Is Theophostic Prayer Biblical?
Learn the danger of Therapeutic Prayer.
It is a new age movement belief that is deceiving the church today.
The Biblical evaluation of Theophstic Prayer Ministry to determine whether if Theophostic Prayer Biblical? Clients getting alse visions of the devil? Did Jesus do it in scripture? There are three risks of making woundedness the root of sinfulness: Is it a telephonic communication?
Many use Theophostics - healing lives hurts through theophoric prayer - is really theophoric prayer new age - Theophostic danger.
1) minimizes the seriousness of sin, ...
2) minimizes the glory of forgiveness and repentance, ...
3) minimizes the power of spiritual disciplines
Sin-based theology or lie-based theology?
At its core, the difference between TPM and Evangelical Theology is the view of sin. In basic terms, Theophostic Theology sees sin as the result of lies that have been believed, leading to defective thinking and ultimately manifesting as sin. Evangelical Theology sees sin as the product of our fallen natures and corrupt flesh. Clearly, these two views are polar opposites, and as always, we must search the Scriptures for the truth.
They use “inner healing” techniques drawn from occultism, especially the “recovery” of repressed memories, to heal those memories. It is not God's way to heal. In yoga, practitioners uncover repressed memories and then apply the healing power of kundalini (i.e., the serpent).
God’s Truth:
Matthew 4:17 “From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Mark 1:14-15 “Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching that gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Luke 5:31-32 “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Those who well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
What does it mean to have believed the lie of the enemy?
Romans 7:8-10 “But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law, sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.”
II Thessalonians 2:9-12 “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned, who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
Ed Smith says his technique is new.
This technique has been around for centuries by the New Age Healers called Theta healers and other types of inner healers. The lie-based theology has striking similarities to Gnostic beliefs about the cause of sin in a person’s life. Gnostics and New Agers do not look to salvation or repentance but a lie-based belief to your problem. Theta Healers do the same type of practice to get in touch with lie-based memories by calling in the person’s spirit guides or angels into their memory to bring healing, and if you are a Christian, they will contact your Jesus into your memory.
3. Ed Smith’s background is in Christian Psychology.
Ed Smith has 17 prior years of experience in psychological counseling. Psychology is rooted in occultism. The "core theory and practice" of TPM involve psychotherapeutic theories and practices, which include recovered memories, visualization, and, at times, hypnosis. The conjuring up of a Jesus figure to answer prayers and give the truth in the manner practiced in TPM is absent in Scripture and is centered on the sins of others and the accompanying "wounds" inflicted by others. This is just the opposite of what is seen in Scripture. We have to take responsibility for the sins of others that afflicted us, such as dealing with unforgiveness.
Carl Jung is one of the fathers of Psychology. Jung’s research asserts the concept of an impersonal or “collective unconscious” (a type of library containing everything known) present in each person’s unconscious. The inspiration came to Jung from contacting the spirit realm. Jung claimed that his spirit guide, Philemon (more on “it” later), was a source of information that gave him crucial insights. According to Don Matzat, “Jung theorized that all humanity, past and present, were connected on an unconscious plane. Jung placed a "scientific" footing under occult phenomena and mystical experience. Jung was deeply involved in the occult and did his doctoral thesis on parapsychology.
Agnes Sanford brought inner healing into the church 50 years ago. Agnes Sanford was a Jung studier and a mentor to John Sanford and other psychologists in and out of the church.”
Agnes Sanford believed “experience comes before theology.” She taught various visualization techniques, teaching one to forgive another's sins through visualization. The method of visualization became the key to her inner healing teachings. One visualizes a situation in the past, then visualizes Jesus coming into their
circumstance to solve the problem. She stated, “I believe imagination is one of the most important. Imagination is one of the keys to the relationship of prayer with God.” “Prayer through the imagination . . . picturing the healing.” She also promoted Jungian psychotherapy and believed Jesus became a part of the collective unconscious of the human race.
Sanford called God “primal energy,” “the very life-force existing in a radiation of an energy ... from which all things evolved,” that “God ... made everything out of Himself, and He put a part of Himself into everything” and called Jesus “that most profound of psychiatrists.” Sanford's pastor was Morton Kelsey, who studied at the C.G. Jung
Institute near Zurich, Switzerland, and who became a Jungian psychologist, as did Sanford's son, John Sanford.
4. By visualizing Jesus in your memory, you are opening your mind to occult spirit guides, making you believe it is Jesus. You are getting a false light! Any time you visualize or go back, you go into a trance state (altered state of consciousness). When you “drift back,” you put yourself into a passive state of mystical receptivity and await words from a mystical Christ, which opens you up to deceiving spirits. Closing your eyes and drifting back puts you into Theta Brain Waves, which opens up the unconscious. Yoga, hypnotism, visualization, emptying the mind for something else to come in – spirit guides, guided angels, etc.
What is Theta Brain Waves? Theta (4 to 8 cycles per second) is the slowest brain cycle.
Deep meditation of emptying the mind does this. This is associated with life-like imagination. This is best for suggestibility and inspiration. This brain wave is dominant in children of ages 2 to 5. Theta waves appear before sleep. At first, your mind goes empty, and then the feeling is replaced by creative imagination or daydreaming. For example, have you ever been not quite awake and not asleep and can hear everything going on around you, but you are still dreaming? That is Theta Brain Waves.
There is no evidence in scripture to look inside yourself. God’s word and ways of dealing with hurts are through deliverance and washing your mind with the word by quoting his word. His way is active. Anytime you look inward, then you are being passive with your mind.
Being passive with your mind causes your mind to go to a self-induced Theta Brain Wave (altered state of consciousness – self-hypnosis and/or trance state), blocking your cerebral cortex that discerns reality to be bypassed.
5. People will feel healed, but what is happening in the cerebral cortex gets blocked and cannot discern reality, or it bypasses rational thinking. Plus, you open the pineal gland to be sensitive to the supernatural or a gateway to the free reign of demons. The 3rd eye, or psychic eye, is opened. The New Agers and others, such as Freemasons, call it “Enlightened.” Look at your dollar bill and see the 3rd eye. When you do TPM, you become “Enlightened” with psychic ability.
Later, the person will experience anxiety (maybe in weeks, months, or years from now) and have no memory attached to why the anxiety is because of cerebral amnesia. The peace they encounter at the time is counterfeit peace and counterfeit healing. Satan gives healing, and then he takes back with a vengeance through anxiety attacks or confusion or a lack of being able to focus or concentrate, tormenting dreams, etc.
God gave us minds to test the reality around us. He gave us the power of independent choice based on a mature assessment of the facts. But satan desires for man to be like an animal without the thought or will to resist. For the demonic rule to begin in a person's life, there first must be the willingness to submit to such a rule. But the problem is that satan needs to be more honest about his intentions and may win this willingness by deception. In other words, even Christians may be deluded into accepting the influence of evil powers if they are unwary and ignorant of their devices.
6. We should never take a person back into memories and then call Jesus into a negative memory to be healed. Christian and secular claim immediate healing from past trauma/victimization issues, which seems to be their conclusive proof. If cerebral amnesia has occurred, the person is not healed. The fear/trauma issues are now blocked from consciousness. If this is the case, the spiritual lie is really the work of spirits of fear, which are now able to torment at levels that prevent resolution, such as anxiety attacks with no memory attached.
Second, a person who relives a memory can experience abreactions. What is abreaction? A person reliving an event before the Lord is ready to show them a memory. Results: More fear enters them. Fear brings torment and bondage. This can cause a person to start having anxiety attacks, nightmares, and torment.
7. What is Satan’s plan? When someone can go into an altered state of consciousness, your mind is trained to suggestibility. In the latter times, there will be the use of telethought communications or sound waves to control the masses who have been programmed through an altered state of consciousness. Satan wants to control your mind. A person who has gone through Theophostic Prayer Ministry eventually will have problems focusing and/or confusion. Some other symptoms of falling asleep in church or falling asleep while reading the Word of God.
Satan is not working aimlessly and aimlessly. No, he is working out his 'Master Plan' for world take-over. The first step was taken in Eden when Lucifer secured the cooperation of fallen men in ruling the world system. Later, he brought mankind into oneness at Babel, and except for God's intervention, he would have achieved world dominion then.
Today, his plan is the same: he is re-programming the minds of men and women in order to build himself a visible earthly empire, his "kingdom." How!
The power of satan concentrates on the SOUL, located in the MIND. Its center is the physical brain and the subconscious mind of man. The third eye will be used by Satan to complete his Master Plan for world take-over through telethought communication. Again, he wants total control of your mind.
When the church has fallen into visualization techniques and inner healing modalities, then the 3rd eye has been opened. Lucifer’s plan is to speak to man directly through his open soul-eye.
Through the hook-up of his mind to spiritual forces, the image of light can speak. The message it brings speaks of the Great Infinite Way and our role...these codes of light extend through telethought communication."
More to the point is the preparation going on at this moment to condition us all - even in the churches - to accept his words.
Sin-based theology vs. lie-based theology.
"The most significant difference we have with Theophostic is whether sanctification is now complete or is something ongoing." - said Philip Monroe, co-author of a "Theological Analysis of
Theophostic Ministry," quoted in Lying Spirits. Is the root of man’s problem sin?
We must turn to God’s Word for the answer. John 8:34-36 “Jesus answered them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free.” Whatever the case, sin is problem enough to have required the coming of Jesus in the form of a man followed by His death on a cross to provide freedom to those enslaved by sin!
On page 225, Dr. Smith says, “The trouble with this belief is it doesn’t work. I believe we need to be honest about the success rate we are having trying to get people free through this approach. Is what we are doing producing “maintenance-free victory” by confessing, repenting, and trying really hard?”
What is the ultimate lie?
I Corinthians 6:9-11 “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”
Galatians 6:7-9 “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”
The ultimate deception is to think that one can live a life of perpetual sin and be saved. Nowhere in Scripture is the notion of a lifestyle of sin considered consistent with regeneration.
There are three main categories of mind-blanking opportunities:
Jesus's appearance to the client is the same as the New Age practice of channeling.
CHEMICAL:
• Drug and Solvent Abuse
• Alcoholic Excess
• Hallucinogenic substances - 'magic mushrooms, LSD, etc
• Many prescribed medication
One of the reasons for the massive increase in drug abuse is that new agers know drugs are a quick route to loss of conscious control. The Bible suggests that drug-taking will lead to a terrible judgment from God: The word used in Revelation 9:21 for 'sorceries' is in Greek 'pharmacies', or the use of drugs.
PHYSICAL:
• Yoga and relaxation exercises coupled with meditation
• Head-banging, shaking, convulsive dancing, etc
• Whirling, as with Dervishes
• Loud, repetitive music, especially rock music
• Flashing Lights
• Drum beats with rhythmic jumping, clapping, and/or chanting
• Obsessive TV, Video, or Computer screen viewing
• Hypnotism, altered states of consciousness
• Sensory Deprivation of various kinds
• Electric Shock Treatments
Such methods have been in use for centuries. In the account of Elijah's battle with the Prophets of Baal, we see the idol-worshippers leaping or dancing around their altar, shouting with loud voices, and cutting themselves with knives to make the blood of their sacrifice flow. (1 Kings 18:26-29) The indigenous peoples of America and Africa do much the same. The object is simply to create a state of unconsciousness in the brain whereby demons can enter (and speak, in the case of the prophets of Baal). Anything repetitive, loud, or mind-blowing enough will do. The teenagers who walk around plugged into blaring heavy-metal music and the cultists chanting to the beat of their drums are achieving the very same effect as the Baal worshippers of Elijah's day.
Christian parents - a word of warning. Rock music opens doors to demon powers. It is designed to
do so. Many of the beats are based on tribal chants and religious rites. Many of the words are openly
satanic, and other terrible spells are recorded secretly on the tapes. If you want to keep your child out of danger, challenge his or her use of rock music. The very act of filling the mind with this music causes oppression, and some youngsters have killed themselves or others because of it.
RELIGIOUS/PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC:
• New Age Music
• Yoga and Transcendental Meditation
• Psychic mediumship and trances
• Self-hypnosis
• Scientific religion (EG Scientology)
• Visualisation and Guided Imagery
• Mysticism - passive prayer techniques, etc – emptying your mind
• Chanting of mantras
• Bio-feedback/Alpha Dynamics etc
• Any 'Christian' ministry which involves emptying or bypassing the mind
• Inner healing – looking inside yourself to lost memories
The above illustrations still need to exhaust the list of mind-emptying rituals offered to people today. Examples abound. , But they illustrate the type of activity that satan is promoting to raise a whole generation of thoughtless, passive 'fodder' for his evil work.
YOGA is not just physical exercise. The word means 'yoke' or 'union' - the exercises, and particularly the breathing, is designed to eliminate the brain's conscious activity and to allow 'union with the Infinite'.
MEDITATION is often accompanied by chanting of mantras and 'centering', focusing on a light or object until vision is dimmed. The continuous chanting of a 'mantra' (the name of a deity) brings that god's power into the mind. In Eastern religions, the name OM is highly prized as a powerful mantra. But in the West, some so-called Christian practitioners suggest the use of I AM.
The object in both cases is to "still the mind to hear the inner voice of higher intelligence whose aim is to influence and co-operate with man."(36)
BIOFEEDBACK and other such scientific meditation methods achieve the same results. The brain waves are recorded and brought into harmony, supposedly leading to inner peace but actually promoting a
passive state of mind.
STRESS-MANAGEMENT is big business today, but many techniques used (even in primary schools!) are designed to relax conscious control of the brain and let the mind float free to experience other realms. Often, guided imagery is taught through relaxation exercises.
SELF-HYPNOSIS/NEW AGE MUSIC is another area of deception growing in popularity. The New Age tapes of soothing, soporific music are used for meditation but often have subliminal tracks of suggestions recorded on them.
Some of these tapes, with unheard but powerful messages, are openly advertised as beneficial for behavior modification - to stop smoking, for example. But other tapes, seemingly just of music, are secretly full of satanic messages which slip into the unguarded mind.
AUTOMATIC WRITING.
One last area of concern is the production of books, teachings, and so-called prophecies by remote
control. Some believe themselves to be controlled by the Spirit of God when really they have let their minds come under the control of demons.
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER/CENTERING DOWN
Many churches already incorporate New Age forms of "prayer" or meditation. Contemplative and labyrinth prayer and centering down are used to empty the mind and focus on the self. Visualization opens the body of evil and replaces it with good. This is straight New Age teaching, not biblical, yet Richard Foster and others have successfully leavened this into many churches. The Bible tells us to pray to the Lord with our mind, body, and spirit. We cannot be cleansed from evil by visualization techniques, only by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.
Christ on the cross, our repentance from sin, and our believing and following Jesus.
ALL THE ABOVE RELEASES KUNDALINI
These two men were experiencing Kundalini meditation or the Kundalini effect. Symptoms can include headaches, nausea, tingling sensation, and uncontrollable twitching. The Sanskrit word Kundalini means the curled one, also called Kundalini awakening or the awakening of the serpent. Practitioners describe it as a curled channel in the tailbone area. It can rise through the chakras (psychic centers situated along the spine from the tailbone to the top of the head), creating physical symptoms ranging from sensations of heat and tremors to involuntary laughing or crying, nausea, diarrhea or constipation, rigidity or limpness, and animal-like movements and sounds.
A Kundalini release can be triggered by erroneous meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, reiki, qigong healing, tantra, transcendental meditation, and other Eastern or new-age spiritual exercises. When the Kundalini energy rises through the chakras, it can cause significant problems for bodily and mental health. We have received hundreds of e-mails from people worldwide damaged by these artificial spiritual exercises.
Other Kundalini symptoms include:
• Burning hot or ice-cold streams moving up the spine.
• Pains in varying locations throughout the body.
• Vibrations, unease, or cramps in legs and other parts of the body.
• Fast pulse and increased metabolism.
• Disturbance in the breathing—and/or heart function.
• Sensitivity to sound, light, smell, and proximity of other people.
• Mystical/religious experiences.
• Parapsychological abilities.
• Persistent anxiety or anxiety attacks, confusion
• Insomnia, manic high spirits, or deep depression. Energy loss.
• Impaired concentration and memory.
• Total isolation due to inability to communicate inner experiences.
• Experiences of possession and poltergeist phenomena.
Repetitive music/mantra
Singing hymns and spiritual songs that worship the Lord has been replaced in many churches by repetitive Christian mantras that empty the mind and stir up the flesh. Christians dance around, clapping and raising their hands, emptying their minds of truth and filling them with rhythmic pulsing music that drowns out the reason and replaces it with emotion. This is a New Age technique used by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and many other Eastern mystics.
God NEVER speaks or guides while the mind is blank. He ALWAYS requires a person's complete control and exercise of his own mind and will. So, those who hear inner messages or write under the control of certain powers allow themselves to be used for deception. Also, those who teach Christians to empty their minds to 'hear God' are leading the Church astray.
Some years ago, a book called Jonathan Livingstone Seagull became very popular, and some Christians received it from God. But the teaching in it was basically Hinduistic, and IT WAS
DICTATED BY THE AUTHOR'S SPIRIT GUIDE. Another best-selling series of books produced by 'inner messages of the mind', is God Calling. This purports to be the daily messages from God received by two women. But these two 'listeners' wrote the book by letting their minds go blank and recording whatever came into them. However pleasant these messages may be, if they were received in blankness, they are NOT of God.
A book dictated to an atheist psychologist, Helen Shulman, by a spirit claiming to be Jesus is now being used as teaching material in churches around the world. It is called A Course In Miracles. It claims to correct the many errors of the Bible, teaching that we are all gods in the making and that evil does not exist. The Course views the world as a 'collective illusion' and tells us that the answer to our problems is to change our perceptions about ourselves and the world. This, of course, is simply New Age propaganda, yet Christians are willing to receive the lies of a spirit-being if he calls himself Jesus and speaks through a person's mind!
Spirit guidance of this sort is not only dictated and written. It is also spoken through false prophets, some of whom operate in Church circles. Some prophecies given out at meetings and then circulated around the Church by newsletters are the product of an empty mind open to demons. We must never fall into the trap of accepting prophecies as valid before using the discernment God provides. This sort of false prophecy leads to no end of confusion in the Church and only serves the cause of satan.
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A SPIRITUAL MIND
The mind, which is available to God and free from attack, is sharp, clear, active, pure, and able to interpret spiritual truths easily.
• A Spiritual Mind is: RENEWED - it is full of the Word of God, set on spiritual things, and not preoccupied with earthly matters.
• A Spiritual Mind is CO-OPERATIVE - it works alongside the spirit as its partner, checking out, translating, and expressing spiritual truths received from God. When the teaching comes from outside the spirit - by hearing, seeing, etc. - the mind co-operates with the spirit in examining and cross-checking the teaching, applying its own education to the learning, and subjecting it to the scrutiny of the spirit.
• A Spiritual Mind is: SUBMISSIVE - it keeps humble, avoiding proud thoughts; it never usurps the position of the spirit. The mind has artificial light, as a light bulb, but the spirit is lit by the glorious sunlight of God. The spiritual revelation comes through the spirit, not the mind. The simple, humble Christian who depends on God for illumination often knows far more than an intellectual Christian.
• A Spiritual Mind is: OPEN - A closed mind is prejudiced and bigoted, opposed to God's truth, but an open mind is pliable and easily entreated. It does not reject all ideas that seem alien to its own light out of hand.
• A Spiritual Mind is: CONTROLLED - each input is carefully examined before it is accepted, and the mind is not allowed to drift idly in a sea of information. The spiritual Christian knows that thoughts are the seeds of action, and he guards himself against any thought contrary to God's way.
• A Spiritual Mind is: PEACEFUL - it rests on God, not on circumstances, and rejects tormenting thoughts, doubts, worries, fears, and imaginings from the devil. It flies to the Lord in trouble, not to feelings or thoughts.
CONCLUSION OF THEOPHOSTIC PRAYER MINISTRY
• Don’t be deceived by the idea that the foundation for inner healing is psychotherapeutic. That’s just the worm on the hook to reel you in, as we Americans are well primed, through decades of propaganda from the psychotherapeutic industry, to think that the psychotherapeutic approach is the best and most scientific way to resolve problems of living.
Inner healing is merely a Trojan horse. You may let it come in, hoping to cure a particular problem, like overeating. But, soon, you will be encouraged to view your entire walk with Christ through this method since inner-healing proponents view inner healing as the best, most effective way to sanctify a believer. It’s not just a therapy, although the methodology rests upon psychotherapeutic notions of the Freudian42 unconscious (Both the Sandfords and Smith) and Jungian archetypes (Sandfords).43 In fact, it’s a new doctrine of sanctification that promotes a spiritual technology involving mystical journeys into a person’s past to give him the power to overcome sin because, assert inner-healing proponents, the orthodox Christian doctrine of sanctification just doesn’t work. A new thing is needed to transform the Church in these last days. The foundation undergirding the Sandfords’ inner healing ideas is Dominionist theology.
• God never changes. His Word and His Person are the objective truth. Avoid subjective reality.
• Remember that the mind is not the spirit of man. God never speaks by flashing thoughts or visual experiences presented to the mind. God speaks and is controlled by a spiritual prompt, translated into human knowledge by the mind. The mind and its powers are soulish, earthly, and fallen and must be submitted to God.
• God wants us to use and control our own minds. He commands us to renew our fallen minds, that is, to walk in the Spirit, not by the reason and judgment of the natural man.
• The mind and the spirit must cooperate in prayer, worship, and guidance. The Christian mind needs the spirit to inspire and control; the Christian spirit needs the mind to regulate and interpret the things of God.
• Cast down imaginations! Never let thoughts or pictures in your mind rule your thinking about God. The imagination of man, though practical, is unreliable.
• Defend the door of your mind as a soldier defends a fort. Never let stray thoughts enter without a challenge, and never be careless over the information you (especially your children) take into your mind. Monitor what your children are taught as much as possible, and be on the lookout for relaxation exercises, guided imagery, journaling, dream recording, and discussing Eastern religions in school. Also, monitor carefully the cartoons and comics children see.
• Refuse your natural desires for power, experiences, thrills, and input from dominant miracle ministries. Especially, do not allow anyone to lay hands on you or prophesy over you unless you are entirely sure that the ministry is from God - go to God before you go to ANY minister!
• Worship and prayer must be directed to the Father in Heaven, through and by Jesus Christ, in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is the only scriptural way. Prayer must not be directed AT another person nor offered to a localized 'presence' in the room.
I apologize beforehand if you think I’m picking on Theophostic Prayer Ministry. I was a practitioner and subjected myself to the ministry for 4.5 years. What resulted? I started having anxiety that increased over time. Second, I became easily trance out or hypnotic, especially when I was around the world; third, my ability to concentrate or focus was affected; fourth, I had a hard time hearing the word or staying awake reading the word. Say, my mind was greatly affected.
Satan heals today but will take away your healing with a vengeance to find another modality with the occult background to take you deeper.
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