19 September 2019

Bakker, Barton and the Americanist Baal


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.