Lux Lucet

In anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine [of Christ], do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.

– 2 John 10-11

While it may come as a surprise to some Christians that they can become guilty by association, nevertheless the Bible teaches that this is the case. Christians are to point out, and to avoid association with, those who teach heresy. By failing to point out the heresy of false teachers, a Christians are like, “the watchman who sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet.” That’s bad enough. But by associating themselves with heretics and unbelievers, Christians actually can share in the evil deeds of others.

This is a sobering thought, one not to be taken lightly.

I bring this up today, because, after reading through the material on the Evangelical Immigration Table website, as well as material about the organization found on other sites, it is hard for me to reach any other conclusion than that those associated with EIT not only have failed to sound the trumpet to warn Christians of the false teaching on immigration offered up by the Roman Church-State, but they have, in fact, received into their house and greeted those who do not bring the doctrine of Christ, both false Christian teachers as well as rank unbelievers.

Put another way, those who lend their names to EIT have sinned a great sin, one of which they have urgent need to repent.

So just how have those affiliated with EIT failed, not only to blow the trumpet when they saw the sword coming, but also welcomed into their house and greeted those who do not bring the doctrine of Christ? There seem to me to be at least three ways: By associating themselves with 1) feminists, 2) false teachers and 3) other infidels.

Feminists

The term “Evangelical” has, at least since the end of WWI in the United States, increasingly become emptied of its original meaning. During the time of the Reformation, an Evangelical was someone who held to two principal ideas: Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide. That is to say, he was someone who, rejecting tradition as normative, believed that the Bible alone was authoritative in matters of faith and life. Secondly, an Evangelical was someone who held to justification by belief alone. That is to say, he held that a man’s works, however good they may appear in an outward sense, could in no way make him acceptable to God. He understood that Christ’s righteousness alone, imputed to him by belief alone, was his only hope of salvation.

In the early 21st century, that quite obviously is no longer the case. For the organizers of EIT don’t hesitate for a moment to call “Evangelical” those who clearly reject the Bible’s authoritative teaching on the role of men and women. The Apostle Paul clearly taught that women were to remain silent in the churches, and that they were not to teach or exercise authority over a man. But in searching the EIT website over the past few weeks, this author noticed a number of times where the organization endorsed what the Apostle forbade.

For example, the Learn More button the upper left side of EIT’s home page takes you to a page that, among other things, has numerous videos under the heading “View Sermon Examples,” one of which is a video of Karla Shaw, identified as being associated with Community Presbyterian Church in Point Loma, CA, which is part of the very liberal Presbyterian Church U.S.A.

Going to the website of Community Presbyterian Church, one finds that the Pastor Nominating Committee was thrilled with the enthusiastic response of the congregation with their nomination of Rev. Karla Shaw as the new Pastor for PLCPC.” So, despite Paul’s injunction that women were not to teach or to exercise authority over a man, or, for that matter, so much as to speak in church, this wayward congregation decided it knew better and called a woman as pastor anyway.

That’s bad enough. But even worse is EIT’s palming this unbiblical decision off on Evangelicals as representative of Biblical Christianity. Question, If Karla Shaw disbelieves the very clear teaching of Scripture that women are not to serve as ministers, why would any Christian feel compelled to listen to what she has to say on immigration?

But this is not the only example of female preachers, or at least female worship leaders, on the website. Perusing the other videos in the same section of the website, the reader will notice several other such videos.

In his book Scripture Twisting in the Seminaries, Part I: Feminism, John W. Robbins rightly noted that the same hermeneutical methods used by feminist scholars to justify female ministers, if applied to the rest of the Bible, “would result in the destruction of the system of truth found in Scripture” (xiii). Any exegete, male or female, who sees fit to twist the Scriptures to justify women preachers cannot be trusted on the issue of immigration either. That EIT would cite such persons strongly suggests that it cannot be trusted either.

False Teachers

Last week, I mentioned that while searching the website I found twelve instances where the word “wall” was used. Thinking that perhaps there were references to Donald Trump’s border wall, I clicked on the links, only to find something quite different. Instead of references to the border wall, ten of the twelve items were references to Jim Wallis.

So who is Jim Wallis? He’s an uber liberal Protestant whose teaching differs little from the sort of thing one might hear from an Antifa supporting college Marxist or Bernie Sanders. One could cite many examples of Jim Wallis’ wrongheaded doctrine and practice, but perhaps quoting the Mission Statement of Sojourners, the organization he founded and stills heads, will give you some sense of his thinking. “The mission of Sojourners is to articulate the biblical call to social justice, to inspire hope and build a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world.”

This statement is noteworthy both for what it does not say as well as for what it does. There’s nothing about preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, nothing about repentance and faith and sanctification. No Scripture is quoted.

On the other hand, we do see a clear call for social – not Biblical – justice, which is a term used by political and economic progressives to denote big government, distributivist policies. Further, the mission statement calls for inspiring hope and transforming individuals, communities, the church and the world, but says nothing explicit about how this is to be accomplished. Since the Gospel is not mentioned, but social justice is, one would be fair in supposing that Wallis and company hope to effect the desired transformation through political means rather than preaching repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, there’s not much that separates the message of liberal social gospelers such as Wallis from that of an avowed atheist progressive such as Bernie Sanders.

And if that weren’t bad enough, by citing, and citing prominently, a false teacher such as Jim Wallis, those associated with EIT have severely compromised whatever Christian witness they may have had and, in the process, shared in his evil deeds.

Other Infidels – The Sorovangelicals

One of the remarkable aspects of EIT is how it manages to convey a message that is so at odds with the people it claims to represent. As the Christian Post notes, “white evangelicals have been, and continue to be, the most opposed to immigration reform among religious groups. This finding has been present consistently over the past twenty years in dozens of surveys from polling organizations including the Pew Research Center, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), the General Social Surveys, and the American National Election Studies.”

An exasperated headline on the leftist website Vox asks, “Several white evangelical leaders reject anti-immigrant rhetoric. Why do their flocks embrace it?” Reading through the article, one sees several explanations offered up. For example, we’re told in the piece that the reason Evangelicals overwhelmingly reject mass, taxpayer subsidized immigration, migration and refugee resettlement is because their thinking is governed, not by the Bible, but by conservative media. As the article asserts without any proof, the, “white evangelical population…gets its moral sense as much from conservative media as it does from scripture.” How Vox knows this, the article doesn’t say. The piece also suggest another possible boogeyman in the form of, “the GOP party agenda.”

The real reason Christians reject the globalists’ immigration program – the fact that it is based, not on the teachings of Scripture, but on the incompetent, big government socialist dogmas of the Antichrist Roman Church-State – is never mentioned anywhere.

So how is it that, on the one hand, ordinary Evangelicals are rightly skeptical of the globalists’ immigration program, while at the same time EIT, and organization that claims to represent them, sounds like the Evangelical auxiliary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops?

The answer lies, at least to a large degree, in that old maxim, follow the money.

So just who funds EIT? Would you be surprised if I told you that in some roundabout, convoluted way, apparently Mr. Globalist himself, George Soros, was helping bankroll their nonsense?

As is generally the case when looking into George Soros’ baleful influence, the trail can become a bit complicated, but here is what can be said with confidence:

• As Breitbart reported in 2013, EIT does not legally exist. It is a loose affiliation of a number of Evangelical 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations. Since EIT is not a legal non-profit entity, it cannot purchase advertising. Nevertheless, in 2013 EIT announced a $250,000 purchase of radio ads in support of the notorious, failed Gang-of-8 immigration reform bill. So, just who facilitated the purchase of all this advertising?
  
• The Breitbart article continues, “EIT says it selected National Immigration Forum to “facilitate” its work.
  
• According to Breitbart, the National Immigration Forum received over $3 million dollars from Soros’ Open Society Institute in 2009 and 2010.
  
• But even though Soros funds the National Immigration Forum (NIF), the Christian Post reports that Ali Noorani, the group’s executive director, says that none of the Soros money went to EIT. According to Noorani, Soros’ money is about 10 percent of the NIF’s budget and is used for internal operations. The reader will need to decide for himself whether Noorani is telling the truth. But even if we’re getting the straight scoop, could not one argue that, since Soros’ money is going to fund NIF’s internal operations, and since those internal operations likely were involved in some way with helping NIF purchase radio ads for EIT, in an indirect sense Soros did fund EIT?
  

For what it’s worth, noted Evangelical author Eric Metaxas announced he was quitting EIT in a Tweet, where he wrote, “Did you know George Soros was behind the Immigration thing I signed but then had my name taken off? Yikes.” Yikes, indeed.

While Soros’ linkage to EIT takes some work to follow, such is not the case with one of EIT’s favorite Protestant leftists, the aforementioned Jim Wallis.

Back in 2010 World editor Marvin Olasky penned an article in which he noted that Sojourners had accepted a $200,000 donation from Soros in 2004. Wallis vehemently denied this claim, saying that Olasky “lies for a living.” Wallis later apologized to Olasky, admitting that, yes, Sojourners did, in fact, take the loot from Soros.

Just two months ago, the Washington Times ran an article about George Soros and his ‘rented evangelicals.’ For a copy of the video discussed in the article, please click here. In that video, there’s a clip of an executive of the New America Foundation who speaks openly about “doing a…’Rent an Evangelical’ ” campaign. The New America Foundation lists Soros’ Open Society Foundation as one of its donors in the $1,000,000+ category.

When watching the video, please note that it erroneously seems to portray Roman Catholics as Christians and victims of Soros corrupting influence. I adamantly deny both propositions.

The big takeaway here is that the Evangelical community is not free from the subversive influence of George Soros. Given the amount of Soros’ money we know has been flowing to into putatively Evangelical organizations, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that there is a great deal more that yet remains undiscovered.

Closing Thoughts

With this post, I am brining my look at EIT, at least for now, to a close. That said, it would not surprise me at all if I’ll be documenting more of their false teaching on immigration at some point in the not too distant future.

The Apostle John warned his readers, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God.” It seems to this author that this warning has a general application to Christians to test those who speak in the name of God to see whether what they say is true. Martin Luther called the notion that all statements of all men must be brought back to the Scriptures and tested by them the Schriftprinzip, the writing principle.

Applying Luther’s writing principle to the statements of EIT, in this author’s opinion they fall well short of what the Bible teaches about immigration. Instead of teaching the importance of private property, the Biblical definition of citizenship and upholding the Protestant, Biblical Westphalian World Order, the pronouncements of EIT advocate the incompetent, globalist, distributivist socialism pushed by the papal Antichrist and his henchmen in the Roman Church-State.

If Christians want to understand what God requires them to believe and to do regarding immigration, they will find no guidance from the confused, dishonest Sorovangelicals of EIT. Christians must reject this group of wolves in sheep’s clothing together with all their words and works. For Protestants to do otherwise is to invite these false teachers into their houses, greet them, and thus share in their evil deeds.