People of the Keys!

“He saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.”
(Revelation 22:10)

The Time Is At Hand

Dear Friends,

Greetings. “The time is at hand”. The Bible says in 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”

In our first article below, researched and written by Tom Horn and Chris Putman, “Nephilim As “Space Saviors” For Man's Salvation”, they bring out the rather astonishing view the Vatican, i.e. the Catholic Church appears to be taking concerning extraterrestrials and their place in the salvation of mankind.

Two important quotes from their article reads; “Top Vatican Astronomer Guy Consolmagno stated how contemporary societies may soon “...look to The Aliens to be the Saviours of humankind.” and former Vatican Observatory vice director, Christopher Corbally, in his article “What if There Were Other Inhabited Worlds” may have summarized the most important aspect when he concluded that Jesus simply might not remain the only Word of salvation.”

The Bible is very clear in Acts, chapter 4, stating without question: “There is none other name (Jesus) under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

From Wikipedia: “The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with more than one billion members worldwide. It is among the oldest institutions in the world and has played a prominent role in the history of Western civilisation. The Catholic hierarchy is led by the Pope and includes cardinals, patriarchs and diocesan bishops. The Church teaches that it is the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ, that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles and that the Pope is the sole successor to Saint Peter who has apostolic primacy. The Church maintains that the doctrine on faith and morals that it presents as definitive is infallible.”

If, the largest “Christian” organization on earth were to teach that man can achieve salvation some other way than through Jesus, this would be an extremely significant event.

Look at the verses below to help understand the immensity of the deception that is at hand.

"For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."

Matthew 24:24

"For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect." Mark 13:22

"Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders."

2 Thessalonians 2:9

"And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live." Revelation 13:13-14

"And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Revelation 16:13-14

"And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." Revelation 19:20

An interesting quote from D.B. Berg from 1978, thirty-five years ago, that relates to the idea of salvation through an alien invasion follows below.

“The devil is going to really put on some phenomenal manifestations in the Last Days...

Invasion from outer space, what a way for the antichrist to arrive! Just like the second coming of Christ, to arrive like he was coming from outer space, like he was a superior being, a higher intelligence arriving from some other planet to solve the world's problems. What a way for him to come!

Imitate the coming of Christ and make it all sound scientific so the people would believe him. Most people will believe anything that smacks of science or sounds scientific. If it smacks of religion or spirituality or anything like that, many people will not accept it. If they can just make it sound and look scientific, then the people will receive him as a superior being who has come to help solve all these terrible problems we have, like a God.

He will be like a God to them, but he will try to put it in a plausible scientific form that people will believe. The antichrist will be sort of a scientific God, if you want to put it that way.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the antichrist, the devil incarnate, is going to stage some kind of phoney invasion from outer space. In a way, since that's the devil and his demons, the fallen angels, they are from outer space. but he is going to use human beings by possession, and is somehow going to capture this man, this human that he's going to use for the antichrist.

He is going to work all kinds of miracles and do all kinds of wonders.” (Rev. 13:13) D.B. Berg 1978.

Our second article from the Daily Mail in London is titled: Spiritual people are more likely to be mentally ill” . It pretty much speaks for itself and continues to show the direction the world is heading. We are in good company with the apostle Paul, whom while witnessing the truth of Christ was reproved by Festes who exclaimed,

Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.” Acts 26:24

Also included in the introduction this week is a short inspirational talk by Pastor Steven Furtick on “The Privilege of Knowing”.

Have a great week ahead.

The Privilege of Knowing

January 3, 2013

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.”1

There’s a reason God’s will in specific situations is so difficult to know sometimes. There’s a reason that not everything is black and white. It can be difficult to discern God’s will for a lot of situations.

Who to date.

Where to go to college.

Who to marry.

Where to move.

What job to take.

And it’s not because you’re not praying. You’re probably praying a lot. It’s not because you don’t want to know His will. You probably aren’t lacking that desire.

But according to this verse in Proverbs, it’s because God conceals.

But why? After all, that seems counterintuitive to God’s purposes and using you in them.

The reason isn’t because God doesn’t want you to know His will. He wants you to know it more than you want to know it. God has something so much greater for you instead.

Him.

God’s not up in heaven hiding His will, hoping you’ll never be able to find it. But He does play hide and seek. He doesn’t just want us to find His will, He wants us to find Him in the process. Because if His will was in plain view, we would seek it instead of seeking Him.

That’s why He conceals it. That’s why it’s so hard.

The point isn’t for God to make His will plain. His will isn’t the main objective. He is the main objective. He wants you to discover Him above all else.

As you run after God and His good, pleasing, and perfect will, remember these two truths:

God isn’t the shortcut to your best life. He is your best life.

God doesn’t want to give you the guide for your life. He wants to be your Guide.

The scariest possibility for your life isn’t getting God’s will wrong. It’s getting God’s will right but barely coming to know God in the process.

You could love the right woman but lose your first love.

You could find the right career but then make it your god.

That’s why He doesn’t just write His will for you in the clouds. At the end of the process, He wants you to know something far greater than what you should do next with your life.

He wants you to know who He is.

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Raidersnewsupdate.com

Nephilim As "Space Saviors" - For Man's Salvation

By Tom Horn & Cris Putnam

In our last entry top Vatican Astronomer Guy Consolmagno stated how contemporary societies may soon "look to The Aliens to be the Saviours of humankind." [i] To illustrate the theological soundness of this possibility, Consolmago argues that humans are not the only intelligent beings God created in the universe, and, he says, these non-human lifeforms are described in the Bible. He starts by pointing to angels then surprises us by actually referencing the Nephilim:

Other heavenly beings come up several times in the Psalms. For example, look at the beautiful passage in Psalm 89 that calls out, "Let the heavens praise your wonders, 0 Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord? ... The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it -you have founded them." Likewise, God asks Job (38:7) if any human can claim to have been around at the creation, "when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy ."

Are these "heavens," "holy ones," those "in the sky," the "morning stars ... and heavenly beings" more references to angels? Or do they refer to some other kind of life beyond our knowledge?

...And these are not the only non-human intelligent creatures mentioned in the Bible. There's that odd, and mysterious, passage at the beginning of Genesis, Chapter 6, that describes the "sons of God" taking human wives. With it is a frustratingly oblique reference to "The Nephilim ...the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown ."

Most Biblical scholars suggest that the Nephelim and the Sons of God in Genesis can be explained away as a left-over reference to the creation stories of the pagans who surrounded ancient Israel, that they were written by the kind of people whose culture saw anyone Not Of My Tribe as being unspeakably alien. Likewise, the references to heavens and stars singing and praising the Lord can be seen simply for the beautiful poetry that it is.

But whether you interpret these creatures as angels or aliens doesn't really matter for the sake of our argument here. The point is that the ancient writers of the Bible, like all ancient peoples, were perfectly happy with the possibility that other intelligent beings could exist. [ii]

Read that again, then ask yourself: Did the Vatican's top astronomer actually mean to use the story of the Nephilim from the Bible as an example of the kind of "space saviors" man could soon look to for salvation? This incredible assertion is only topped by what he says next. In quoting John 10:16, which says, "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd," Consolmago writes: "Perhaps it's not so far-fetched to see the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word, Who was present "In the beginning" (John 1: l), coming to lay down His life and take it up again (John 10: 18) not only as the Son of Man but also as a Child of other races?" [iii]

Do Vatican scholars actually believe Jesus might have been the Star-Child of an alien race? Does Consolmagno and/or other Jesuits secretly hold that the "Virgin Birth" was in reality an abduction scenario in which Mary was impregnated by ET, giving birth to the hybrid Jesus? As incredible as that sounds, you should prepare for the unexpected answer as this series unfolds.

All this would seem impossible theology if not for the fact that other high ranking Vatican spokespersons--those who routinely study from the "Star Base" (as local Indians call it) on Mt. Graham--have been saying the same in recent years. This includes Dr. Christopher Corbally, Vice Director for the Vatican Observatory Research Group on Mt. Graham until 2012, who believes our image of God will have to change if disclosure of alien life is soon revealed by scientists (including the need to evolve from the concept of an "anthropocentric" God into a "broader entity"), [iv] and the current Vatican Observatory director, Father JosÃ¨ Funes who has gone equally far, suggesting that alien life not only exists in the universe and is "our brother" but will, when manifested, confirm the "true" faith of Christianity and the dominion of Rome. When the L'Osservatore Romano newspaper (which publishes nothing that the Vatican doesn't approve) asked him what this meant, he replied: "How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere? Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation"[v] and believing in the existence of such is not contradictory to Catholic doctrine. [vi]

Brother Guy Consolmagno with Pope Benedict XVI

Such statements are but the latest in a string of recent comments by numerous Vatican astronomers confirming a growing belief (or inside knowledge?) that disclosure will be made in the near future of alien life, including intelligent life, and that this encounter will not challenge the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

From the 70s through the 90s, it was Monsignor Corrado Balducci--an exorcist, theologian and member of the Vatican Curia (governing body at Rome) and friend of the Pope--who went perhaps furthest, appearing on Italian national television numerous times to state that ETs were not only possible but already interacting with Earth and that the Vatican's leaders were aware of it. Furthermore, speaking as an official demonologist, he said that extraterrestrial encounters, "are not demonic, they are not due to psychological impairment, and they are not a case of entity attachment, but these encounters deserve to be studied carefully."[vii] He even disclosed how the Vatican itself has been closely following the phenomenon and quietly compiling material evidence from Vatican embassies (Nunciatures) around the world on the extraterrestrials and their mission [later in this research we will disclose the secret alien files the Vatican has been collecting since the 1950s]. For example, at a forum concerning the enormous UFO flap in Mexico, he stated, "I always wish to be the spokesman for these star peoples who also are part of God's glory, and I will continue to bring it to the attention of the Holy Mother Church."[viii] Whatever you make of his claims, Balducci was a member of a special group of consultants to the Vatican, a public spokesperson for Rome on the matter of extraterrestrial life as well as UFO and abduction phenomenon, and his assertions have never been contradicted by the Church.

Still, perhaps most intriguing was Catholic theologian Father Malachi Martin who, before his death in 1999, hinted at something like imminent extraterrestrial contact more than once. While on Coast to Coast AM radio in 1997, Art Bell asked Martin why the Vatican was heavily invested in the study of deep space at the Mt Graham Observatory we visited. As a retired professor of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Martin was uniquely qualified to hold in secret information pertaining to VATT. Martin's answer ignited a firestorm of interest among Christian and secular UFOlogists when he replied, "Because the mentality...amongst those who [are] at the...highest levels of Vatican administration and geopolitics, know...what's going on in space, and what's approaching us, could be of great import in the next five years, ten years" (emphasis added).[ix]

Those cryptic words "what's approaching us, could be of great import" was followed in subsequent interviews with discussion of a mysterious "sign in the sky" that Malachi believed was approaching from the north. While this could have been an oblique reference to an end time portent, the Catholic prophecy of the Great Comet, people familiar with Malachi believe he may have been referring to a near-future arrival of alien intelligence. (Interesting note from the authors: When we asked Father Guy Consolmagno what he thought of Malachi's claims, he seemed actually miffed by the man, saying, "I have heard stories about the late Malachi Martin which make me rather suspicious of statements that come from him. I was at the Observatory in the 1990s, and he never visited us nor had anything to do with us." This reaction seems consistent with how many other Catholic priests despised Malachi's willingness to disclose what Rome otherwise wanted buried, especially the Satanic cabal within the Jesuit order Malachi wrote about in his best-selling books.)

Yet, if ET life is something Vatican officials have privately considered for some time, why speak of it so openly now, in what some perceive as a careful, doctrinal unveiling over the last few years? Is this a deliberate effort by church officials to "warm-up" the laity to ET disclosure? Are official church publications on the subject an attempt to soften the blow before disclosure arrives, in order to help the faithful retain their orthodoxy in light of unprecedented forthcoming knowledge?

Writing for Newsweek on Thursday, May 15, 2008, in the article "The Vatican and Little Green Men," Sharon Begley noted that "[this] might be part of a push to demonstrate the Vatican's embrace of science... Interestingly, the Vatican has plans to host a conference in Rome next spring to mark the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin's seminal work on the theory of evolution. Conference organizers say it will look beyond entrenched ideological positions--including misconstrued creationism. The Vatican says it wants to reconsider the problem of evolution 'with a broader perspective' and says an 'appropriate consideration is needed more than ever before.'"[x]

The "appropriate consideration" Begley mentioned may have been something alluded to by Guy Consolmagno three years earlier in an interview with the Sunday Herald. That article pointed out how Consolmagno's job included reconciling "the wildest reaches of science fiction with the flint-eyed dogma of the Holy See" and that his latest mental meander was about "the Jesus Seed," described as "a brain-warping theory which speculates that, perhaps, every planet that harbours intelligent, self-aware life may also have had a Christ walk across its methane seas, just as Jesus did here on Earth in Galilee. The salvation of the Betelguesians may have happened simultaneously with the salvation of the Earthlings."[xi]This sounds like a sanctified version of panspermia--the idea that life on Earth was "seeded" by something a long time ago such as an asteroid impact--but in this case, "the seed" was divinely appointed and reconciled to Christ.

The curious connection between the Vatican's spokespersons and the question of extraterrestrials and salvation was further hinted in the May, 2008 L'Osservatore Romano interview with Father Funes, titled, "The Extraterrestrial is My Brother." In the English translation of the Italian feature, Funes responds to the question of whether extraterrestrials would need to be redeemed, which he believes should not be assumed. "God was made man in Jesus to save us," he says. "If other intelligent beings exist, it is not said that they would have need of redemption. They could remain in full friendship with their Creator."[xii]

By "full friendship," Funes reflected how some Vatican theologians accept the possibility that an extraterrestrial species may exist that is morally superior to men--closer to God than we fallen humans are--and that, as a consequence, they may come here to evangelize us. Father Guy Consolmagno took up this same line of thinking when he wrote in his book, Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist:

So the question of whether or not one should evangelize is really a moot point. Any alien we find will learn and change from contact with us, just as we will learn and change from contact with them. It's inevitable. And they'll be evangelizing us, too.[xiii]

But hold on, as this disturbing rabbit hole goes much deeper...

In a paper for the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, Father Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti--an Opus Dei theologian of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome--explains just how we could actually be evangelized during contact with "spiritual aliens," as every believer in God would, he argues, greet an extraterrestrial civilization as an extraordinary experience and would be inclined to respect the alien and to recognize the common origin of our different species as originating from the same Creator. According to Giuseppe, this contact by non-terrestrial intelligence would then offer new possibilities "of better understanding the relationship between God and the whole of creation."[xiv] Giuseppe states this would not immediately oblige the Christian "to renounce his own faith in God simply on the basis of the reception of new, unexpected information of a religious character from extraterrestrial civilizations,"[xv] but that such a renunciation could come soon after as the new "religious content" originating from outside the Earth is confirmed as reasonable and credible. "Once the trustworthiness of the information has been verified" the believer would have to "reconcile such new information with the truth that he or she already knows and believes on the basis of the revelation of the One and Triune God, conducting a re-reading [of the Gospel] inclusive of the new data..."[xvi] How this "more complete" ET Gospel might deemphasize or significantly modify our understanding of salvation through Jesus Christ is discussed in the exotheology section of our upcoming investigative book "ExoVaticana", but former Vatican Observatory vice director, Christopher Corbally, in his article "What if There Were Other Inhabited Worlds" may have summarized the most important aspect when he concluded that Jesus simply might not remain the only Word of salvation: "I would try to explore the alien by letting 'it' be what it is, without rushing for a classification category, not even presuming two genders," Corbally said, before dropping this bombshell:

While Christ is the First and the Last Word (the Alpha and the Omega) spoken to humanity, he is not necessarily the only word spoke to the universe... For, the Word spoken to us does not seem to exclude an equivalent "Word" spoken to aliens. They, too, could have had their "Logos-event". Whatever that event might have been, it does not have to be a repeated death-and-resurrection, if we allow God more imagination than some religious thinkers seem to have had. For God, as omnipotent, is not restricted to one form of language, the human.[xvii]

That high-ranking spokespersons for the Vatican have in recent years increasingly offered such language acknowledging the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence and the dramatic role ET's introduction to human civilization could play in regard to altering established creeds about anthropology, philosophy, religion, and redemption is set to become more future-consequential than most are prepared for.

And then there is that LUCIFER device at Mt. Graham, which the Vatican denies being connected to but we shall illustrate otherwise later in this series. LUCIFER is curiously described on the Vatican Observatory website as "NASA AND THE VATICAN'S INFRARED TELESCOPE CALLED [LUCIFER]--A German built, NASA and The Vatican owned and funded Infrared Telescope... for looking at NIBIRU/NEMESIS." [xviii] Why has the Vatican Observatory website allowed this caption to remain? Nibiru and Nemesis are hypothetical planets that supposedly return in orbit close to the earth after very long periods of time. They have been connected in modern myth with "Planet X" and most darkly with the destruction of planets that some believe occurred during a great war between God and Lucifer when the powerful angel was cast out of heaven. In the book of Job where the prophet details how God destroyed the literal dwelling places of the angels that made insurrection against Him (Job 26:11-13), it specifically mentions the destruction of Rahab, a planetary body also known as 'Pride,' from which God drove 'the fugitive snake.'" Are Rome and other world powers using the LUCIFER device to observe something the rest of us cannot see--something they believe represents this ancient war (or worse, keeping eye on approaching end-times angelic transportation devices/UFOs, something Father Malachi Martin hinted at)? The latter theory is interesting in light of the demonic name of the infrared device. Infrared telescopes can detect objects too cool or far away and faint to be observed in visible light, such as distant planets, some nebulae and brown dwarf stars. Additionally, infrared radiation has longer wavelengths than visible light, which means it can pass through astronomical gas and dust without being scattered. Objects and areas obscured from view in the visible spectrum, including the center of the Milky Way, can thus be observed by LUCIFER's infrared technology. [xix] But what UFO researchers have fascinated about for some time now is how infrared technology can also be used to spot and track Unidentified Flying Objects in the heavens that cannot be seen with other telescopes or the naked eye. In fact, some of the most astonishing UFOs ever caught on film have been recorded with infrared. What this has to do with the arrival of Petrus Romanus and especially the global leader he will celebrate is beyond disturbing and ultimately imminent.

LBT engineer showing authors the LUCIFER device and - explaining how it uses Infrared to see...?

[i] Private pdf from Guy Consolmagno to Tom Horn outlining the Vatican's position on the arrival of alien saviors [to be provided free with the new book "ExoVaticana" when it is released April, 2013]

[ii] Ibid 33-34

[iii] Ibid 37

[iv] http://www.mt.net/~watcher/ufovatican.html

[v] "Vatican Astronomer Says it's OK to Think Aliens Exist," USA Today, May 28, 2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-05-14-vatican-aliens_N.htm.

[vi] http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/believing_in_aliens_not_ - opposed_to_christianity_vaticans_top_astronomer_says/

[vii] Richard Boylan "Vatican Official Declares Extraterrestrial Contact Is Real" UFO Digest http://www.ufodigest.com/balducci.html

[viii] Paola Leopizzi Harris, "Monsignor Corrado Balducci says Mexico is blessed with UFO Sightings" www.paolaharris.it March 28, 2006 http://www.delusionresistance.org/ufo/catholicism-ufos.html

[ix] "Comet and Father Malachi Martin" (ART BELL INTERVIEWS FATHER MALACHI MARTIN: Transcript of the April 5th, 1997 interview with late Father Malachi Martin by Art Bell), Godlike Productions, January 7, 2007, http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message326615/pg1.

[x] Sharon Begley, "The Vatican and Little Green Men," Newsweek, May 15, 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/lab-notes/2008/05/15/the-vatican-and-little-green-men.html.

[xi] Neil Mackay, "And On the Eighth Day--Did God Create Aliens?" Sunday Herald--Scotland, November 28, 2005, http://www.sundayherald.com/53020 (site discontinued; see alternatively, from Signs of the Times: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/106410-And-on-the-eighth-day-did-God-create-aliens-).

[xii] "The Extraterrestrial is My Brother," L'Osservatore Romano, May 14, 2008, http://padrefunes.blogspot.com/.

[xiii] As quoted by article: Brother Guy Consolmagno, "Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: A Jesuit Priest Says the Discovery of Life Elsewhere in the Universe Would Pose No Problem for Religion," Beliefnet, http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Science-Religion/2000/08/Would-You-Baptize-An-Extraterrestrial.aspx?p=2.

[xiv] Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, "EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE," Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, http://www.inters.org, and http://www.disf.org/en/Voci/65.asp.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Open Minds Magazine, "The Vatican Extraterrestrial Question," by J. Antonio Huneeus, June/July 2010, Issue 2, 59.

[xviii] http://www.vaticanobservatory.org/VO-NEWS/index.php/videos/item/79-lucifer.html

[xix] http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4926827_infrared-telescope-work.html

Don't miss: UFO Conspiracy!

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Greece: The Odyssey

As another difficult year for the battered European economy ends, many Greeks are returning to the land to survive.

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DailyMail.co.uk

Spiritual people are more likely to be mentally ill (but at least they think life has more meaning)

Researchers at University College London say spiritual believers are more likely to suffer problems such as eating conditions or an anxiety disorder

By STEVE ROBSON

PUBLISHED: 1 January 2013

Researchers found those with a spiritual understanding of life were more likely to suffer from mental illness

Being spiritual may give life deeper meaning, but it can also make you more susceptible to mental illness, new research suggests.

A study found that people professing to be spiritual, but not conventionally religious, were more likely to suffer from a host of mental challenges.

They suffered problems including abnormal eating conditions, drug abuse, anxiety disorder, phobias and neurosis.

They were also more likely than others to be taking medication for mental health problems.

Professor Michael King, from University College London, and his fellow researchers wrote in the British Journal of Psychiatry: 'Our main finding is that people who had a spiritual understanding of life had worse mental health than those with an understanding that was neither religious nor spiritual.'

The study was based on a survey of 7,403 randomly selected men and women in England who were questioned about their spiritual and religious beliefs, and mental state.

Of the participants, 35 per cent described themselves as 'religious', meaning they attended a church, mosque, synagogue or temple.

The vast majority of this group were Christian.

A further 19 per cent claimed to have spiritual beliefs or experiences without following a specific religion, while 46 per cent were neither religious nor spiritual.

More than nine out of 10 were white British, with an average age of 46.

Of the different groups, spiritual people were 50 per cent more likely to have a generalised anxiety disorder and 72 per cent more likely to suffer from a phobia.

Spirituality was also associated with a 40 per cent greater likelihood of receiving treatment with psychotropic drugs

They also had a 77 per cent higher chance of being dependent on drugs and were 37 per cent more at risk of neurotic disorder.

Spirituality was also associated with a 40 per cent greater likelihood of receiving treatment with psychotropic drugs.

Individuals of religious faith and those with none experienced equal levels of mental problems, the study found.

But there were fewer problems with drugs or alcohol among the faithful.

Unlike some American studies, the new research found no clear relationship between religious belief and happiness.

One recent large internet study in the US reported that non-religious people with spiritual beliefs were emotionally less stable than other groups.

However, they made up only 2 per cent of the study sample.

The researchers wrote: 'We conclude that there is increasing evidence that people who profess spiritual beliefs in the absence of a religious framework are more vulnerable to mental disorder.

'The nature of this association needs greater examination in qualitative and in prospective quantitative research.'

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