It seems highly appropriate that career heretics and
charlatans Jim Bakker and David Barton have decided to collaborate and promote
their lies about the United States and its history.
These are myths promoted to support their heresy but
ultimately what these men are about is pretty basic... they would make
merchandise of God's people. They think godliness is gain and they're willing
to lie, cheat and steal in order to make a name for themselves.
Presenting themselves as agents of light they are in fact mouthpieces
of darkness and ministers of Satan. Whitewashing history, they turn avarice
into virtue, theft into prudence and criminal conspiracy into Divine destiny.
Murder and war are shrouded in honour and glory.
Barton, a criminal and deceiver who has grown wealthy through
his endeavours has condemned himself in supplanting the Word of God with his
own ideas and the myths he has woven in order to support his agenda and allies.
His blasphemous Founder's Bible supplants Christ and makes America the
centerpiece of history and a key process in God's plan of redemption. I'm sure
the heretic would publically deny that America is the Kingdom of God but it's
clear this pernicious error is at the heart of his teaching. In fact Barton has
effectively redefined Christianity and equated it with his mythological and
heretical understanding of Americanism. This is why he is actually an ecumenicist,
something his supporters often labour to hide.
These men are spiritual whores and I don't know whether to be
more amazed by their spiritual debauchery in their defense of someone like
Donald Trump or the fact that their audiences are so far gone, so handed over
as to no longer possess a whit of sanctified sense to release what they're
being sold.
Historical ignorance has reached such levels that a
mountebank like Barton is able to sell his lies and filth without serious
challenge. Those who do challenge him and repudiate his interpretations are
decried as liberals and Marxists. It's a sad thing when people will give
themselves over to lies. There are many Christians, Christian historians and
theologians critical of Barton and they are certainly not Leftists or Marxists
in any sense. It comes down to truth versus myth, Biblical doctrine versus
heresy and the Gospel of the Kingdom versus those who would manipulate the Holy
Oracles of God for their own political purposes and pocketbooks.
People love to have their ears tickled. They love their false
teachers who tell them what they want to hear. They're taught lies and they
love to have it so.
This sort of thing used to outrage me but now more than
anything it saddens me. I find myself growing frustrated and angry with those
who know better and yet won't come out and condemn this spiritual filth because
ultimately the end justifies the means. Barton, Bakker, Falwell and all their
ilk are buffoons and idiots... but they're useful. Because in the end even those
Christian leaders who know better still support the general goals of these men
and thus they will not speak out and condemn them in the denunciatory terms
they deserve. Fundamentalists, Evangelicals and even some Reformed leaders hide
Barton's shady financial dealings (he receives an abysmal rating from charity
watchdog groups) and his associations with the pseudo-prophets of the Charismatic
movement. This is glossed over because Barton's presentations tickle ears and
get people worked up. Because in the end (at least I'm convinced of this) many
of the people in the pew are far more passionate about the politics of America
than they are the cares, concerns and doctrines of the Kingdom of Christ.
Barton and those like him serve another purpose. They are the
middle-men between more conservative Evangelicals and Confessionalists and the
Christian Right fringe represented by Mormons such as Glenn Beck and
Charismatic deceivers like Jim Bakker and Rick Joyner. Barton with his
redefined Americanist Christianity can easily and comfortably navigate these
worlds and while many in the Reformed sphere found common cause with Glenn Beck
(and played the harlot jumping on his fame and fortune bandwagon) there are
other Evangelicals who would prefer to keep their distance. Joyner is clearly
beyond the pale for a lot of Reformed folks. D James Kennedy was probably
unique in that his car-salesman teflon-polish style worked well enough with the
TBN crowd. But he's gone and apart from some of the New Calvinist types, no one
of his calibre has arisen to fill that role.
As far as a Second Civil War... that's where all of this
headed. That's ultimately what they're promoting. It has reached a point in
which to re-win the culture they're going to have to continue pushing polarity.
It will lead to violence. They're not openly promoting the violence but it's
between the lines and the language is being employed in a way reminiscent of a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
Recently I caught wind of this 'Faith and Freedom' conference
coming to Northwest Pennsylvania. I'm half tempted to make the drive and attend
but I can't bring myself to throw money away and support such lies and evil...
even out of morbid curiosity.
Some of the names are known to me. Federer is a Dominionist
and largely phony Barton-esque historian and myth weaver whose name used to pop
up alongside the now disgraced Doug Phillips of Vision Forum.
I wasn't surprised to see his name appear in association with
this blasphemous Dominionist group.
Trewhella has made a career of promoting the Lesser
Magistrate Heresy, essentially encouraging civil war and for Christians to
(under the Lesser Magistrate) take up arms against the federal government. He
will give an account for his teachings and the sin he has given himself to
promoting.
Bradlee Dean is an obscenity, a heathen masquerading as a
Bible believing Christian. It is judgment on the Church that he is given a
platform to speak and that anyone would grant him authority. And I can't help
but laugh at anyone who is impressed by someone who centres his persona on
being a 'coach'. It reminds me of the silliness I encountered back in Christian
high school and the various coaches I encountered that would probably look up
to this guy. What a bizarre combination of sports, quasi-militarism and
Christian ethics! It is really quite humourous, or it would be if there weren't
so many people being taken in by it.
One of the figures associated with this hubris-ridden,
myth-based warmongering spiritual filth was linked to another website which I
must admit left me somewhat stunned. I had to laugh at the pseudo-Stalin
quotation that opens the website. It's a false quote that still makes the
rounds. I'm afraid it was Paul Harvey who got that ball rolling... putting
words into people's mouths. The false quotes get passed around and eventually
become part of the Right-wing canon.
I have often referred to this Christo-American hybrid
religion as Americanism. I assumed this would be a label that Christians would
find offensive, an affront and challenge to their Biblical sensibilities. But I
guess it's not. There's no shame here. It really is another gospel. It is a
form of high place devotion, of Baal worship masquerading as the worship of
Jehovah.
The 12 Lies promoted by the Americanism website is an
exercise in futility, in question begging as is the whole Barton
Christo-American project. It's all based on a false premise. As I constantly
argue the 'Christian America' argument must be addressed on two fronts. Does it
theologically stand? Is it even a valid theological concept? The answer is no.
Christianity must be re-defined in order for the concept to even function or
make sense.
Secondly, does it stand historically? This is a bit more
complicated as history, especially Christian or Church history is riddled with
error and subjective assessment. But even an examination of this question
demonstrates that Barton's Christian America narrative collapses. He's only
able to maintain it by further re-defining Christianity so that he can
transform Enlightenment proclivities about religion, Unitarianism, Deism and
Freemasonry into Biblical Christianity. This is how Barton is able to propagate
his myth of someone like Thomas Jefferson being a Biblical Christian. The
notion is prima facie absurd as are
the assumptions of Barton and his false gospel. The only people taken in by him
are the ignorant and those that have already sold themselves out to the heresy
of a kingdom rooted in wealth, power and violence.
I am reminded of a book from my youth... Hal Lindsey's Satan is Alive and Well on the Planet Earth. When I became a Calvinist I came to despise
the book and yet in retrospect though the work is replete with theological
error there is something in that ethos that I miss and would recapture. A
closer examination of the New Testament revealed that while the Semi-Pelagian
Dispensationalism of Lindsey is indeed false, there are some strong reductionist
tendencies in the Calvinist outlook that don't do full justice to the New
Testament and how it presents both the ordering of This Age and how we as the
Church are to interact with it.
Indeed Satan is alive and well. Though bound in one sense,
and cast down from his heavenly placement, he is still the god of this world
and the prince of the power of the air. He is the lord of chaos and the
draconic force behind the various Beast powers, the same bestial forces that
false Christians have whored themselves out to for centuries. History repeats
itself. And yet our accusing adversary's primary focus is not in spreading
Marxism or Islam across the globe. There have always been false religions and
Bestial powers but they have never succeeded in stamping out the Kingdom of
God. Satan's primary venue remains within the Church. The Pharisees and
Sadducees were the sons of Satan in the 1st century. Roman
Catholicism and the Papacy dominated so-called 'Christendom' (a false
ecclesiastical construct which lives on) for centuries and still play a large
role. Already riddled with corruption at its inception the Protestant movement
today is largely dominated by Satan's agents and they thrive. Biblical doctrine
and Biblical views of the Kingdom and ethics are today reckoned as heresy.
Sometimes Satan wars against the Church and openly persecutes
it via his proxies. And yet he is intelligent and possesses a kind of wisdom.
He has to know that subverting the Church has always been more effective than
openly persecuting it. The Constantinian Shift represents just such a victory.
Celebrated by the historians and theologians of Christendom, the 'victory' of
the 4th century was in fact the great defeat. For the Christianity
that emerged in that century was fundamentally different than the Christianity
established by the New Testament. It was a new religion and thus the victory
long sought through persecution was finally attained... not through the sword
but through compromise and corruption.
I don't doubt the sincerity of some of these folks. I think
many of them are outright frauds but I believe some are sincere and certainly
many of the rank and file pastors and people in the pews are fully onboard and
committed on an ideological level. And while they think great gains are being
made and that the Church is perhaps on the cusp of a great victory... a myth
recaptured, a wave ridden into a golden age.... in fact we are on the brink of
a great apostasy. We've seen such episodes before but this one will rank among
the worst.
As mentioned previously there are those who are alarmed, who
would warn, who would call for discernment... but at the end of the day their
efforts are half-hearted because they're still largely on board with the vision
and agenda of these folks. Their real debate is over the means, not the end.
We need more teachers, churches and voices that will loudly
proclaim that the ends and the means of these folks are not just a little off
base but diametrically opposed to the
Scriptures. They are in fact enemies of Christ. We need reformation and not
one represented by a recapturing of the Geneva Bible and its doctrines. David
Barton wants nothing more... as long as he and his family can cash in on it.
We need a new reformation in the form of exodus. We need to
separate and rebuild in order to steel ourselves against what is coming. We
need to prepare by returning to the doctrines of the New Testament... for no
matter which way things unfold we will be faced with trial.
If the False Church recaptures the political order they will
persecute Biblical Christians. It has happened before and will happen again. If
the False Church fails, they will unleash a backlash and great violence. The
Bestial powers will seek to destroy the false church and making no distinction
will persecute us in conjunction with it. Either way, hard times await us.
Praise be to God. And yet, let us not be silent. Souls are at stake and even
amidst the hardship there can be the glory of fellowship and communion. Though
the numbers of faithful are always relatively few, my hope is that the
groundwork for the underground remnant can be laid and that the times of trial
which await us may be glorious and a time of rich spiritual blessing.
These ministries are not a cause for hope but instead
represent a dire warning. I laugh at these people. They are absurd and anyone
who is honest cannot help but find a type of humour in what they've brought
themselves to. They are fools and I mean that in a moral sense more than
anything else.
But at the same time there is both a righteous anger and a
deep sorrow that envelopes me when I see this rubbish and filth. I think of so
many people I know who are led astray by this type of teaching. Unlike the
scoundrels Barton and Bakker, they are sincere and yet are being led astray.
They are on paths of destruction, paths that will lead them away from the
heavenly gate, paths that will lead them into the mire where they will not
persevere, where their faith will be choked by riches and the cares of this
world.
In the end God's will is done and that keeps us from going
mad. It is a comfort and yet there is a real battle taking place and real
sorrow. The responsibility lies not merely in the decree of God but in the
actions of men and the destruction they create. The battle is real and yet we
do not wield carnal weapons. We fight wielding the sword of the spirit and our
loins, our seat of our strength, are girt with truth. Though lies are one of
the primary tools in how men fight their wars and ethics are always subordinated
to strategic goals, for us there are no tricks, no shortcuts and the ends never
justify the means. Our victory is assured but we win by dying to self, taking
up the cross and going as sheep to the slaughter. This is how God is glorified
and how we attain victory. What sorry fools they are in thinking the Kingdom of
Christ is built through money, usury, war, politics, lobbying, the judiciary
and the conquest of culture.
It is only through the embrace of the eternal that we
understand just what is at stake and what victory looks like. The mad dogs we
fight, these wolves in sheep's clothing are deceived or at best labour for a
kingdom which perishes. They are deceivers but they are also deceived (and
therefore must be pitied) and in thinking they do God service they will be
stunned on the Day of Judgment when they finally learn the bitter truth.