuff like "I imagine you had a few normal jobs before being in a band, huh?" and, when I saw the logo of Rapture Ruckus (it looked like an old-school video game "sprite" character), "You play video games?" Turned out, yep, many of them do. When I was asked (by the guitarist for Cory Lamb, who was wearing the shirt) what my favorite video game was (yes, I'm a hardcore lifelong video gamer), I first asked if old-school or new-school. Old-school. "That one's easy- Super Mario Bros." And I agreed with his answer, "Can never go wrong with that one!" Spent an hour getting their equipment out of their trucks and setting up inside.
Got to meet Glen from Fireflight (the band member that day I met), and he figured out pretty quickly that I'm a huge Skillet fan while he was getting his guitar ready, while Dawn, it turns out, doesn't need to look any different than she does in the videos. As someone commented on their latest video (Stay Close), "Is it just me or does she get more and more beautiful in every video?" Impossibly, it turns out to be true, And just a little talk with her showed how passionately compassionate she is, and (believe it or not), how human and humane she is. Then, onto their new drummer, Adam. While he and a lady who goes with them on the road, Katy, were getting his drums ready, all three of us talked... and talked... and talked. If they ever got annoyed of my incessant blabbing, they showed no sign, they just went along with it, and with loads of great humor. Especially when another roadie got out a huge, all-wooden tambourine, sat in it, and started playing it. I asked Katy to hold my glasses, asked the guy to keep playing, then started to headbang with a Rock On gesture shooting out and bobbing up-and-down. At that, everyone who saw it cracked up.
Believe it or not, even roadies and bands have misadventures and funny stories while on the road. The guitarist with the Rapture Ruckus shirt? It turned out that at another venue, while opening a door, was afraid he'd be slammed under, so he asked for a little assistance this time. While Rapture Ruckus was getting all their stuff set up, knowing they're from New Zealand (you don't have to know that to know they're foreign, their accents make it obvious, but I almost thought their lead singer was from Ireland!), I decided to make jokes with my "professional" linguistic skills (spoke a touch of Japanese, Norwegian, and Russian, along with English) and it got everyone surprised and amused.
Cut to 5 hours later, start of concert. Rapture Ruckus was up first, it'd been four, maybe five years since the last concert I was at (Skillet's Comatose concert at the Veteran's House in Huntington, WV), so it took quite a bit of time for me to get myself loose enough to headbang and Rock On with my fist in the air (I still feel it in my neck and right elbow...). Nonetheless, I was immensely surprised at all the energy the dude has! And anyone who wonders why a Christian music artist keeps praising God, it's not entirely because it's "in the contract" as the cop-out goes. I did a little research on the band, and their singer, Brian, had suffered from drug abuse when, at 18, he was challenged by a good friend who's a Christian on where hise life was heading. At that, he went to a church, committed his life to God. So, why constantly praise God in the music? As a public celebration, an energetic acknowledgement that your life is no longer the same, and that you have no shame about it.
Yet, the biggest thing that happened to me wasn't all the intense energy that kept flowing out and everybody rocking it out, it happened about five songs into Fireflight's playing time. Saw a little girl that was anxious to get up front, so I shifted to the "side" (if you can call it that in an open area like a mosh pit) and let her go on. A few minutes after she thanked me twice (the first time I was headbanging and she didn't know I saw her), I had the feeling she wanted to get further up, so I tapped a guy ahead of me on his arm, then tapped the girl on her shoulder, gesturing to her to go on ahead, the guy got the hint and waved her to go ahead, then she started going crazy right up front (there was no security guards at the stage). So, even with all the immense intensity and that electrifying concert that sparked this tiny town, it was helping a little girl from Enid, Oklahoma to have a better time than she would have if I hadn't let her go ahead.
After the concert, I was stunned to find out my own mother had been headbanging, while my stepdad couldn't (stiff back from work), but we all had a great time afterward nonetheless. Even managed to get pictures of the lead signer of Rapture Ruckus (my mom is in the picture, she got a picture of me with him on her phone), as well as with Cory Lamb (never heard his music before then, turned out to be really good inspirational rock). Post-concert, even had a great time helping the bands get their stuff packed up to get ready to hit the road. Told them all, "Wherever you're going after this, have a great time there."
And Adam from Fireflight? He told me to finish up on my book. Though he doesn't read fiction, it was awesome to hear a member of a great band say that to me anyway.

The testimony of yours truly

Before I post anymore posts (and I have many in mind), I do believe it's more credible to know who the speaker is than to simply take the words of the speaker to heart (so many dangers can happen that way).
So, onward I go to explain who I am and how I came to believe what I believe.
I was born in in the county seat of Muskingum County, Ohio- Zanesville, a rather large place, but not quite big enough to be considered a major city (it doesn't have any major skyscrapers, just plenty of  landmass). I was born to two different kinds of people-the religiously devout and the spiritual skeptic-and had a lot of pain growing up, mainly through my father (who turned me off from swearing, so if you met me and I hate cussing, it's not solely from my beliefs, it was from my father). My mother tried raising my brother and me in church, though it felt more like a religious obligation than out of goodwill or out of the heart. In other words, my brother felt like we were being forced into church. Personally, I wanted a way to get away from the pain.
At 11 years old, I found that way through my mom's boyfriend (Mom and Dad divorced in the late 80's, when I was just a toddler) who told me about being a Christian and asked me if I had ever been "saved". Funny thing is, even at that age, when no one had told me about the process, I knew deep inside how it worked, I hadn't heard about the concept of sin, yet maybe the pain had something to do with my already knowing something about it. So, instead of getting saved in a church, like most of the world would expect, I was saved in my mom's boyfriend's apartment in New Philadelphia, Ohio. Saved...
Or so I thought.
There were other concepts I hadn't heard of or would know for a while that I needed to know about- including false faith (psychosomasis, you could say), religiousity, being Pharisaic, etc.
For a full ten years, things would seem to happen that, logically were impossible- including times and incidents where I just knew-knew-that I shouldn't have lived through. At least three of such an event happening, yet I did live anyway. And other bizarre events that should have been impossible if life were as boring and expendable as I've heard in public school (yep, I was raised in a battle for the mind between creationism and evolution) had left me to believe.
Even though I hadn't read the Bible as much as it felt required to read (you know, at least some daily), I did know bits and pieces and when certain people would challenge me about what the Bible said (okay, it was just one person who had a degree that called him "Reverend") about homosexuality, I told him, "You're the reverend, you tell me." Really, I was onyl familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and their widely-known acts of perversion, not solely homosexuality, but also gang rape, pedophilia, etc. Yet, from the things that I did read, I decided to take a hint from King Solomon and do a prayer I had never heard anyone else do at that point- pray for wisdom over riches.
And I would get it in college, through the help of a great friend, Gerhard Esterhuizen. The leader of Marshall University CRU, he explained the many finer points of Christianity without sounding like a know-it-all theologian, he brought the Truth of the Scripture to us in a down-to-earth style that was easy to comprehend without watering it down (like I'd seen so many televangelists do, which disgusted me), including one MAJOR thing I was guilty of-legalism. I'd judged people in my mind for the slightest of things, even if they did those things by accident.
I hated and judged gays.
I hated science.
I hated. This. That. These. Those.
I was the epitome of what people hate Christians for without ever realizing it.
That year in college, I gradually changed. Then, at 21, when I moved to live in Huntington, WV (ever since the first time I saw it back in my Upward Bound days in high school, I knew I wanted to live there irregardless of how), it happened.
I picked up a copy of Christian Apologetics author Lee Strobel's new book, The Case for the Real Jesus, without knowing he was a Christian, just knowing a vague thing about him yet not remembering if he was a Christian or not. The moment before I opened the flap to read it, I knew and felt something- my mind was opening.
When I say felt, I don't mean in a metaphorical way, I mean literal- feeling something like a temperature shift in a specific area of my brain.
The moment before I opened that book, I thought this thought:
There will be one of four things that will happen when I'm done reading: I will either be an atheist, an agnostic (again, I was one for half a week, most depressing time in my life, and I was chronically depressed as a teen), or a Jew (thinking of believing in God, but not Jesus), or be a stronger Christian.
I would find out later that I had only "thought" I was a Christian. I had finally learned of false faith, and it was when I read an article in my Apologetics Bible titled "How can I really know?" that it finally clicked what I should do- stop being a fake and become a real deal for people.
I already had edgy Christian shirts, a decent selection of Christian books, knew (some) Scripture, always praying before meals, etc. Thing was, I realized I was being religious, which was never prescribed by Jesus to do. I was going by the rules more than anything.
I knew that it was, by far, time to change. So, right after reading that article, while keeping something in my that Gerhard had said ("when I gave my heart to God and Jesus, I didn't pray, I didn't say amen, I simply confessed and accepted him in my heart") and remembered how much of a strong, faithful Christian he was, I didn't put the "madatory" amen at the end of what I thought- I simply mentally confessed and accepted, and did feel something else- that burden Christians talk about? It felt like my body had a few pounds lifted, something like a spiritual Slim-Fast, essentially put.
Since then, I've come to learn much, oh so very much. Especially that there is an area where all those degrading stereotypes about Christians are true- at least in certain churches and areas. In fact, I'm living in such an area- the "Belt Buckle" of the Bible Belt, Oklahoma. And it's been a test of my faith to see such a terrible thing that some churches simply do not know how to operate spiritually (at all) while others are down-to-earth, Scriptually sound (and never watering it down), and get ripped left and right by the world. One such church I've been to operates as a coffee shop in OKC, called Valley Brook Vineyard Community Church, or Joe's Addiction Coffee Shop.
So, if anyone tries to offend me about being a Christian and get shocked that I can offend back, I just say this, "The world's been trying to offend me all my life- it's my turn now."

A new thought on horror

Quick word test, what do you think of when you read this oen word: horror?
Something like torture? Demons inflicting torment upon people? Serial killer doing mass murders? Something ritualistic and satanic? There are many things that one word has the potential to get us to think, btu these days, it seems to indicate cheesy ways bring in the money, show off new cinematic techniques of stripping flesh off, using weapons to kill people in some weird and disturbing ways.
It's sad what horror has become: a trivial laughable shadow of what it had once been.
When I was watching American Horror Story, I realized one interesting reason I enjoyed it- it was a throwback to old-fashion horror- not all the way obvious, but much of it in your mind. A lot of the horror is literally in your head. Kinda makes you think I'm calling you crazy, doesn't it? Well, True Blood tried to hard to get "mature" audiences to get scared... and get off. It turned me off. Despite all the rave reviews, it barely held my attention through the first season. Second season, since it dealt with cults (and one thing I like to study is cultic mindsets and mentalities) got my interest better, but all the sex talk, over-the-top swearing, and useless horror... it just couldn't keep me reeled in, so I was struggling to the last episode. Then the third season. Okay, okay, I only watched halfway through. It ended up having too much sex (felt formulaic), way too much swearing (who was coming up with the show? College frat boys trying to best each other's mouths?), and very little true horror.
AHS doesn't rely on the totally obvious. Yes, there's a naked man in the first episode, who's doing something with himself, but you don't see it. It's implied, plus he's crying. Grown "men" these days would be confused at why he's crying, after all, he has a smokin'-hot maid (literally in his eyes, she's old and ugly to everyone else) that he just about had sex with, so why's he crying? When you realize the multi-layered context (the cheating that occured beforehand, the family psychology, his problems with lusting, his desire to desire his wife, and so many other issues happening at once), you may come to realize what all really is happening. And that's just one element in this deep, thought-provoking horror show. After a couple of episodes, people suddenly thought it was ruined in its taste. Why? The start of the episode "Piggy, Piggy" starts with one of THE most controversial topics in modern America- school shootings. Columbine, for one. VA Tech, for another. And, very recently, a school in Cleveland, OH. It's tragic. Immensely. I have no kids yet, but Columbine happened when I was in the 5th grade, and it truly shocked us all how far the bullied would go. Do others in, then theirselves.
The start of the episode starts peacefully in a school library-
wait, I should start in the last few minutes of the previous episode, when a group of kids, during Halloween, start messing with Tate and his girlfriend, who's his psychiatrist's daughter, Violet. The kids really have no itnerest in Violet, but they want to torture Tate, who thinks they have some really good makeup. Then they realize he doesn't remember.
Remember what? Start of next episode, silence until a couple shots are heard, worrying the small group in the library, the sounds get closer and closer, the doors get blocked and everyone hides. The blocking's useless. Tate comes in, wearing makeup to make his face look like a skull, finds a student, doesn't say a thing, aims his shotgun and blasts away. You don't see it, but the body twitching and a sharp BANG says it enough for your mind to work the details. Everyone gets it. He never says a word in the process, which makes it even creepier. Effective horror.
Why include something so devastatingly tragic in a well-rated show? Well, for one, it is called American Horror Story, but for another, it's working our fears, the things that truly shake us, down to our bones and psyche. Its subtleties and layers truly give those who really pay attention massive chills. It also reminds me of Christian suspense author Travis Thrasher, known for bizarre stories like 40, Admission, The Solitary Tales, and Isolation, among others. In an interview, he was asked what he loved tow rite about, his response was very different from what I'm used to- he wants to explore our fears. Even in his early, love-based stories, he dealt with the theme of fear, even if as a subplot, he still wrote about it. And he does have a LOT of stories.
Essentially put, I've gotten fed up with how modern-day "horror" works and am glad for movies like Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and shows like American Horror Story, which rely on throwback methods and subtleties.
I'll admit, I even love the Paranormal Activity movies because of how subtle the demonology is in them. It has a much more realistic feel to them, showing a family that is as normal and American as can be, yet something's happening to them, demonic in nature.
Still horror, but another angle of it, and still effective.
I'm working on a lot of book ideas, most of them are Christian horror, and I want to write in the effective style, not rely on the cruddy formulas that Hollywood, anymore, goes with, which seems to predictable to even have a thrill factor, let give your spine chills like it did in the 70's and 80's (as far as I'm concerned, the 80's was the last decade of intelligent filmmaking before everyone wanted to grow up and lost their common sense along the way). Why write stories? Not just because I want to, but because I want to explore the harder questions (why do Christians expect people to go with the rules yet break them on their own? What really is real? What's the nature of demons and satanism? What drives our fears into existence? How does perception work? Why does the Church get so arrogant about "knowing" things when the Bible does state there are mysteries only God can know? What was the origin of the Pentagram before it became a Wiccan symbol? And on and on) and the best way I've found to do it is by storytelling. Granted, not all my stories are horror (there's a bit of sci-fi and historical mixed in), but why couldn't a Christian ask the real tough, stickler questions that shock us, or, as I've heard it put about the Bible, scare the HELL out of us? Because traditional Christian shouldn't ask the questions lest be rebellious?
Good thing I'm no traditional Christian, isn't it?

Christian horror- any merit/reality to it?

Try to imagine this, since I was a kid, I've enjoyed horror movies. Some I believe(d) are great masterpieces, others, I knew, were a waste of time and production money (remake of Piranha stands one of them). As a teen, I got into murder/mystery books, starting with Ted Dekker, then discovering Steven James, and even indie sci-fi author Kirk Outerbridge (his two books, Eternity Falls and The Tenth Crusader have immense and intense twists that ask real hard questions we should consider). The enjoyment lasted a pleasuring 5 years, then I found out something I had never really known before- some suspense had supernatural horror in it. Ted Dekker's "Adam" and Robin Parrish's "Nightmare" are great examples. So is the classic Christian masterpiece "This Present Darkness" by Frank Peretti, whatwith vivid descriptions of demons that can influence in specific ways and descriptions of actual battles of angels and demons fighting each other for the choices we humans make, from the mundane to the utmost important.
And then, I found out there's a controversy over Christian horror. What kind of controversy? The kind where traditional churches consider anything that's "horror" as Satanic. I have something to say to that: the Bible is filled with horror stories, many of which the church have no problems preaching on:
1. The most well-known, the Crucifixion of Jesus, dealing with grotesque public torture of an innocent man, wrongly accused and tried, beaten and stripped of flesh (literally) and forced to handle a truly heavy piece of wood that bears down on Him. Even when He's raised while nailed in the wrists (the Jewish view of that part of the arm is called the hand) and ankles, people are sneering and jeering at Him, challenging His divinity, especially the thief next to Him.
2. After a king has an affair with one of his soldiers' wife, he has his loyal soldier killed off, then starts to lose his sanity, and even goes to a spiritist (in the Bible, she's called a psychic or a witch, depending on the Version you read). What she summons is not what the Bible calls her "familiar spirit," but the actual spirit of king Saul's fallen soldier, which literally scares the living Hell out of her. This spirit wasn't supposed to appear, which could have made her wonder where her spirit contact was and how this one appeared. And what the spirit said shocked both the witch and his king.
3. A possessed man in a graveyard, no clothes at all, with superhuman strength no one can comprehend, tortures anyone who gets close to him, yet One manages to rid the demons within without harm.
4. And though there are literally hundreds of other horror stories, I'll leave with one last example, the very first: when perfection was tempted by evil incarnate and every perfect thing in this universe no longer knew perfection. Immortality, eradicated. Literal walks with God, etched out. Pure, untainted knowledge of anything, suddenly tainted and distorted where demons could play with people with twisted religions and rituals and reasons to hate one another.

All that to say, if you're goign to hate Christian horror, which does have Biblical ground to it, why not hate the Bible? Because you don't read it as horror? Many have and have painted terrifying portraits of the Crucifixion and Sheol, and worse. Now that I think about it, there was even a poetic description of an actual medical condition when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He was so strained with suffering, His own pores started bleeding, and he had to be tended by angels.

A great author underrated

Question for you: what kind of authors do you read? I don't mean genre-wise, I mean reputation and renown-wise?
Do you read extremely well-known authors like James Patterson, Ted Dekker, Stephenie Meyers, Cassandra Clare, and Anne Rice?
Or maybe widely-known yet not-quite-as-well-known authors Steven James, Stephen R. Lawhead, and Jim Butcher? The difference between the two sets? One set is mainstream known, the other is known on a more underground way, even though they're New York Bestsellers.
Then there are very lesser-known authors: Mike Duran, Kirk Outerbridge, Melanie, Jack Cavanaugh, Randy Alcorn, and Eric Wilson.
I'd like to have attention paid to that last author. I first heard of Eric Wilson when myspace still have popular life in it (once upon a time, I had one) and he sent me a friend request. I can only suppose he saw me on Ted Dekker's friends list and decided to take a chance. Why put it that way? At the time, he was on his way to release his fourth book (which was still a couple motnhs away from street release). At first, I wasn't sure what to think, books with titles like "Dark to Mortal Eyes," "Expiration Date," and "Best of Evil" seemed like very unusual titles to me. When I saw the cover of Expiration Date, I literally thought it dealt with zombies (it was during the start of that whole zombie-crazed movement in pop culture, not too long after The Dawn of the Dead remake came out on DVD), so I decided to try. Noticing that, somehow, it was the sequel to Dark to Mortal Eyes, I figured I'd read from the beginning. I'd read the Left Behind series and a couple of Ted Dekker books... but I was in no way prepared for what the pages in his debut book held: a deep story about a woman coming to find her father she never knew about, a man suspicious about this woman he'd never known of that's saying he's her father, and the timing with a vintner competition coming along making even more suspicious of her, and an old woman that knows too much about the man, not much about the young woman, and yet is about to unleash literal Hell on Earth in a very bizarre way.
How would this relate to a zombie book? Turned it doesn't, because Expiration Date had nothing to do with the crazed pop culture obsession with zombies, it dealt with something heavier, darker, and so much more important- whether we're dealing with fate or if we truly do have free will with a unique spiritual story: a man coming back to his hometown, only when he starts touching people's hands, he feels numbers burned onto his skin, yet nothing's there. I takes him a brief while to figure out what they really are, but dark spiritual forces are trying to trick everyone into no longer believing what he says (and using a different kind of trick than I've ever heard of) as well as a demon portraying a cruelly personal trick on him dealing with something tragic from his past.
A few books later, I start to notice something- his novels are interconnected in both overt and subtle ways. I got used to that with Ted Dekker's books, then found out that was inspired by Stephen King, but the connections between Eric's books blew my mind away. Characters that seemed to be one way in one book turn out to be something entirely different in another book, additional background given while kept  consistent in a "timeline" of sorts. And what I didn't know, I found out on his website. The connections I didn't pick up on threw me off, then I thought back to the stories and specific scenes and I realized how I hadn't picked up on them.
He has a few different series based in different genres: horror (Jerusalem's Undead Trilogy, The Senses Series [tragically short-lived for the talent he proved to have in the pages]), and suspense (The Aramis Black Series and the By The Numbers Series).
At this point, only his novelizations based on three Kendrick Brothers films (Flywheel, Facing the Giants, and Fireproof) and his latest two books (One Step Away and Two Seconds Late) I haven't read, I haven't had a chance to get my hands on them. The saddest part is, with how stickly the publishing industry's getting due to the digital revolution, it's getting harder for his books to get noticed.
Luckily, I'm a shameless author and book promoter, that's why I'd like to ask you a favor:
Check out his books and consider his latest book. An industry full of double standards and other such issues won't find much reason to publish something all the way if not too many people aren't interested (a couple good authors got lost in the mix a few years back because they didn't get attention at all).
If you'd like a link to his latest book, here it is:
http://www.amazon.com/Two-Seconds-Late-Eric-Wilson/dp/1613280378/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330195282&sr=8-1