The Golden Compass-Part 1

Best-selling children’s author Philip Pullman’s trilogy appropriately entitled, His Dark Materials, has already been read by millions of children.

It is more popular in Great Britain than Harry Potter and is quickly gaining momentum in the USA. Pullman admitted in 2003, “My books are about killing God,” and further stated that his objective is to get our children to “decide against God and the kingdom of heaven.”

The trilogy is now being made into a movie series like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, with the first installment, The Golden Compass, due out on December 7. This will be just in time for children who see the movie to beg their parents to stuff their stockings with Pullman’s entire trilogy or video game for Christmas morning. Is this really a movie that sensible and loving parents want their children to see this Christmas season? Or, is The Golden Compass, seriously misdirected?

To be sure Pullman’s, Golden Compass, will prove to be a seductive and entrancing story for children as it employs hyper fantastical elements that reinforce the allure for power through communion with “daemons” while at the same time offering release from moral constraints given by God. Many children, like some adults, are easily lulled into a desire for power and would love to believe they could jettison moral values and acceptable ranges of behavior because they don’t have to answer to God or their parents. In a day and age where drive-by and school shootings are becoming common, do we really want to throw gasoline on a fire that is already raging by teaching our children that they can act wickedly without penalty or harm?

Pullman declares emphatically that, “I am all for the death of God” (books.guardian.co.uk). The bible teaches that God is holy, just, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and full of mercy. Pullman says, “… if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against.” Do not be deceived, Pullman is targeting you and your children, “I wanted to reach everyone,” he says, “and the best way I could hope to do that was to write for children.”

While many parents may find the first installment of His Dark Materials non-offending, the truth is that it is part and parcel of a series that is meant to string an audience along until they are totally turned against God and the Christian faith. Since Scientologist, Nicole Kidman, who plays a leading role in, The Golden Compass, has stated that the movie version of Pullman’s work, “has been watered down a little,” some unsuspecting parents may believe that it is somehow safe for their children. Chris Weitz, the director and screenwriter of the film adaptation of Pullman’s, The Golden Compass, has stated, “All my best efforts will be directed towards keeping the film as liberating and iconoclastic [God destroying] an experience as I can.” While he has said, “there may be some modification of terms,” he also added, “I have no desire to change the nature or intentions of the villains of the piece, but they may appear in more subtle guises.”

Pullman has taken the title of his trilogy, His Dark Materials, from Milton’s classic, Paradise Lost. His Dark Materials, is a description originally used when Milton was describing Satan’s fall and subsequent decent into hell (Milton, Paradise Lost, book 2). This is fitting because Satan and his followers become the heroic characters throughout Pullman’s trilogy. Many caring parents however are unaware that Pullman’s, Golden Compass, is more than a simple children’s movie and is in reality, a well thought out piece of satanic propaganda. Sadly, because Pullman’s work openly blasphemes God and demeans traditional moral values, it is almost guaranteed rave reviews by many God-haters in the liberal establishment and mainstream media.

When Pullman admits that, “My books are about killing God,” and that he wants to move our children to “decide against God” we should know that he is not talking about Islam or one of the million Hindu gods but the Judeo-Christian God. Pullman’s blasphemous caricature of the one true God as revealed throughout the pages of Holy Scripture is evident through his repeated use of the biblical terms and names for God throughout his trilogy, i.e., Yahweh, Ancient of Days, Almighty, Adonai, Lord, El, King and Father.

Hollywood and the music industry have, of course, long been powerful tools of blasphemy against God and the glorification of occult themes. Yet never has such a blatant and audacious assault on the name of God been so well packaged and directed toward children while at the same time received such acclaim and fanfare from even the liberal elite. Pullman is the worst of pied pipers because he directs his poisonous venom at the most vulnerable among us, our children. He is aware that many young children lack discernment and seasoned critical thinking skills and thus hopes to gain a great victory in destroying their hope and faith in their Creator and Redeemer.

The first book in the trilogy, The Golden Compass, won the award for the best children’s novel in Great Britain. The second book in the series, The Subtle Knife, won the Parent’s Choice Golden Book Award. The last book in Pullman’s popular trilogy, The Amber Spyglass, was the first children’s book ever awarded Britain’s prestigious Whitbread prize, winning not only in children’s literature but in all other categories as well. It was dubbed "Britain’s book of the year." The Amber Spyglass has been ranked just behind Rowling’s Harry Potter books in the New York Times Book Review. The New York Times gives Pullman high marks for his blasphemous and perverse work claiming it to be, “very grand indeed” with “scene after scene of power and beauty.” Even though the Times acknowledges that “Pullman is devilishly inventive” and that his “thrillingly ambitious tale…may well hold the most subversive message in children’s literature in years.”

Where’s The Outrage?

Pullman’s attack on the faith of millions of children through his blasphemous diatribe against God is unconscionable and inexcusable. What is absolutely amazing is that while many Christians rightly took a stand against the glorification of witchcraft in the Harry Potter series (which the Scriptures declare categorically to be an abomination to God) many have embraced Pullman’s more blatantly satanic trilogy with open arms. One astonished film critic wrote, “Clergymen who kidnap children. Witches who aren’t wicked. Even a pair of sexually ambiguous angels. If you thought Harry Potter was blasphemous, wait till you get a look at [this] trilogy.”

Publisher’s Weekly, ran a story questioning why more people were not up in arms over the popular trilogy and concluded that no one’s really sure what the answer is. The Washington Post, also questions why more Christian’s aren’t speaking out. The Post states that the popular trilogy “subverts fundamental Western religious principles and is populated by compassionate witches, malevolent theologians and a feeble, disingenuous God.” The Post further stated, “While many readers might find such content objectionable, attacks on ‘His Dark Materials,’ have been few” and that “This is particularly surprising,” because, Harry Potter, which has been roundly criticized, is “relatively innocuous” compared to Pullman’s trilogy. It is a truly telling declaration regarding the lack of Biblical literacy and spiritual discernment in the church today when secular newspapers are stunned that so many Christian parents are allowing their children to read novels and watch movies where the underlying theme is to attack God, demean the Christian faith, and glorify the devil. Incredibly, Pullman himself is dumfounded that he has been able to slip his subversive message under the radar of so many Christian parents, boasting:

“I’ve been surprised by how little criticism I’ve got. Harry Potter’s been taking all the flak. I’m a great fan of J.K. Rowling, but the people – mainly from America’s Bible Belt – who complain that Harry Potter promotes Satanism or witchcraft… Meanwhile, I’ve been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God.” (The Sydney Morning Herald, December 13, 2003)

After a handful of readers had read Pullman’s second book in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, had the courage to point out that he was endorsing Satanism, Pullman stated, “My response to that was: ‘You haven’t read the whole story yet. You wait and see what happens in the third book.” Who is Pullman fooling? The third book became even more satanic! The Washington Post pointed out that the final volume concludes “with a great war in heaven that results in the death of God” (The Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2001). Rupert Kaye, CEO of the Association of Christian Teachers, has said that by the third installment of the trilogy, Pullman’s, “blasphemy is unfurled for all to see”. Pullman, who claims to be an atheist, not only misled his concerned readers but also has an admitted diabolical agenda regarding our children. Pullman is clearly an atheist in that he denies the God of creation but he seems quite spiritual as he has a penchant for bringing great glory to God’s greatest adversary, the devil. Craig Bernthal, professor of English at California State University, Fresno, says of Pullman’s trilogy, that it is “anti-Christian fantasy for children” wherein the church is vilified and “’Lucifer gets to win.” Of Pullman’s vicious attack and caricature of the church, Bernthal declares, “What Pullman attacks…lacks even the substantiality of a straw man.” Bernthal further states that Pullman’s story “is ultimately shallow.” Nevertheless, this will not stop the hordes of media pundits from christening the trilogy for the sheer reason that it is Antichrist and anti-Christian. Many of the liberals and politically-correct in popular media and education will see to it that our children get a hefty dose of Pullman’s propaganda in their own quest to undermine the Christian faith and the biblical basis for morality among our youth.

If you have been duped into rationalizing that fantasy is somehow harmless and believe that such books will not jeopardize your child’s faith you are tragically mistaken and even contradicted by Pullman himself!

In a rare moment of spiritual candor, Pullman admitted to The Washington Post that his underlying motivation for writing, His Dark Materials, trilogy for children was, “to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”

Pullman knew that others would see something quite sinister and diabolical in his work, “In trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief, Mr. [C.S.] Lewis would think I was doing the devil’s work.” (Wartofsky, Alona: ‘The Last Word’ in The Washington Post, 19 February 2001)

Pullman is not your run of the mill atheist, but seems to know deep down that he is indeed doing the devil’s work , stating in his interview with the Telegraph, “I am of the Devil’s party and know it.” Pullman does the Devil’s work by making his caricature of Satan, “Lord Asriel,” strong and heroic while making God a feeble tyrant: “They had no idea that they’d make the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn’t have anything like the knife…” (Philip Pullman. The Subtle Knife, p. 283)

No doubt we can chalk up much of the negligence of Christian parents pertaining to safeguarding their children from Pullman’s poisonous trilogy to ignorance in regard to what they are allowing their children to read or watch. Some will underestimate the power of fantasy to teach their children lies and allow Pullman to molest their children’s minds and souls. Yet, when Pullman is asked on his publisher’s website (Random House) if he wrote His Dark Materials as “fantasy,” he answers, “No. I think of it as stark realism…” (www.randomhouse.com) Satanist, Anton LaVey, who founded the Church of Satan, would have relished in Pullmans’ ability to turn little children from the worship of God to the worship of the Devil. LaVey said, “Fantasy plays an important role in any religious curriculum, for the subjective mind is less discriminating about the quality of its food than it is about the taste…Thus, fantasy is utilized as a magic weapon…” (Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Rituals, p. 15, 27).

No parent in their right mind would allow their children to eat food that contained poison and would jeopardize their child’s physical well being and possibly end their child’s life. We should be even more concerned about allowing our children to ingest spiritual poison that threatens their eternal souls. My hope and prayer is that this article will help inform, convict and encourage parents to do what is right in the eyes of God so that we will be better equipped and motivated to protect the precious children He has given into our care It should be understood that each of us who are parents will certainly stand before God to give an account for the way we have raised our children (Romans 14:12).

Pullman’s Cosmic Revisionism

Pullman’s blockbuster children’s trilogy resurrects elements of the long-debunked Gnostic heresy that turned everything upside down by calling good evil and evil good and by making villains into heroes and heroes into villains. In Pullman’s trilogy, God becomes evil and Satan becomes good. The hiss of the serpent morphs into the chorus of songbirds announcing a new day. Original sin becomes human liberation and the fall of humanity is recast as the way in, not out, of paradise. Rebellious and evil angels are transformed into freedom fighters that are here to save the day and demons are even transformed into angelic furry animals and friendly spirit guides. Those who love God are recast and repudiated with the most intolerant and vicious hatred while witches become the hope of the new world. It is in this "devilishly inventive" way that Pullman (who admittedly seeks “to undermine the basis of Christian belief”) subversively turns the affections and affinities of the young and unscrupulous from God to Satan, witches and demons.

One of Pullman’s adaptations of Milton’s, Paradise Lost, which allows Pullman to set the stage, is Satan’s temptation of the angels that he drew to destruction. Milton portrays Satan pulling off this deception against a third of the angelic host by deceiving them into believing that God is not truly their creator and persuades them to believe that they may have simply come about through natural processes on their own (sound familiar?). Thus Satan is able to persuade the angels to rebel against God by denying his sovereign right over their lives and that they were created by divine order. Pullman has one of his angels, representing Satan, describe God as a fraud who merely condensed from dust in the following manner:

“The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty – those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves – the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of dust as we are, and dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself.”

While Pullman’s revision of Genesis and the fall rehashes the satanic deception more elaborately than Milton in his poetry, there is an appalling difference. While Milton presents the satanic lie as a deception that denies angels a heavenly future, Pullman serves up this preposterous scenario to our children as though it were gospel truth. Ironically, the foundational teaching, “to undermine the basis of Christian belief,” in Pullman’s series is a lie from Satan in Paradise Lost. Pullman who declares that he is aware of the power of stories to "teach" is, in effect, teaching our children the most diabolical rebellion against their creator, their parents and the Christian faith. Pullman’s trilogy depicts the rebellious angels who defy God as heroic. They are led by the Satan figure, “Lord Asriel,” and seek the death of God as they enlist the other characters in the series to join their rebellious war on God. The series goes on to chronicle Lord Asriel’s quest to overthrow the “Authority” and set up his own kingdom known as the republic:

“I think he’s a-waging a higher war than that. I think he’s aiming a rebellion against the highest power of all. He’s gone a-searching for the dwelling place of the Authority Himself, and he’s a-going to destroy him…He’s going to find the Authority and kill Him…he’s Lord Asriel, he’s not like other men.” –Philip Pullman. The Subtle Knife, pp 40-42

While God is ridiculously portrayed as a dying wimp, Pullman of course has his Satan figure, called Lord! As the story continues to progresses as witches, who are depicted to be good even though they align themselves against God, are able to communicate with Satan’s fallen angels via computer. They declare that they are seeking revenge on God and they in turn join forces with the fallen angels. In time, creatures from parallel universes join in the rebellion against God seeking liberation from His moral law, which of course, is twisted and made to be immoral. This is where Lyra and Will come in; the two main characters of the trilogy. Lyra and Will are the new Adam and Eve and Lyra is said to be a reincarnation of the original Eve who partook of the forbidden fruit in obedience to the devil. Lyra and Will are the keys to successful rebellion against the “Authority,” or "God." If they can be seduced, Satan can win the day against the “Authority.” Another satanic figure named Mary is taught by the “shadows” that she is to “play the serpent” in seeking to seduce Will and Lyra. The fall from the “Authority” is depicted, as in other satanic literature, as a fall upward, being liberated from the repressive regime of the “Authority.”

Pullman, as the Gnostics of old, totally inverts the fall and claims that rather than “lead[ing] to sin, death, misery, hell…” the “temptation is wholly beneficent….[and is] a fall into grace, towards wisdom” (www.thirdway.org.uk). God’s Word warns that we are not to be deceived by Satan who continues to appear as an angel of light in order to deceive us in the same way he deceived Eve of old:

"But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ…And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve" –2 Corinthians 11:3; 14-15

It is amazing how well Phillip Pullman fits the bible prophecy quoted above as he seeks to initiate millions of children into the modern gnosis. Notice the positive spin that Pullman tries to give Satan on his publisher’s website as he depicts Satan as an angel of enlightenment rather than the deceiver he really is:

“So, for instance, the book depicts the Temptation and Fall not as the source of all woe and misery, as in traditional Christian teaching, but as the beginning of true human freedom something to be celebrated, not lamented. And the Tempter is not an evil being like Satan, prompted by malice and envy, but a figure who might stand for Wisdom.” –www.randomhouse.com

Pullman is basically teaching children that rebellion against the authority of God is good and liberating. In a webchat he justified rebellion against God and supported Satan’s reasoning with Eve by echoing Satan’s promise of knowledge to Eve in the garden of Eden. He stated that, “only when we lose our innocence, can we take our first steps towards gaining wisdom.” Pullman further asserts, “This is the moment when the two children begin to leave their childhood behind and this, to my mind, is what the story of Adam and Eve is all about. It’s the moment we left our childhood behind and began to grow up.” (www.bbc.co.uk). In his trilogy, growing up means rejecting the biblical God and giving ourselves over to the rebellion in a quest for esoteric or occult knowledge, while rejecting God’s moral commands, His authority and ultimately seeking to kill God off. My friends, this is no subtle deception!

Pullman has said that he wanted to make Lyra and Will easy to relate to for obvious reasons. He admitted, “Lyra is a very ordinary child and so is Will, and there are hundreds of thousands of millions of kids like Will and Lyra all around the place. The great things they do are doable by all of us…” The truth of the matter is that the first humans did not "grow up" but lost paradise; lost the Spirit of God; became miserable; grew old; and died horrible deaths. The promise of a better life in the name of being liberated from the Lord God led to their separation from all that was good, beautiful and alive. Their sin did not lead them to a beautiful world but to a world filled with thorns, thistles and pain. The reality is that Pullman is not leading our children to a better world for they too must die, and if they are led into rebellion against God and die in that rebellion God will give them over to the world they want. They will receive a world without His loving presence. A world filled with eternal darkness and despair. A world filled with everything that God is not, including the wicked hatred and eternal despair that fills those who hate God. The bible calls this new world "HELL" .

Pullman The God Killer

In Pullman’s story if the Satan figure, Lord Asriel and the fallen angels are going to finally be successful they are going to have to kill God. The rebel angels are bent on getting a special knife because it is the only weapon that can effectively kill God, hence the title of the second book in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife. The young man named Will (depicting Adam) must get the knife to the Satan figure, Asriel, so that he can do God in. The subtle knife is also named ‘Æsahættr’, which means ‘God-killer’. Of course Pullman can only kill God in his imagination and attempt to do so in the imaginations of the millions of children who are reading and watching his God-hating propaganda.

If Pullman is to make killing God palatable for his young and unsuspecting audience, he must make the impossible seem possible by diminishing His eternal power and glory. Next, he must get his mostly young and impressionable audience to sympathize with his cause by diminishing God’s goodness and characterizing Him as sinister and evil. He accomplishes both goals in depicting God as evil by having Him claim authority over the lives of others and as a lame fraud, in a way that is similar to the Wizard, in the Wizard of Oz. God is not only depicted as having a beginning like our own but he is portrayed as being doubly weak because he also does not have a future as he shown growing old and senile and is finally murdered at the hands of Lyra and Will (who you will recall, Mr. Pullman would have our children emulate!). in a world that infuses and overdoses our children with far more fantasy than reality, lines are easily blurred between right and wrong and good and evil. Sadly, Phillip Pullman is likely to make huge inroads in the hearts of countless children in his war on God.

Pullman And Bad Science

Since Pullman has admitted that his stated goal is to undermine the Christian faith, it is no wonder that he cast heroic characters like Mary Malone, as a scientist who has turned her back on God and ends up serving the fallen angels. Satan’s angels instruct her to play the part of the serpent in tempting Lyra. Malone tells Lyra that, “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all” (Pullman, The Amber Spyglass, p. 441). At least Pullman admits through one of his heroes that the Christian faith is both powerful and convincing, because this can hardly be said of his comic revisionism.

Unfortunately it is Pullman’s reliance on long-debunked and outdated science that becomes foundational to his con. Pullman, as we have discovered, teaches his audience that God came on the scene after matter was already in existence and organized, presumably from the eternal past. Many atheists gambled their eternal souls on the so-called “steady-state” theory that hypothesized that matter was eternal and not created. However today, even atheistic scientists who subscribe to the "big bang" theory now acknowledge the existence of a first cause that brought time, space and matter into existence. Einstein stated that he wrongly subscribed to a cosmology that assumed that the universe had no beginning. In fact, he admitted that his subscription to the theory of a “cosmological constant” had been the “biggest blunder” of his life. Einstein went on to claim that the existence of a creator was highly evident in the construction of the cosmos. As the renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking admitted, “So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose a creator.” By adopting eternal matter and the now woefully outdated “steady state” hypothesis, atheists could do away with the idea of the “Authority,” even as Satan in Paradise Lost sought to get those he was deceiving to believe that God did not create the universe. So Pullman offers nothing new, only false pseudo-science and snake oil.

Spontaneous generation is yet another scientific blunder that has been repudiated yet Pullman nevertheless adapts the pseudo-science into his fantasy as though it were a plausible reality. Atheists in the past denied creation by divine fiat and came up with the theory that life spontaneously generated out of dead matter. However, in the 19th century, Louis Pasteur and other scientist proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the theory of spontaneous generation categorically false. They demonstrated that life does not arise from non-life and complex cells and organisms do not spontaneously generate from dead matter. While scientist in the laboratory have longed proved this notion false, every day the laboratory life itself demonstrates the incontrovertible evidence for the law of biogenesis which states that life comes from life. This bears eloquent witness to the need for an eternal creator, a creator without a beginning or end, indeed, “from everlasting to everlasting.”

The third scientific blunder that Pullman draws upon in his effort to kill God with his not- so-subtle knife, is the theory of alternative universes. Some atheists, in their effort to run from the evidence, have fantasized about alternative universes that are not dependent upon a beginning or the same known scientific laws that would demand a creator. In so doing, they are able to live in an alternative universe that exists only in their minds and ignore the evidence of the authority of a creator revealed through the things made in the known universe (Romans 1:18-32). Even though such theories only exist in the imaginations of men, they play naturally into Pullman’s fantasy world as he seeks to deny the existence of God in his mind and in the minds of the children he is deluding.

Read The Golden Compass-Part 2 >>