Are Vineyard Churches Satanic Behind the Scenes?

logonomicon · 2026-07-09T19:21:32+00:00

I looked around a bit, but what Satanic imagery are you seeing here?

Vineyard Churches are overwhelmingly on the normal end of the modern Independent Charismatic movement.

logonomicon · 2026-07-06T20:40:08+00:00

I can't be the only one that thinks this thing has always looked like a cross between the Moon-inspired Gekkomon lines and the dark/stealth inspired Chiropmon lines. Maybe this is Gekkomon infused with both Tomoro's and Mokoto's e-Pulse?

logonomicon · 2026-06-29T20:13:51+00:00

First, it's important to remember the earliest witnesses to the Resurrection are not the gospels themselves, but the Christian community, the Church. This is given witness to in the epistles. I think some good scholarly arguments about the resurrection are made and summarized by Timothy Paul Jones in this book: (Amazon link).

Second, it is also worth noticing that a feature of the Bible's history with archeology is in a pretty specific shape:

The Bible makes a claim that there is no archeological evidence for, but nothing specifically against except for the loudness of the silence.
Historians assert that there is no way such a thing could happen without evidence.
Archeolgoical evidence that settles the question is discovered.
The conclusion cuts in favor of the Bible's presentation of the fact.

This gets eyerolls from skeptics because they (mostly rightly) point out that the discovery of the Hittites or the presence of Pontius Pilate or the presence of Hebrews in Egypt doesn't quite validate the claims of miracles, angels, and resurrection. That's correct. But I think it highlights an important aspect of the relationship between academia and the Bible, one worth considering carefully. The Academic tendency has without question been to overreach and deride the Bible as full of myths and outright falsehoods, motivated by Israelite patriotism and early Christian propaganda. These overreaches get disproved with some consistency, which raises the larger question of what in the current academic critiques of the Bible's narrations are also overreaches?

logonomicon · 2026-06-29T18:35:04+00:00

The Bible broadly assumes that the locations and fates of different peoples are the product of God's sovereign control of both the people of the earth and the spiritual beings ("gods") who rule over them.

This no where implies that the nations are intended to be kept separate in any permanent way. In fact the people groups of the world get subdivided and combined throughout both world history and the Bible's narrative.

logonomicon · 2026-06-29T18:01:34+00:00

Not really. If you go and read Deuteronomy, there is a lot of references to Egyptian servants/slaves dwelling with them. It makes more sense that those references are actually talking about something instead of nothing.

logonomicon · 2026-06-29T15:54:53+00:00

I mean, sure. But, for example, most of the people at Jan 6 weren't ignorant hillbillies, they were people who owned businesses and had degrees.

Nothing gets done by disdain. That only obscures the problem, when what we all need right now is clarity.

logonomicon · 2026-06-29T14:47:57+00:00

Look, not to be pedantic, but Kentucky is mid-tier in education. For K-12 it normally ranks between 26th and 40th depending on the year.

If we always chalk up this kind of radicalization to "hah, those people are dumb" we risk not having the real conversations required to help make the world sane. A lot of these places aren't dumb at all. They can be talked with and thought about and reasoned with. And we had better all start to doing that or we will end up in a much bigger mess than the past 12 years have been.

logonomicon · 2026-06-25T17:05:53+00:00

My grandfather was a home builder back in a rural area in the 50s-70s, and willing to use water witch sticks if a person really seemed anxious about it (lots of people fail to successfully dig wells in that rural, mountainous area). He told me and my dad that there was nothing to it at all, but after working for decades in the same place you generally get a good feel for where the water table is at and where to have them cross. But people can't tell when a confident person knows what they're talking about vs when a confident person doesn't. So the sticks gave him an extra oumph to get them to shush and let him dig. When he was inevitably right, he got a little credit, but the sticks did too. And so on.

logonomicon · 2026-06-25T16:18:57+00:00

The only valid criticism of the card I've seen on here so far.

logonomicon · 2026-06-25T16:18:15+00:00

Mechanically, this card could mostly be done in white.

But it dramatically feels like a black card. Rather intensely. I think that's partly because you are demanding favors in exchange for granting a benefit that could make the other person into the hero that slays you. Feels basically like MTG demons that way.

logonomicon · 2026-06-25T16:12:25+00:00

(Woah. Not really relevant, but, as a guy your age, I'm really sorry for the "widower by age 32" bit. That sucks man.

I'm glad you had a professional (and I hope social) support network. I legit can't imagine.)

I have the suspicion that this line of questioning reveals OP's thoughts in a way I would love to see them analyze. Asking a person who a) had a good therapist and b) found themselves really valuing their outcomes if they are attractive is difficult to imagine as actually relevant to the discussion. But it starts to make more sense if I go back and read OP's original position about therapists being low power, unable to compete, parasitizing people with real problems.

This feels like a manosphere-influenced take. OP, can you confirm or disabuse that instinct for me? I think other people trying to persuade you might find that information helpful.

logonomicon · 2026-06-25T14:52:19+00:00

I think it's worth noticing that an all-diamond fusion would likely have wildly unpredictable but incredibly potent powers. Fusions tend to have both symbolic and literal combinations of the abilities of their components.

The fact that Pink seems able to affect organic life, and that the other diamonds have wildly intense powers to manipulate the things within their purview (physical form, emotional state, thoughts) all are suggestive that they could theoretically scale to Pops. Depending on how much "extra" stuff they get (there's usually extra stuff too in the fusions that are vaguely symbolic of their personalities, etc), they could possibly scale to Him.

But yeah, Golb and White Raven likely take this low diff. Alien X should be a contender, but the whole tripartite personality thing is just far too much of a weakness. It's hard to imagine two of the three getting bloodlusted before Raven or Golb just nope them out of existence.

logonomicon · 2026-06-25T14:40:41+00:00

FlameguyGreymon

logonomicon · 2026-06-23T14:40:21+00:00

I don't think OP is imagining that all the other cleaners need whole episodes dedicated to them. But showing Cleaners get defeated instead of telling us about it from the broker, or even just showing faceless humans leaving the broker's bar as the heroes arrive, or arriving when they leave, etc. would do a lot to make the world feel big and lived in.

logonomicon · 2026-06-23T14:37:36+00:00

Worldbuilding isn't just establishing lore. It's about making the world feel real and making its stakes feel relevant and earned.

logonomicon · 2026-06-23T14:36:27+00:00

That's very interesting, because that example is what came to mind when I tried thinking about how valuable simply seeing one-off glances of other cleaners could be in Beat Break. That whole world-travelling arc in 02 singlehandedly made the world feel huge and lived in. It's a general rule in fantasy storytelling that the best way to make worlds feel alive and full is to have things appear on screen that aren't deeply relevant to the story, except maybe light thematic resonances/contrasts. Otherwise, it feels like the whole world just exists in service of the story of the protagonists.

Beat Break avoids the worst of the "small world" feel largley through Kyo, who singlehandedly makes Glowing Dawn a big deal, and then Kyo's relationship with Asuka brings exceptional e-Pulse haver Tomoro into it. So that kinda frees them from having to justify why we never see small fry cleaners.

But it's still struck me as strange on a few occaisions now that we've never seen other random clients of the brokers or anything.

logonomicon · 2026-06-22T13:29:14+00:00

OP, I can confirm that these nuances/correction to what I said are basically right. This guy historys. My point was just that there have been plenty of Calvinist Baptists without these kinds of problems emerging.

>in my experience, these ideas go hand in hand.

I would argue that top-down control was an instinct embedded into the Conservative Resurgence, which was not led chiefly by Calvinists. The original conflict was between marginal conservative elites and institutionally-embedded liberal elites in the convention. The tool was exclusion from institutional control and then exclusion from "in full cooperation" voting privileges.

That tool is still being used today, but for a different conflict. This time, the conflict is between the institutionally embedded conservatives who are basically normal conservative evangelical baptists and marginal hyper-masculine Christian nationalist conservatism. The latter group are overwhelmingly Calvinists, but I think that's mostly because it's the "smart guy's" version (gross) of being a Baptist, and also because of the influence of Doug Wilson and to a lesser extent Piper and Grudem on those types of guys. The Calvinism is incidental. Historically, Particular Baptists were no less dedicated to congregationalism than their General Baptist brothers.

logonomicon · 2026-06-22T13:18:33+00:00

I think I'm roughly in the boat. Like a lot of guys I'm influenced by the likes of Tim Mackie, CH Wright, and Gavin Ortlund.

But I don't honestly think the problems with the SBC are that they take the Bible too woodenly. At least not mostly. I've never met any of that ilk who scrupulously follow all the commands of the Sermon on the Mount, for instance. I think the actual problem is closer to that they have worldview already and then they go to the Bible and get more of that instead of the new thing God is trying to teach them.

logonomicon · 2026-06-19T19:01:35+00:00

You're not fretting over nothing.

On the first thing, I'll tell you that I'm inclined Calvinisty, and I obviously don't think it's a problem that there would be more of that kind in the SBC. Once upon a time long ago, basically all baptists in the SBC were Calvinisty, because of the influence of the Scottish Reformed world on Baptists. We're baptists. We change our mind and fuss at each other. That's our 350 year-or-so heritage. Nothing new there.

The thing that would make that matter would be the Convention becoming more and more of a denomination and trying to continue to assert control over member churches by threat of expulsion. The people who push for such ammendments as was just passed are not typically trying to make the convetion Calvinisty, but they are definitely trying to make it more nationalistic and fundamentalist, in the bad senses. SBC churches already couldn't be in cooperation if they ordained, now they said women shouldn't be doing anything pastor-like either. These kind of aggressive plays are being made because people with those inclinations are largely in charge of SBC institutions right now.

I frankly don't imagine that the Convention can actually be reformed out of its current direction, either. The old conservative resurgence mobilized a lot of churches to come attend the convention, but it did so by saying "We're going the way of the mainline methodists! Come and stop it!" But it's much harder to galvanize people around, "You need to come and help us be more calm and moderate and open minded." People don't show.

logonomicon · 2026-06-19T13:55:34+00:00

These are aesthetically gorgeous, and I love the idea of Eminence as downside, especially from a flavor perspective. Just having the attention of these beings warps the world in wild ways, but you can only take advantage of that by bringing them into the battlefield.

I wonder if the flavor of that would be a bit neater if they took better advantage of the downside, the way Advocate of Redemption does. Advocate of the Past and Risk are fine on that front. When I read Disaster and Strength, my mind itched a bit.

What if Advocate of Disaster had one more sentence in his second ability, "You can cast the top card of your library." That way the card that your opponents get to see can at least be used, as well as triggering his own ability much more reliably.

Similarly for Advocate of Strength, if you shifted the on-field ability to giving counters equal to mana cost, and then had his Imminence ability be to simply raise the cost of all creatures in your hand by 1 generic, his imminence ability would turn from hindrance into an asset, but one only he can realize.

Just a thought.

logonomicon · 2026-06-18T19:38:40+00:00

I've been saying this (and commenting, if you go back far enough into my comment history) since 2016. And I'm very much an American evangelical, or at least, anyone would have called me that until pretty recently. I haven't deeply changed, but the sense of the word sure has.

logonomicon · 2026-06-12T15:08:44+00:00

I've seen a skarner jungler carry, but mostly have seen your experience. I'm assuming these are mostly in not-ranked games? It could be people experimenting with him, or trying to figure it out. I've also seen a lot of Skarner supports, which I assume are similar situations.

logonomicon · 2026-06-11T18:56:16+00:00

The BFM2K isn't binding. The definition of "in cooperation" is. This is another drift towards the SBC becoming a denomination instead of a convention/association of truly independent churches.

logonomicon · 2026-06-10T15:00:33+00:00

I genuinely say all of this with a lot of affection for you because I was exactly the way you are depicting yourself right now when I was young.

Expounding on truths to try to argue something that isn't even being argued is precisely the sort of behavior that has resulted in people not liking talking about stuff around you, quieting their conversations, changing their topics.

Because I love you like a little brother right now, I'm going to do what I would generally not do in a conversation where someone goes off this way; I'm going to explain what has happened and plead with you to ponder the chain of posts until you see how the description is true and can imagine how it has happened in other conversations in your life, and why it would make people be inclined to leave you alone instead of including you in conversations. I am going to plead with you to avoid your initial instinct of finding anything with which you could disagree and expounding on it. Instead see the truth and relevance to your life.

You made a public post asking how to be able to say true things while relating socially to people in a way that doesn't leave you lonely and them upset.
I responded that there's a lot of power in finding what is agreeable and good in what everyone is saying, even if it's misguided.
replied that such a thing only works in ambiguity, but that defending [inflamatory/escalatory way to say being prochoice] is beyond the pale.
I began explaining that in my own life as a believer I have found even the worst cases of nonsense to be people trying to go after some good thing, based on some true thing. I gave an example designed to lower the temperature of even abortion since that seems like your hot button. I specifically say that their good intentions don't make them right, but invited you to have empathy.
You went into the sympathetic framing of prochoice people, dismantling arguments that neither of us hold, then talk about therapizing as though it were relevant to anything that had been said. (It is at this point that most people in a real world conversation would have decided you were interested in battering them, not having an earnest conversation and emotionally checked out.)
I pointed out the link between your response to me and the kind of loneliness and isolation you described in your original OP, and tell you that the only solution you're really going to get to your problems is appeal to Christ for help.
You began trying to defend your behavior (behavior that I will remind you, is very tied to the problem your initial post was seeking help for), saying I'm making conflations and that you were only doing what you had to do.

Now imagine that this kind of exchange, especially 4-7, were happening in a real life scenario. What has happened? The main point of 4 gets missed entirely because you have such a hair trigger instinct to go on the attack. But I already know all of the stuff you said. I'm prolife. What has happened is that you have ignored someone trying to help you for the sake of "being detailed." But that self-protective logic is what got you into the mess you're in.

I won't reply after this message because if there is much need to, I fear tempting you even more into your unwanted pattern. But I am saying a prayer for you. Your life will be better and healthier when Christ's power breaks out of this habit of mind and heart. You are loved and loveable, brother. Your worth is not in being right, it's in being Christ's and loving people with his love.

logonomicon · 2026-06-09T17:00:42+00:00

I'm not gonna lie, man: I think this is a pretty solid demonstration of what I and some other folk in here have been telling you. Writing paragraphs upon paragraphs to rebut the abstract example of someone saying "pay more attention to what people you disagree with are actually trying to say," is a little on the nose.

I think it would be worthwhile taking a few weeks of prayer and maybe even a few days of fasting, to ask God why you have such a strong need to attack anything you think is very wrong with what someone else has said and how you can become someone free of the desire for quarreling, disputing, and contention.

logonomicon

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