“I
believe that one of the next great moves of God is going to be through the
Believers in the workplace”.
The quote from Graham demonstrates what the movement was
always about. Those that think he was just a simple-message Gospel preacher
have never taken the time to understand what either he or the larger
Evangelical movement was (and is) all about. You can't be an ecumenicist and
come down hard and firm on anything. Graham's simplicity wasn't rooted in a
bare-bones Fundamentalist-type commitment to Scripture. Not at all. His simple
message was part of his larger ecumenical strategy. He wanted people 'in' and
once 'in' they could be schooled in accordance with the Lausanne programme. And
overwhelmingly Lausanne's programmes were and are about transforming culture.
In the end Graham didn't care what theological background you hailed from. He
just wanted you in the fold and part of the larger project. Whether you were
baptised or not, spoke in tongues or not or prayed to Mary or not, didn't
really matter.
The various Lausanne inspired movements want to eliminate the
sacred-secular divide even though it's clearly taught in the New Testament. If
they have their way, the world will not become the Kingdom or the Church but rather
the Church will simply become the world. Once again forty-five years after
Lausanne it's fairly clear to me that the process of embracing worldliness is
well underway.
Dominionism effectively rejects the New Testament notion that
Christ is Head over the Church in a way he is not in a covenant relationship
with the world. They see all the world as belonging to Christ's Kingdom and
thus all the world and its institutions must be made holy. The gospel for them
is not about proclaiming the coming Judgment, the Day of the Lord and the
destruction of this aeon and all its works in light of the coming Kingdom. It's
not about calling people to repentance and to live as strangers, pilgrims and
exiles on this Earth, testifying against it and proclaiming the glories of the
heavenly Kingdom. It's not a movement interested in focusing on heavenly
things, laying up treasure there and living by eschatological ethics.
No, the movement wants to make heaven on Earth. They don't
like it when it's put in such utopian terms (and their covenant even dares to
deny it) but if they're honest, that's what they're trying to do. The
Dominionist movement wants to transform this sin-cursed and fallen world into
the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is no longer the realm of the Spirit, a realm
hidden from those who are unregenerate. No, the Kingdom becomes a very visible
and tangible entity wed to political structures, parliament houses, social
institutions and culture... and thus war and mammon.
And this theology, this Mystery Babylon ideology, this false
gospel born of Gehenna is rapidly being spread across the planet setting the
stage for global apostasy. They think they're making rapid advances across the
world. Given that they're building on a false foundation, it's hardly a risky
prediction to suggest that in a generation it will all be reduced to ashes or
what's left will no longer be worthy of the name Christian.
They want the Kingdom
to be made visible in all spheres of society. Again, the language is
borrowed from Abraham Kuyper but the agenda has ranged far beyond what he could
have even imagined or what was being thought of in 1974.
Genuine Kingdom Christianity believes work is but a means. We
live as Christians at all times and yet the work itself is secondary, a temporal
means to provide for our families. The pursuit of Caesar's coin is not Kingdom
work and thus we only seek what we need. We must never compromise Gospel and
Kingdom integrity and thus many spheres are in fact closed to us and to be
rejected. We make enough money to survive and support the work of the Church
which in all actuality needs very little. The Evangelical movement is awash
with gold and thus it is deeply mired in corruption, choked by the cares of
this world and blinded by the deceit of riches. We were warned by the Apostles
but the leaders of Evangelicalism took no heed and instead sold themselves out
to an economic and political order rooted in wealth, power and sadly built on
the backs of the poor and on the exploitation of the weak. The colossal
infrastructure of modern Evangelicalism is truly in every sense an abomination.
Rather than view work-time as holy, as worship and Kingdom
labour we want to minimise that time so that we can indeed pursue Kingdom
labours such as prayer, worship, communion with God through His Word,
evangelism and acts of mercy...all of which proclaim a rejection of the world,
its values, hopes and goals.
Lausanne rejects the theology and ethics of the New Testament
and like all Dominionist schools of thought introduces a pagan-sacral gloss on
top of Christianity. That's why it's so dangerous. Sacralism, the
sanctification of culture, the proclamation of divine favour on political
endeavour is the default setting in a fallen world, and one that New Testament
Christianity rejects. The only legitimate sacral society in history was Old
Covenant Israel and that typology has been done away with. That order is
obsolete, fulfilled by Christ. Unlike all the pagan religions and societies the
Kingdom of Christ is found not in this world but beyond it. It is wed to no
nation, to no tribe. The Kingdom is 'here' in that the Spirit dwells in us and
thus we (the Church/ The Body) inhabit both realms simultaneously and yet the
world and its works are doomed to perish in Parousia fires. Only the holy
things survive this age and are genuinely part of the Kingdom. And just what is
holy in This Age before Christ's return? That which is sanctified by the
Spirit... the members of Christ's body. Nothing else is holy. The cultural
'attainments', the political projects, the arts and sciences, the financial and
social models are all sub-Christian and sometimes anti-Christian and thus doomed
to perish. Those who labour to transform such things are blind leading the
blind and being led by the blind.
Marketplace folk,
pastors and the para-church... these were told are the three-legged stool that will help the Church
win the victory and fulfill the Great Commission. It's a redefinition of New
Testament ecclesiology and a whole-hearted rejection of both the Authority of
Scripture and its Sufficiency.
The nearly seven-minute summary video is a blueprint for the
Satanic infiltration and corruption of the Church. Packed with subversive
heretical theology, the frankly Luciferian video left me stunned and in some
respects despondent. It's nothing new, but sometimes when it's all put
together, it overwhelms.
Opposing
this will by some Christian estimations seem insane, even evil. Christians are
warned that they will be opposed and certainly so by the False Church. Lausanne
represents just such a False Church. It shouldn't surprise us but the 'prophet
with honor' so-called, the man Billy Graham was in reality probably the
greatest heretic of the 20th century. The man who basically built post-war
Evangelicalism revealed himself to be a fraud. His testimony of heresy and
apostasy which only increased throughout his life culminated in a denial of
Christ's exclusivity. Ever seeking fame, accolade and positions of power and
influence, the Evangelical hero showed his true colours way back in the 1950's.
There were those who had him pegged back then and the subsequent decades only
confirmed their fears. American Evangelicalism was his project and Lausanne
represents that same vision projected onto a global scale. Billy Graham, the
great evangelist, the great builder of the Church perhaps more than any other
person over the past century helped to lay the foundation stones for global
apostasy. A collaborator with both Rome and theological liberalism the famous
preacher was corrupt from the beginning. Sold out to big money, dazzled by fame
and power he promoted wars and encouraged Evangelicals to support evil
geopolitical policies, imperial exploitative economics and to equate Right-wing
politics with Biblical Christianity. An ear tickler, a false prophet, a
minister of darkness masquerading as an angel of light, Graham and his cohorts
have corrupted Christianity the world over.
For months after his 2018 death I waited to hear the honest
assessments and the condemnations of his legacy. But apart from very few voices
what I mostly heard was praise. Hosts of Evangelical, Confessional, New
Calvinist and other leaders lauded him. Perhaps with some sense of shame, they
sometimes tempered the praise and restrained it a bit but overwhelmingly they
believe that his influence was positive.
Consequentialism reigns it would seem. Were people saved at
his rallies and this despite his sham evangelical methods and trickery?
Perhaps. This is despite his false evangelical system. And yet millions and
millions more were undoubtedly deceived by his cheap grace gospel and further
deceived by Evangelicalism's perversion of the doctrine of assurance. Have
these theological stalwarts forgotten Christ's condemnation of the Pharisees
that they crossed sea and land to make a proselyte but made him twice the child
of hell?
No, they praise Graham because in the end he represented a
'positive' cultural view of Christianity. Thankfully (I suppose) the public
largely forgot his largely disgraceful (and at the very least ambiguous) legacy
with regard to civil rights and race, his rabid support for America's criminal
and almost genocidal war in Vietnam, his apparent anti-Semitism and especially
his relationship with Richard Nixon who used Graham... and apparently Graham
was happy to be used... and looked like a fool in the end. But he wasn't a fool
for Christ. He was a fool for power, for politics, for the scheming criminal
Richard Milhous Nixon.
Graham himself often embraced contradictory positions and
tried at times to re-write his past and re-invent himself. He fanned the flames
of what would become the Christian Right but in reality was something of a
theological liberal and opposed some of the extreme social positions advocated
by the movement. How many conservative Evangelicals are aware of his positions
on issues like women's ordination or his rather soft stance on abortion? Very
few I can tell you because their leaders hide it from them. Billy Graham was
untouchable, again the 'prophet with honor' as one author (almost
blasphemously) put it.
These corrupt mercenary leaders of today's Evangelical and
Confessional world ignore Graham's sell-out and compromise with Rome, his
theological liberalism, the corrupt finances of his organisations (which live
on in the legacy of his son), and his statements which demonstrate that in the
end Graham didn't seem to understand the gospel at all.
Some of the more conservative types realise there were
serious problems with his 'ministry' but in the end the Dominionist-Evangelical
project is one they deeply believe in and thus despite his perilous flaws they
are thankful because today's Christian Right wouldn't exist if not for Billy
Graham.
If these are the 'watchmen' then today's Church is in big
trouble. It's being set up for a terrible fall.