“In 2019, Bethel orchestrated what can only be described as a modern-day necromantic ritual. A two-year-old girl had died suddenly, and rather than mourn as Christians—clinging to the hope of the resurrection to come—they launched a social media campaign under the hashtag #WakeUpOlive. They danced. They sang. They commanded her lifeless body to rise….”
(The Dissenter) In the ancient world, the sick and dying would embark on desperate pilgrimages to the sanctuaries of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. These were not hospitals. These were temples—shrines of mysticism where hope and illusion walked hand in hand. Scattered across Greece, with major centers in Epidaurus, Kos, and Pergamon, these sites lured the suffering with empty promises of divine intervention, wrapped in elaborate rituals and sacred theater. Continue reading