Q and the cross of Jesus

There are circumstances when I feel a great need to bury myself in God’s word and let Christian hymns and praise sweep over me. I feel a need to have truth and goodness wash my mind and soul. Often the reading I do for research has that effect. Sometimes just circumstances, ugly circumstances, place me in that position. For several days I have been listening to some extremely horrible videos. My concern for a few friends on Facebook who seem to be affirming conspiracy theories, even placing information by people who are involved in the Q or QAnon movement on their Facebook pages, initiated my need to understand the religious/social side of this movement; to hopefully emphasize the evil of this strange ideology which in some cases is mixed with a rather heterodox Christianity.

Recently, The Dispatch published an article “The GOP’s Conspiracy Theorist Problem,” which high-lighted several Republican candidates who are involved in conspiracy theories and the QAnon movement. In the article the author, Audrey Fahlberg, devotes a paragraph to the religious side of the QAnon movement writing, “QAnon’s doomsday flair has even captured the attention of fringe churches, including Omega Kingdom Ministry which regularly interprets Q drops through a biblical lens.” Fahlberg also refers to “Home Congregations,” a site Omega Kingdom Ministry is connected to. I explored these two sites and their strange videos.

And yes, there is a faith statement that sounds like orthodox Christianity with a twist. There is this part of their faith statement, “We believe that Christ never intended to start a religion, but that men have built the church as we know it today. We believe that Christ never intended that His Body become a business or an institution, but a family. We believe that Christ has called us out of the crowd to be His Ekklesia, a governmental body, a ruling congregation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.” This statement eliminates most connections between QAnon believers and orthodox Christianity since the meaning is that only those house churches abiding by the teachings of “Home Congregations” and the predictions of Q are performing God’s 

will.

The differences between the house churches connected to QAnon and orthodox Christianity, including Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox, are vast. It is the eschatology of the QAnon churches that shapes their theological differences with true Christianity. Always they are informed by the conspiracy theories of QAnon. Yes, they believe in the return of Christ but their focus is on political events deeply colored by the unknown person or persons they call Q.

In one particular video a leader, Russ Wagner, explains what he believes is the difference between “Church,” and “ekklesia”. He states, “ekklesia was a governmental word ‘called out assembly.’ Tracing what he sees as the history of the words, Wagner adds, “The body of Christ on earth today is his [Christ’s] governmental ruling council. Wagner goes on to emphasize that, “We have been given authority to rule what is lawful and what is unlawful in our city and in our region.”  Additionally he opines, “We have been given the authority to take legal and militant action against the destructive forces of hell in our city.”

Since Wagner is a charismatic most of his view of taking authority is demands made to demonic spirits, however his concepts belittle the cross of Jesus. In a different video he quotes Jesus’ words, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8 NKJV),” then Wagner says, “You see, the Kingdom of Heaven coming down to earth destroys all the work of the enemy if the ekklesia of Christ is functioning in any given city.” In other words it is Jesus’ manifestation plus the ekklesia functioning that destroys the works of the devil. There are two big problems here:

First because Wagner has made a difference between the Church and what he calls the ekklesia he places the Church outside of the purposes and the work of Christ. But the bigger problem is Wagner’s lack of acknowledgement of the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The beautiful hymn in the first chapter of Colossians details this:

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead, so He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross, through him I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. (Colossians 1: 13-20)

Adding to Wagner’s views about the Church and the authority of what he calls the ekklesia is the problem of placing the conspiracies of QAnon alongside his and other’s teaching. Their web sites are full of videos and the messages in the videos are not only extreme conspiracies, they are theologically unbiblical. There is also the potential for anti-Semitism in several of their wild tales. The basic conspiracies are the usual; there is a group of families, the Rothschild’s are considered first, who are controlling the world, own all the banks and the Federal Reserve and most businesses and institutions. They intend to destroy all that is good. But in the QAnon tales there is an additional concern. What is called, the deep state, a group consisting of most presidents, many celebrities and wealthy individuals like Bill Gates and of course Soros are involved in a worldwide ring of pedophiles.

This is where President Trump supposedly comes into the story. There is a plan, the Q plan, in which Trump is involved with some military leaders to arrest all of the offenders of sex trafficking and move the world toward a golden age. This plan involves the arrest and imprisonment of such people as the Bushes, the Clintons, Bill Gates and Soros.  And supposedly peace will come to earth because the conspirators had been controlling such people as North Korea’s Kim Jung-un and China’s Xi Jinping who will now make peace. As an aside, one video suggests that Trump in the end won’t be the leader but instead John Kennedy Jr. who didn’t really die in a plane crash!  

All of that weirdness is itself unbiblical, because it is untruthful and horribly slanderous, but here are the theological problems. One particular video insists that all of the conflicts and hatred happening in the world aren’t caused by common humanity because it isn’t the nature of humanity to commit crimes or cause conflict. We are good and those committing such atrocities are the enemy. But what does Scripture say about the goodness of humanity? “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).” And Psalms 53 is very clear:

The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ they are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; there is no one who does good. God looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there is anyone who understands, who seeks after God. Every one of them has turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. (1-3)

If even a part of humanity were good, born without sin, there would be no reason for the Incarnation and the death of Jesus on the cross so once again the cross is belittled. Instead some of humanity is lifted up as those who in their goodness will help to bring about utopia. And although there is here and there a commitment to Jesus and his salvation, in many of the videos Trump is seen as the ultimate liberator, the one who will deliver the world from the cabal of pedophiles, the deep state. Jesus’ uniqueness, sacrifice and triumph is simply treated as nothing when one commentator states that Q’s plan will, “be regarded as the greatest story ever told.” Another speaker, a professor, Douglas Belmore, who professes to be a Christian, insists that his listeners should not worry because “Q owns the most powerful military intelligence the world has ever known.

The possibility of anti-Semitism comes in a series of videos that attempt to explain communism by linking it to the occult and what is called the Illuminati. Two men, Benjamin Chasteen and Rob Counts, are the producers of this series. In their video, “The Illuminati End Game: The Secret Societies behind Communism,” they use Nesta Webster, the author of World Revolution the plot against civilization as their main reference. They explain that in the academic world she is known as a Nazi sympathizer but they attempt to explain that away. They state that in her “findings Nesta made a grave oversight; she found that people who called themselves Jews were behind several subversive movements because of that she confused these people who called themselves Jews as actual Jews.” And “she ended up joining societies who considered themselves Fascist before those societies are considered what they are today

But Bob and Rob show their own anti-Semitism when they attempt to excuse Webster’s. Because her information is mostly made up and partly based on the fake Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion it is Webster who named them Jews. She was not confused; she not only joined several British Fascist societies but also wrote for an anti-Semitic journal, The Jewish Peril.[1] In a third video, “Deep State Funded Lenin,” Bob and Rob state that a Rothschild and several other Jewish bankers funded the early communist revolution, adding that J.P. Morgan also funded them. The creators of these videos keep bringing up Jewish bankers without admitting to their own anti-Semitism. They suggest that Hitler was a Rothschild and was raised by Ashkenazi Jews and then make fun of the four letters at the end of the word.

The leaders and members of these two religious organizations and the many other Q followers insist that there is a personal great evil above the deep state which will be brought to an end by political, martial and judicial ends. There is a personal great evil, but one that has already been defeated on a bloody cross. We live in the already/not yet of that defeat. And if we are Christians we live beneath the cross, not under the manipulative hands of slanderous mythical tales. Our times are in the hands of Jesus, our fellowship is with the Church, His body. Do not forsake the one who bought you.

When I began this blog posting I was letting the word of God and this Christian song sweep over me:

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesta_Helen_Webster