Showing posts with label now the end begins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label now the end begins. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Christians and Conspiracy Theories: Witnessing, Romans 1 and An Appeal (Part 4)

Posted by Christine Pack and Cathy Mathews

In the past few days, we've written extensively about Christians and the conspiracy theories, and the wisdom of such a focus. We want to make it clear that just because biblical history records conspiracies doesn't mean that as believers we should study conspiracies. There is plenty of evil in the world that is plain, that we already know of, that we should address. We don't need to decode Katy Perry's or Madonna's or Beyonce's song lyrics according to some conspiracy theory website in order to determine that they are wicked and promoting a wicked lifestyle. It's plain to see from what they have recorded and how they live.

With this is mind, please consider the following two examples for witnessing to the lost:
THE BIBLICAL WAY:
Christian to a lost person: "Did you notice what Katy Perry was singing about in the half-time show? Her lyrics encourage out-of-wedlock sex and homosexuality. God teaches that fidelity in marriage is a blessing and that homosexuality is a sin in his eyes, let me show you. 
Lost person: It does? Okay, can you show me that?
contrasted with......
THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST'S WAY:
Christian to a lost person: Did you watch Katy Perry's Super Bowl performance? First of all, she's the woman who rides the beast from Revelation 17. And about that costume, did you notice....(insert four thousand more words here on the costumes, symbols and hand signals of the half-time show)." 
Lost person: Zzzzzzzz (asleep)
 Romans 1 and Suppressing The Truth In Unrighteousness 

The Bible is all we need in terms of understanding why the lost are enslaved to Satan. Romans 1 stands in stark contrast to the claims of conspiracy theorists on how people become enslaved to sin, which is that these symbols, or hand signals, or corporate logos, or whatever, somehow "condition" people to accept Satan's schemes. But this is simply not true. When unconverted people stand before God at their judgment, God will not say:
"You were under Satan's spell because you looked at a symbol. It was a Satanic symbol, but because you didn't take the time to study symbols, and therefore identify one correctly, you were put into bondage under Satan."
Nor will He say:
"Remember that ad you saw in the magazine that time. Well, it had an embedded Satanic message that your subconscious mind saw, and this ensnared you in Satan's trap. Too bad there was nobody schooled in 'visual literacy' that could have pointed this out to you." ('Visual literacy' is a term that was used by a recent commenter to explain why Christians need to study symbols for occult meaning, and warn others about them.)
No....but what God will say is something like this:
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen." (Romans 1:18-25)
They will be condemned because although God makes His existence self-evident and plain to men, they suppress this truth in unrighteousness.

Men love their sin.

This is what binds men to Satan.

Men are not ensnared unknowingly and unwillingly through subliminal messages or imbedded symbols, but are enslaved knowingly and willingly through denying the clear evidence of their Creator and refusing to honor Him as God or give Him thanks. They refuse to come to Him on the terms He has given (faith in His Son Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins).

That's it. And that is God's own prescription for what enslaves people.

 God's Children Marked By Love 

Given that America has increasingly cast off moral restraint, no-one is denying that there are almost certainly darker times ahead for believers. We're just discouraging the fearmongering websites that cause believers to become, in our experience, angry, paranoid, panicky and mean-spirited when biblically challenged about the wisdom of looking at conspiracy websites. We're not saying all those who frequent conspiracy websites are this way. But Christians are told by God that they WILL be marked by love. Well, many of the conspiracy theorists who have come onto our Facebook wall to debate this in the past few days have been mean, foul-mouthed, unkind, panicky and angry. Those are not the fruits of the Spirit.

 A Final Appeal 

Let me close with a direct appeal to our friends, the conspiracy theorists: please understand that our desire really is to see Christians who are caught up in conspiratorial thinking to become free from this snare. Because even if it's ALL true, every bit of it, so what? What are you going to do with all this information that you get from your conspiracy websites? Are you going to storm the doors and demand answers? They shoot people at the White House for that. You know that, right? What about the resorts where the world leaders are (allegedly) meeting to conspire evil? You can't get in there, those are gated communities, and even if you could, what would you do? Pass out You Might Be An Illuminati Member If..... pamphlets? They'd cart you off and lock you up in a padded cell.

I mean honestly, what is the point of looking at this stuff, and supposedly "educating yourself" on it all? What is the end-game for it?

What lost people need is not a dissertation on evil. They need Christ. They need the gospel message. They need to be helped to understand what sin is, and then told that they need to repent and believe on Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

Let's keep our eyes on the Christ, and make sure we're keeping our hearts pure, and making sure our time is being wisely spent on the study of the Scriptures, and not in hours of time spent poring over conspiracy websites. Let us strive to remember that this increasingly dark world is not our home, but that we can entrust whatever wickedness is here to the LORD. May we continue to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. And when souls are saved through the preaching of the gospel, those new believers WILL leave behind the trappings of the world of their own accord, because He who has begun a good work in them will bring it to completion, will He not?
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Tim 3:16-17) 
"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." (Phil 4:8)
"But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." (1 Peter 3:15)
"The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day." (Prov 4:18)
* * * * * * * *

The rest of this series can be read here:
PART 1 - Christians and Conspiracy Theories (Katy Perry, the 2015 Super Bowl halftime performances, Now The End Begins website)  
PART 2 - Christians and Conspiracy Theories (Madonna, the 2015 Grammys)  
PART 3 - Conspiracy Theories: Dark Times, Truth, Lies and Where Christians Should Put Their Focus
PART 5 - Christians and Conspiracy Theories: A Biblical Response (CONCLUSION)

 Additional Resources 


Conspiracy Theories Are Bunk (Dr R Scott Clark, Heidelblog)

The Christian and Conspiracy Theories
 (Ken Samples, Issues Etc.)


David Rockefeller, the New World Order, and the Necessity of Verifying Internet Quotes (Nick Peters)

Why Creation Ministries International Rejects ‘Conspiracy’ Theorizing (Drs Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati, Creation Ministries International)


Monday, February 9, 2015

Christians and Conspiracy Theories (Part 2)

Posted by Sola Sisters

Madonna at the 2015 Grammys
Just when the folks who might have a tendency to be conspiracy minded settled down after the Super Bowl performances, Madonna got "kind of Satanic" a few weeks later at the Grammys by dancing with "a bunch of masked, horned bull-men," according to the on-site MTV reporter. And the conspiracy thinking got another boost in the Christian realm, with articles about these things showing up regularly in my social media feed.

It's interesting to note that the above was reported in a tongue-in-cheek way by MTV, but this doesn't help the conspiracy theorists, whose ability to decode Illuminati conspiracies is very high, but their ability to decode cheeky commentary is apparently non-existent. (Conspiracy theory website Now The End Begins ran with the headline Madonna Dances Over Pit of Horned Demons at 2015 Grammys.)

In reality, Madonna gave a performance that featured a matador theme, and which included horn-hatted dancers who did look something like how we might imagine Satan's minions to look.

There were also other displays of demonic/Satanic imagery at the Grammys, including AC/DC singing "Highway To Hell," which the audience rocked out to while wearing glowy, devil horn hats. These devil hats were passed out to the crowd, who were encouraged to take them home as a keepsake. Sweet, huh?



But my friends, and my fellow Christians, this is not Illuminati indoctrination. This is just celebrities riding the wave of the culture. They love to shock and outdo each other and be outrageous. And besides, I've always had a theory about Madonna, who was raised Roman Catholic, that at heart (besides being a sinner in need of a Saviour), she's just a Catholic schoolgirl who wants to shock the nuns.

To be clear: there's no question about the fact that Madonna lives and promotes a wicked lifestyle. But no, she is not a high level member of the Illuminati.

As Christians, we should respond to the evil that we know of (which is readily known through the content of Madonna's songs and lifestyle), and "overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21).

Also, a note of caution: please do not see this as an opportunity to mock or ridicule Madonna. She is a lost person, living a wicked lifestyle, but at one time "such were some of you" (1 Cor 6:11). Pray for her. Pray for someone to have access to her who can give her the gospel.

The rest of this series is linked below:
PART 1 - Christians and Conspiracy Theories (Katy Perry, the 2015 Super Bowl halftime performances, Now The End Begins website)   
PART 3 - Conspiracy Theories: Dark Times, Truth, Lies and Where Christians Should Put Their Focus
PART 4 - Christians and Conspiracy Theories: Witnessing, Romans 1 and An Appeal
PART 5 - CONCLUSION Christians and Conspiracy Theories: A Biblical Response 

 Additional Resources 

Conspiracy Theories Are Bunk (Dr R Scott Clark, Heidelblog)

The Christian and Conspiracy Theories (Ken Samples, Issues Etc.)

David Rockefeller, the New World Order, and the Necessity of Verifying Internet Quotes (Nick Peters)

Why Creation Ministries International Rejects ‘Conspiracy’ Theorizing (Drs Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati, Creation Ministries International)


Conspiracy Theories: Dark Times, Truth, Lies and Where Christians Should Fix Their Focus (Part 3)

Posted by Sola Sisters

 Dark Times 

Why do people become fixated on conspiracy theories? And what is going on with those Super Bowl and Grammys and MTV performances? It’s our view that Christians become fixated on conspiracy theories because they want to understand and better navigate the world, which is increasingly dark. But we contend that looking at conspiracy theories is a wrong focus, it’s time poorly spent. For some, the study of conspiracy theories becomes almost a gnostic kind of piety, to be the person who is in the know, the one who has broken the code. But this is pride, and not becoming to the Christian. What the LORD desires for us to know, He gives to us in his Word. We are the finite, created thing; we are not the Creator, and so it is not given to us to know all things.
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29)
Obviously, we are living in a wicked time, a time that is becoming more and more wicked with each passing year. Our culture is hyper-sexualized. Many thousands of babies are murdered every year by being aborted. There is rampant fornication and immorality and violence all around us. In short, our culture has cast off all moral restraint. There's not even a pretense of it anymore. And so, it is to be expected that the celebrities this immoral, hyper-sexualized, sensation-seeking culture chooses to build up and idolize will reflect those values (or lack of values). And they do. They sing songs with lyrics that celebrate wickedness, fornication and the latest cause du jour, normalized homosexuality. So should it really be any surprise that the performances of these celebrities at one of the most-viewed events of the year would be over the top in every way? That's what we know and can see plainly, and that's what we should be dealing with. We don't need to deconstruct costumes or hand signals in order to know that the lyrics of Katy Perry's songs are wicked. The lyrics celebrate bisexuality, and we don't need to do any code-cracking on a conspiracy website in order to know whether or not that's wrong. We can know it's wrong from God's word.

And as far as high-level, global conspiracies in the way that conspiracy theorists generally think of them, which interconnect the government, the pharmaceutical industry, the military, past and present world leaders, the banking industry, corporate heads, and even farmers?  The very idea not only stretches the bounds of credulity, but it's just simply not possible. (Listen here to an in-depth discussion about conspiracy theories, and why they are not possible as they are commonly thought to exist.) Conspiracies, actual conspiracies, don’t hold together because of human frailty: fear, conscience, pride, etc. As Chuck Colson pointed out in his book “Born Again”, the Watergate conspiracy in which he was involved, an actual political conspiracy that occurred in the late 1970s, demonstrates that conspiracies fall apart or are exposed in relatively short order.
“Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world, and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks.”

 Truth, Lies and Where Christians Should Put Their Focus 

In the 1980s, there was a widely circulated rumor that the CEO of Fortune 500 company Procter and Gamble had publicly stated he was donating a portion of Procter and Gamble's profits to the Church of Satan. This rumor took on a life of its own, and was widely repeated and whispered about for years. During this season of slander, the Procter and Gamble logo was also widely deconstructed for evidence revealing the company's (alleged) connection to the Church of Satan. But this rumor, which continues to surface every few years, is completely false. (This article discusses the $19 million dollar lawsuit won by Procter and Gamble against a competing company, Amway, for creating and spreading this falsehood.)

And to go a step further, from a Christian perspective, for Christians to repeat information such as this without verifying it, is to bear false witness (transgression of the 9th Commandment). As we say often here, truth is important, because God is the author of truth. Truth is important to God, and so it ought to be important to us. This means that we have an obligation to verify whether things that we repeat are true or not.

Yet studying symbols, deconstructing hand signs and poring over conspiracy theory sites which put out all manner of outrageous speculation, are a staple among conspiracy theorists. Just put "Illimuniti" into a Google search engine, and see what you get: 45 million stories in a split second (0.25 seconds, to be exact), that's what you get. That's a rabbit hole from which a person might never emerge. But is this where God wants us to put our focus and spend time?

A theory is just that: a theory, a guess, a speculation about something for which there is no proof. By contrast, truth is what we know to be true, and as Christians, we know that God is the author of truth, and also that truth is centered upon the person and work of Christ. Therefore, truth is important.
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6) 
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17) 
“But the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you.” (1 Peter 1:25)
So what do conspiracy theories have to do with truth?

Yes, conspiracies, actual conspiracies and not theories, exist, and the Bible itself mentions conspiracies in several places. Lest we forget, there was a conspiracy to kill Jesus. But the conspiracies mentioned in scripture are only mentioned in passing, and nowhere are Christians exhorted to study them. Please take note of this distinction we’re making between conspiracies (real, mentioned briefly in passing in scripture) and conspiracy theories (speculated about, but not proven).

Where conspiracies are directly addressed in scripture, this is what we are told:
"For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: 'Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.'" (Isaiah 8:11-13)
As the passage from Isaiah points out, the Lord of hosts, God, should be our focus.

The Gospel of Matthew also gives us an account of the disciple Peter stepping out of the storm-tossed boat and beginning to walk toward Christ on the water... until he began to sink after taking his eyes off Christ, and putting his focus on the wind which was whipping around him:
“Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.’ And Jesus said, ‘Come!’ And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Him. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind stopped. And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, ‘You are certainly God’s Son!’” (Matthew 14:28-32)
We also know that God is sovereign, and that nothing that is occurring around us is taking Him by surprise. We can trust Him. We can rest in Him. We belong to the One who knows the end from the beginning. God the Father will give us strength and peace in whatever trials may come. God the Son will give peace to those who abide in him. God the Spirit will give us a sense of peace and comfort.
God the Father - “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)  “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’” (Isaiah 46:10) 
God the Son “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5)
God the Holy Spirit - “But the Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14:26) “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:29)
What is the fruit that God the Son references in the Gospel of John? It is not the fruit of studying conspiracy theories and explaining them. It is gospel fruit. It is the fruit that comes from sharing Christ with the lost, perhaps even those trying to deconstruct alleged conspiracies as they also attempt to make sense of this world? To those people, we can bring the light and the hope of a Saviour who gave his life “as a ransom for many.” And what is the rest for our souls that is referenced in the Gospel of Matthew? It is rest in knowing that our salvation is secure because of Christ, and that we look not to this world, but toward the world to come.

 Conclusion   Conclusion 

Is there a balanced way for Christians to view conspiracy theories? The answer is yes, there is. Simply put, it involves first and foremost keeping our eyes fixed upon Christ, and then weighing actual evidence, and not just relying on anecdotal accounts or speculation or the first 10 websites provided by a Google search (or in the instance of an Illuminati Google search, the first 45 million websites). Of all people, Christians know that there is real evil in the world, and that we have a real Adversary, a real spiritual presence that is alive and well and active in the world today ("Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." 1 Peter 5:8). But, we also know that a sovereign Lord rules and reigns over all the affairs of man, and that what we are commanded to do is simple: keep our eyes fixed on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, contend for truth, love and serve our families and churches, and share the gospel.

The rest of this series is linked below:
PART 1 - Christians and Conspiracy Theories (Katy Perry, the 2015 Super Bowl halftime performances, Now The End Begins website)  
PART 2 - Christians and Conspiracy Theories (Madonna, the 2015 Grammys)  
PART 4 - Christians and Conspiracy Theories: Witnessing, Romans 1 and An Appeal
PART 5 - CONCLUSION Christians and Conspiracy Theories: A Biblical Response 

 Additional Resources 

Conspiracy Theories Are Bunk (Dr R Scott Clark, Heidelblog)

The Christian and Conspiracy Theories (Ken Samples, Issues Etc.)

David Rockefeller, the New World Order, and the Necessity of Verifying Internet Quotes (Nick Peters)

Why Creation Ministries International Rejects ‘Conspiracy’ Theorizing (Drs Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati, Creation Ministries International)