U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at an event at the Hendrick Center for Automotive Excellence in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., August 16, 2024. Jonathan Drake | Reuters
Lacking a particular subject this week, I thought I’d opine on a few news items I’ve been thinking about.
Kamala’s Monstrous Regiment
From the look of things, Kamala will be the Democrat presidential nominee. I know. That’s not a particularly shocking prediction. After all, she has the endorsement of all the big-shot Dems. Just as important, she is generally leading in the polls. A swap-out would be more likely if Kamala were down in the polls.
Now, someone may say the polls are fake. And I certainly wouldn’t be on to argue with that. As a Scripturalist, I believe that knowledge is revealed in the 66 books of the Bible, its express statements, and logical implications. The most that any of us can have is an opinion about the political polls, whether they are accurate or not. We cannot have knowledge.
“This is like the modern version of Amalek. Until they’re (apparently referring to the Palestinians) wiped out, this is just going to go on and on and on and on.”
These were the words of no less an Evangelical light than John MacArthur in an interview with Ben Shapiro.
I’d like to say that MacArthur’s words were a rarity among American Protestants, but they are not. A substantial portion of the American Evangelical church is caught up in the superstition that is dispensationalism, a view of the end times that rose to prominence in the 19th century. For them, dispensationalism is the lens that colors their view of events in the Middle East. And so great is that coloring that they end up supporting anti-liberty political Judaism while destroying the Biblical system of political Protestantism set up by their forebears.
I’m not an expert on John MacArthur’s views on the end times, but I did find this article that seems to be consistent with his statement to Ben Shapiro. In it, MacArthur calls himself a “leaky dispensationalist,” by which he seems to mean that he’s not one of those crazy sorts of dispensationalists but is of a more rational spirit. Very well. But for all that, his stance on how Israel should conduct the war in Gaza, and by implication America’s obligation to support Israel’s war efforts, is not much different than Zionist wingnuts like Sen. Lindsey Graham, who called for Israel to nuke Gaza[1] or Nikki Haley writing “finish them” on an Israeli shell.[2]
What I find interesting about men such as MacArthur is that they continue to push the position that the American people have a God-given responsibility to ask “how high” every time the Israel lobby commands them and their elected officials to jump. By their words and actions, they show that they believe that the American people are, in fact, subordinate to the Israelis based on their warped interpretation of eschatology.
Take, for example, the Israel lobby’s attack on the First Amendment. At the behest of Jewish Zionists,[3] the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill called the Antisemitism Awareness Act that would, in effect, make all criticism of Israel and Jews illegal on college campuses.[4] Given the antisemitism laws in effect in Europe and Canada, it’s reasonable that the Israel lobby won’t be satisfied with quashing all criticism of Israel and Jews only on college campuses. They will work to impose such laws on American society at large, the First Amendment notwithstanding.
The First Amendment prohibits Congress from establishing a church, abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government. It is among the crowning achievements of political Protestantism. The First Amendment guarantees that Christians have the right to proclaim the gospel of Justification by Faith (Belief) Alone. If faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God, then, of course, freedom of speech is critical to the spread of the gospel. And since spiritual liberty begets political and economic liberty, free speech is also necessary to the creation and maintenance of our republic and the rights guaranteed under our Constitution.
So why do John MacArthur and others, instead of taking the side of political Protestantism as they should, prefer instead to support Zionism, which is an expression of political Judaism? Political Judaism lacks the necessary ideas to create or sustain a free society. Do these Christian Zionists not understand that Zionism and our God-given liberties protected by our Constitution are incompatible?
In the New Testament, we have several clear examples of what those who adhere to political Judaism think about free speech. They hate it. They had Christ crucified because they didn’t like his sermons. Even before the crucifixion, there were attempts on Jesus’s life simply for what he said.
The Sanhedrin beat Peter and John for what? For preaching the gospel. The Sanhedrin didn’t believe in freedom of speech. In 2024, the modern-day Sanhedrin in the form of the ADL, AIPAC, and other Jewish organizations and individuals[5] likewise do not believe in free speech and call for college kids and professors who protest Israel to be beaten, suspended, doxed, and prevented from working. They are political thugs whose ideas and actions are incompatible with a free society. Many Christians, who, like the Sanhedrin, also do not believe in freedom of speech, agree. But the Constitution, an expression of political Protestantism, says that college students have the right to peacefully protest Israel.
Political Judaism says, “Don’t say that, or we’ll throw you in jail.” Why do American Protestants fail to take their own side by defending political Protestantism’s principle of free speech? Why do they side with political Judaism against the commands of Scripture and their own best interests? A big part of the answer is their foolish and unscriptural dispensationalist eschatology.
Other Protestants, seeing the problems with political Judaism, prefer to side with Rome instead. One popular expression of political Romanism is Christian Nationalism, which calls for Protestants to make a grand alliance with Romanism and Eastern Orthodoxy to rebuild Christendom. Christians should not side with political Romanism or Orthodoxy, which, like political Judaism, are forms of unbelief lacking the necessary ideas to create and sustain a free society.
Satan fills this world with all manner of distractions, including false theologies and philosophies designed to fool, if possible, even the elect. It’s time for American Protestants to take Jesus’s words seriously, “Take heed that no man deceive you.”
[3] See this post of X from AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) from May 1, 2024. AIPAC, an organization committed to advancing political Judaism, is delighted at the Antisemitism Awareness Act’s attack on the First Amendment.
[5] One of the most vocal individuals attacking the right to protest Israel is billionaire investor Bill Ackman. Ackman demanded that Harvard University (his alma mater) name the Harvard students blaming Israel for the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. This is a tactic known as “doxing,” which is “Typically…a malicious act, used against people with whom the hacker disagrees or dislikes. Doxing…is the act of revealing identifying information about someone online, such as their real name, home address, workplace, phone, financial, and other personal information.” (Kaspersky, https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/what-is-doxing). Ackman claims to believe in free speech while at the same time acting like some mafia Don, saying to student protestors, in effect, “You’ll never work in this town again!”
Beit Lahia in northern Gaza on Dec. 26, following Israeli bombardments. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
I’ve written a great deal over the years in the space criticizing Roman Catholicism, but I’ve not had much to say about Dispensationalism. But both of them seem to have this in common: they are deeply superstitious.
Now Romanism and Dispensationalism are not superstitious in the same way. Romanism with its worship of Mary and the saints,[1] its doctrine of transubstantiation, and its cult of relics is thoroughly imbued with superstition. Dispensationalism, on the other hand, is a superstition that has taken over large parts of the professing Evangelical church in the United States, its chief superstition being the worship, or something close to it, of the modern nation-state of Israel.
Pastor Greg Locke, a Baptist preacher, is one of many examples of Israel worshipping American Evangelicals on the scene today. In a post on X dated 5/11/2024, Locke spent 588 words expressing his thoughts on Israel, even threatening to dismiss congregants whose views did not conform to his. Locke wrote, “In the last days there will be ONE dividing factor in the Body of Christ.” Locke enumerated several things that were not dividing factors: who kept their church open or closed (apparently a reference to Covid), cessationists vs. those who operate “in the gifts,” traditional vs. contemporary worship, or Bible versions. Interestingly, Locke did not mention those who believe in sovereign grace or free will or those who hold to justification by belief alone vs. those who hold that one is saved by faith plus something else. No, these are all minor issues. The big dividing line for Pastor Locke is what one believes about the nation-state of Israel.
Israel blows up Gaza, then wants to send the refugees to America.
One of the tired, stock lies of the Israel Lobby is the canard that “God blesses those who bless [the nation-state] of Israel.” And when they say “bless Israel,” they mean harm America for the benefit of the Zionist state.
Well, get ready get ready for another blessing from our greatest ally!
According this story from CBS, the “White House considers welcoming some Palestinians from war-torn Gaza as refugees.”
Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t want them hanging around his neck of the woods, but our greatest ally thinks sending them to your neighborhood and forcing you to support them with your tax dollars is an awesome idea. Our wonderful president agrees. So don’t even think about complaining about this wonderful blessing or so much as ask a question about why America should take these people in. No sir. Why, that would be antisemitic. And you don’t want to be antisemitic, do you?
This is all very predictable. Israel began the campaign to offload its Gaza problem on America at least as far back as November 2023. In an op-ed titled “The West Should Welcome Gaza Refugees: Europe and the U.S. accepted millions who fled eaerlier wars” in the Wall Street Journal dated Nov. 13, 2023, Danny Danon (a sitting member of the Israeli Knesset) and Ram Ben-Barak (another sitting member of the Knesset and former deputy director of the Mossad) could hardly contain their eagerness to bless Europe and America with millions more refugees. “The international community has a moral imperative…to…help the people of Gaza move toward a more prosperous future.”
For some unexplained reason, “the international community,” by which these two Israelis mean Europe and the U.S., have this “moral responsibility,” but not Israel.
The proper response to them is “Get thee behind me, Satan!”
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill testifies during a House hearing on Capitol Hill on Dec. 5. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
One can find many examples of high-ranking government officials and others in positions of influence complaining about threats to “our democracy.”
In 2018 when the great internet purge of conservatives began with the unpersoning and deplatforming of Alex Jones, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said,
Infowars [Infowars is Alex Jones’s news organization] is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it[1]
More recently, Nancy Pelosi opined that the prospect of Donald Trump being re-elected as president would be a “nightmare scenario” and that “our democracy” is “at stake” in the 2024 presidential election.[2]
This is an odd statement. Pelosi is asking readers to believe that if Donald Trump is re-elected by the voters as president, that somehow this is a threat to “our democracy.” It seems to this author that this would be the very definition of democracy: the people getting the elected officials whom they choose.
What Pelosi seems to mean is that if Donald Trump is re-elected, the voters made the wrong choice. While there’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with the result of an election, it’s silly to deem it a threat to “our democracy.”
Lux Lucet 