Julie Green, Eric Metaxas, ‘Still’ it is said, ‘still, shall the City of God abide, lusty beside her tiny stream’

 

There is a beautiful peace that belongs to the children of God, those who belong to Jesus, who are held within His redemptive kingdom, who wear the blood washed garments of grace. They are yoked to Jesus’ easy yoke even in the midst of suffering. But there are those meddling with evil, pushing, or believing lies, who end up substituting idols for Jesus. And sometimes those who meddle in heresy reach demonic depths.

The leaders of the MAGA movement, (Trump’s movement), and leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation movement are growing in their vengefulness’ and verbal abuse. I have been listening to various videos, one of Eric Metaxas on Steve Bannon’s War Room, “Eric Metaxas on Loving Your Country Too Much,” a putdown of Tim Alberta’s book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, and his many interviews. And many of Julie Green’s videos. She is considered a prophet within the NAR movement. Green gives supposed prophecies almost every day. The prophecies are offered as though Jesus is speaking directly through her as though she is a medium.

Bannon and Metaxas refer to Alberta as a Marxist, globalist, and his book as coming from the “pit of hell” insisting that it is meant to silence the Church. But, instead Alberta’s book is a warning and a gift to the Church calling us back to faithfulness, not to the kingdoms of this world, but to the Kingdom of God and to the King, Jesus.

Green’s prophecies have mostly, seemingly, been calls to stand up for God; but one does not listen long before hearing political messages. Trump is referred to as God’s David and the people of God are interchanged with God’s United States. God will punish His enemies referring to their actions as infiltrating all American institutions and stealing elections. Green mentions what some of these two movements are calling the Haman effect, which refers to the biblical Haman who planned to have Mordecai, Queen Esther’s uncle, hanged but was himself hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. The belief is that many of the enemies of the two movements will be hanged or imprisoned.

Probably the worst of the prophecies Green has released was, at my writing, less then a day ago. The video is entitled Judgement is Here and Judgement is Clear. I am focusing on this video because it has a demonic quality to it. As Green supposedly begins to allow Jesus to speak through her, her voice becomes harsh and loud and her face begins to be contorted. It is frightening, not because I am frightened by God’s judgment—after all, I belong to Him; but I feel deeply sorry for Green who has allowed herself to be pulled into a very dark world for the sake of a very bad man. And she and others, Metaxas for one, are pulling many lost sheep into this dark world.

The messages coming out of these videos and also the conferences are about enemies, who want to destroy America and Christianity. But the words one hears are about judgements on those Christians who don’t agree with either the MAGA leaders or the NAR leaders. And there is nothing about loving enemies. When writing a review of Metaxas book, Letter to the American Church,  I quoted Barth which I often do—it speaks so well to the real need and purposes of the Church in the middle of trying times:

Of course something has to be done; very much so; but most decidedly nothing other than this, viz. that the Church congregations be gathered together again, but aright and anew in fear and great joy, to the Word by means of the Word. All the crying over the Church will not deliver the Church. Where the Church is the Church she is already delivered. Let persecution be never so severe, it will not affect her! ‘Still’ it is said, ‘still, shall the City of God abide, lusty beside her tiny stream’ (Psalm xlvi. 5; Luther’s translation).[1]

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[1] Karl Barth, Theological Existence To-Day: A plea for theological freedom, ( Hodder and Stoughton: London 1933) 77,78.

A Book Review: Tim Alberta's warning and gift to the Church.

 

A book review by Viola Larson

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

Author: Tim Alberta

Harper Collins: 2023

Writing in 2024 I intend, to focus on Jesus as Lord and the good news of redemption. Still, I see painful times ahead and believe there is a warning that needs to be given to Christians. It is about idolatry. Tim Alberta’s new book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory is to the Church a gift, a warning and a carrier of hope.

Alberta who is a political columnist for Atlantic, as well as a Christian, began his journey of writing his book after experiencing harassment at his father’s funeral. (His father had been an evangelical pastor.) After Alberta’s book American Carnage was published many of his fellow church members were unhappy with his views of Trump. He was given an insulting letter by a church elder. Alberta writes:

“I was part of an evil plot, the man wrote, to undermine God’s ordained leader of the United States. My criticisms of President Trump were tantamount to treason—against both God and country—and I should be ashamed of myself.

However, he assured me, there was hope. Jesus forgives and so does he. If I could use my journalism skills to investigate the “deep state” he wrote, uncovering the shadowy cabal that was sabotaging Trump’s presidency then I would be restored. He said he was praying for me.” [1]

This and other harassments sent Alberta on a journey, exploring the causes of such idolatry in the Church.

Some chapters in his book explore the roots as well as the present ideology of believers caught up in extreme loyalty to Trump. Those explorations cover a past that was itself a move away from the words and work of Jesus, including the formation of Liberty University. And a present which includes mega churches who with ultra-patriotic sermons and flag waving captured the loyalty of members of other churches that were attempting to protect their members from COVID by staying closed during the worst of the pandemic.

It should be pointed out that Alberta believes that those evangelicals who are a part of Maga not only idolize Trump, they, going beyond normal patriotism, idolize America—see America as a covenant nation meant, like Old Testament Israel, to obey scriptural laws. They do not see America as a pluralistic democracy and they tend to confuse that with their real biblical position as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Alberta has one chapter on Clay C lark and Michael Flynn’s Reawaken America Tour, a movement I sometimes follow and write about. His description of his experience in one meeting in Branson Missouri covers the nightmare well:

“Sitting in the second-floor gallery of the Mansion Theatre looking out across a standing-room—only crowd of people clad in garish cross necklaces and Qanon sweatshirts and red Maga hats, I could practically hear the voice of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, who declared sometime around 600 BC that the people of Israel possessed ‘no shame at all. ‘They had, Jeremiah said in one translation, ‘forgotten how to blush.’ In fifteen years of political journalism, I had witnessed political chicanery and skullduggery of every sort. Nothing could surprise me anymore; I was immune to outrage, bereft of the ability to recoil from iniquity. And then I discovered the Reawaken America Tour. [2]

Positioned here and there within various chapters are Christians who represent hope. One person is the pastor following Alberta’s father. Timid at first, fearful of those in his church who constantly pushed far right political issues including conspiracy theories, losing members during the COVID pandemic, Cris Winans grew mature, brave, and wiser. Alberta writes of how Winans begin to deal with the members of his church:

“Winans wanted to bring his congregation along to compel them to second-guess their extrabiblical desires. But make them think it was their own conviction. He would preach on godly character then play dumb when someone approached him afterward to admit they were rethinking their allegiance to certain politicians or pop-culture personalities; he would preach on the spiritual principle of discernment then offer a bemused shrug when someone confessed to him that they were beginning to doubt conspiracy theories or question information they’d been imbibing on social media.”[3]

A couple of the pages of hope are contained in one chapter with so much hope it is impossible to cover all in a short review. A conference at Wheaton College. Several outstanding speakers return the audience to the need for Christians to return to love and compassion for those outside the church. And there is a reminder that, yes the church was once persecuted greatly and in other parts of the world still is, but here in the West, in America, contrary to many evangelicals’ views. there is not that kind of persecution.

And additionally, there can be great ministry because of push back to the gospel. As one speaker, Laurel Bunker, reminds the audience of the world’s real need:

“The Black kids of the city of Chicago; the gay kids who struggle with suicidal ideation; the single mothers’ the prostitutes; the broken of society. The only way they will know is if we go.” … “they are not going to come to us. They don’t care about our steeples. They want to know, is my life redeemable? Does my life have purpose?”[4]

And then there is the chapter that covers an event in France where an Orthodox Ukrainian monk, Hovorun and Miroslav Volf, a well known theologian and poet, from what was once Yugoslavia, now at Yale, spoke covering the political religion that Vladimir Putin embraces as an excuse to keep power and enlarge it. While there is so much information in this chapter that is so thoughtful and helpful the discussion on civil religion versus political religion is particularly enlightening in regards to Trump, Maga and evangelicals who are pushing toward nationalism.

Alberta states that Hovorun notes that political religion is enforced by the state and gives examples of “Hitlerism, Nazism, and Communism.”[5] According to Alberta, Hovorum also stated, “In Trumpism, we are still dealing with civil religion—a form of civil religion. Its not yet political religion.” (Italics Alberta’s)

To take this further Hovorun points to what he believes is hopeful, political evangelicalism is “Christ-centric.” But Volf disagrees, his words “I’ve come to believe … that the Christ of the gospel is a moral stranger to us.”[6] 

There is more,, The book is full—as I said at first it is a warning and gift to the Church.

 

 

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[1] Alberta, The Kingdom, 9

[2] Ibid. 263.

[3] Ibid. 430.

[4] Ibid. 143.

[5] Ibid. 241.

[6] Ibid. 242.

Kristallnacht & Christabel- The wickedness of hatred

Today is the 85^th anniversary of Kristallnacht [the Night of the Broken Glass] the horrible night in Nazi German when Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses, synagogues, and beat up and killed many Jewish people. There is a movie, Christabel, that I always think of when I hear a reference to Kristallnacht &, The movie is based on the true story of Christabel Bielenberg, and taken from her memoir, “The Past is Myself: Looking Back on the Years 1932-45.”

Christabel, although British married a German lawyer and they lived in Germany during the Nazi years. Her husband was part of the underground that attempted to kill Hitler and was imprisoned in Ravensbrūck. Many of their friends were hanged for their righteous attempt. In the movie I first saw on PBS, although not in the one I own there is a poignant scene where Christabel is in a church on Christmas Eve, they are singing Silent Night, at the same time the viewer is seeing one of the friends being hanged. But this is not why the reference to Kirstallnacht always reminds me of the movie.

There is a scene where Christabel and her husband are returning home from a concert and they come upon a street filled with violence—windows of shops broken, Jewish people being harassed and beaten, buildings on fire. They then know that it is time to act—they must be against the Nazis. They must, although underground, plot to end the horror happening in Germany. Violence in this case is a signal that complacency must end.

As I listen to the various videos of protests against Israel and the Jewish people, and watch the videos of protesters tearing down pictures of those who have been kidnapped by Hamas, I am aware that there is a great deal of ignorance about Israel and the history of the Jews and the Holocaust. One young person being questioned suggests that if the Jewish state is annihilated the Jews just go back to whatever country they came from undoubtedly not realizing that the Jews were chased out of those countries.

 And many of the protestors sound as though they have never heard of the Holocaust or perhaps don’t understand how it was that 6 million Jews were murdered because of the lies told about them.  But at the same time there is a strong whiff of ugliness, wickedness to be exact, in their comments.  Idealism (the attempt to be altruistic or always choose the good), too often turns to wickedness when it is centered in secular paganism; that is a kind of religious bent that is centered in natural super naturalism, a materialism that leaves out the image of God in humanity. So one makes their own decision about right and wrong, emotion is the main authority. What is called good may in reality be evil. Such as celebrating the killing of children and babies, the mutilation and burning of families in the name of helping Palestinians. Right and wrong, good and evil have been turned upside down.

The people I wrote about above, the Bielenbergs and their friends, saw evil and knew evil when they saw it. At first they didn’t realize the enormity of the crimes committed against Jews and others, but their knowledge grew and their courage. After the war they moved to Ireland and the lawyer became a farmer. But this is the scary part: too many today see the evil and think it is good. May there be mercy from a gracious God to fall on us in torrents.

The Traumatizing Stories that Break the Heart

                                                                                         

They say it helps to write, but this is hard, hard to write. Because I often write about anti-Semitism, I have read many of the posts on what happened on October 7^th in Israel. I’ve watched many of the videos. I am traumatized. How does anyone deal with the nightmare image of a family where the father has his eye gorged out, the mother has a breast cut off, the small boy has his fingers cut off and the young daughter has her foot cut off and then they are burned alive.

I read the story of the family of three, a mother and father and their 16-year-old son. The father and mother laid on their son to protect him. He lived. The last thing he remembers from his parents is his father saying, “my arm is gone.” And his mother dying. This struck me very hard because two summers ago I broke my arm at the point where it fits into the shoulder blade, and when I got up from my fall I could see my arm sticking out from my body but could not feel it or control it. I had to take my left hand and reach out to my right arm and move it next to me. I was terrified and how awful one must feel as they are dying to have lost the arm that was probably trying to protect a son.

And the mother who was dying; I watched my husband die with Alzheimer’s. I read all the signs to look for—the breathing is one. As he died he began to breathe with short puffy breaths that one could hear.  And those would probably have been the last sounds of a mother given to her son. My anger and sorrow have not ended; probably will not end until eternity.  

Kevin D Williamson of The Dispatch wrote of how Israeli warriors were not meant to be models of goodness for journalist but were rather supposed to be protecting their people. That a nation’s job was to protect its people.

As a Christian my first duty is “to love my God with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my mind,” and my neighbor as myself—but a nation is called to protect its people before it protects any other. Carefully with concern but still protect its people. It seems too many with a misplaced understanding of history and yes with Jew hatred, with a warped understanding of their own prejudices and biases, believe that Israel is the only nation that should not protect its people.

The darkness that is falling over this world has always been here, it is the reptile hiding in the bushes, twining about the tree, calling out lies to many who allow their hearts to be bittered by anti-Semitism. Even when they smile one sees the hate and bitterness in the face of those who are tearing down the posters of the kidnapped Israelis. Their idealism has turned into a farce. Their activism has turned evil....

G.K. Chesterton in his book The Everlasting Man, with thankfulness that Rome had overcome Carthage, since it was a battle between Rome’s household gods and Carthage’s demons, is not aware when writing of the coming darkness of Nazi Germany. Chesterton explains the relationship of Carthage to Tyre and Sidon, and their god Moloch who could also be called Baal. He explains their method of worship was to throw babies into the great fire of Moloch. The Romans, Chesterton explains, would not understand nor would Chesterton’s contemporaries. He writes:

We can only realize the combination by imagining a number of Manchester merchants with chimney-top hats and mutton chop whiskers, going to church every Sunday at eleven o’clock to see a baby roasted alive.

Such evil returned with the Nazis and now with the Hamas warriors who also roasted a baby alive. There are surely those who are simply concerned about the welfare of Palestinian citizens but far too many are sinking into dark paganism, worshiping the god of anti-Semitism. When protesters won’t cry out against the butchery of Hamas, they stand not with Palestinians but with Hamas, with terrorist, with ancient evil.

Anti-Semitism-Killing People -Killing Our Souls

 by Viola Larson

Around forty years ago my husband and I attended Warehouse Ministries a church which was part of the Jesus Movement. The arts, painting, poetry, acting, etc., was a part of that ministry and one of their events was a play about Dietrich Bonhoeffer a German theologian, who was part of the Confessing Church during the Nazi years. He was one of the Christian martyrs killed by the Nazis toward the end of the war.  This was on my mind as I heard one of our Christian radio stations advertise a speaker with a “great message”; so I listened.  His message was that the Jews were the evilest group of all races and religions. Surprised and angry I called the station to ask about him and they gladly gave me his phone number. That was my first introduction to someone who was a holocaust denier. Thankfully he never spoke on that station again.

Later, folding clothes and watching TV on the Sacramento interfaith station I found they had a speaker whose program went on all day because he was free. The two ladies, one a Science of Mind pastor, the other a Seven Day Adventist, were using his program (for free) and did not know that he was an anti-Semite. He hid it by referring to the Jews as Kenites.  With the help of a Jewish professor at Sacramento State University he was removed from the station.

 I went on to write about these supposedly conservative anti-Semites believing that such racism was simply tied to deceived and deceiving fundamentalist although many were also involved in occultic beliefs. But later, belonging to the Presbyterian Church USA I discovered that progressives could also be deeply anti-Semitic. One organization in that denomination, The Israel, Palestine Mission Network, is simply as anti-Semitic as any of the conservative groups I have written about—publishing slick booklets that tell lies about the Jewish people in Israel.

So I have seen all these pockets of anti-Semitic groups here and there in the United States and elsewhere. But never have I thought that whole sections of our country and other countries, on college campuses, in large cities, in newsrooms with their coverage, would hate the Jewish people so much that they would riot, send death threats, tear down posters of kidnapped Jewish children and praise the terrorist, Hamas, who tortured, murdered, raped women and burned families alive. This is the scourge of Nazism rising again, not in one country, but in the whole world and horribly in our own country.

This kind of hate is deeply evil, like the blackness of hell. It will turn our whole country sour and if we do not stand against it deaden our souls. C.S. Lewis had some dire words to say about how we are either becoming splendid beings or the monsters of nightmares.  Dante places the devil in his lowest circle of hell frozen in ice—and that is perhaps the gravest transformation—so frozen in time and place because we no longer care about any other being but self. I have seen videos of those tearing down posters of kidnapped children, and they are frozen unable to feel shame or sorrow, they can only smirk or sneer.  They are well on their way to finality in that condition. Lord have mercy on all of us.          

And then there is evil, dark putrid, hellish evil—the kind that walks the smelly burning tunnels of damnation.

 

In 1999 three synagogues in Sacramento were firebombed. One was destroyed. The perpetrators were two brothers, white supremacists who also killed two gay men and bombed an abortion clinic. While much of the community came together and supported the Jewish community some failed in their concern and attitudes.

Picture by Penny Juncker

The Inter Faith director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center called me later, perhaps several months or a year, (I have forgotten) asking if I could help them find a Presbyterian church who would show a film on anti-Semitism. They had inquired of several different Presbyterian churches and the local PBS station and so far had been turned down. I did find a Presbyterian church, a small, Evangelical and multi-ethnic Church. It was where one of my daughters was a member. The meeting was small but fairly well attended given the size of the church.

What surprised me was the emotions of the two Jewish people who brought the film. One of them, who worked with a music association, as we talked after the film, told me that she was liberal in her politics but had become so discouraged with the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the left. She no longer would join them in their marches. Both were discouraged. That was over twenty years ago, and now, today how must they feel?

While as a Christian I believe all are sinners, there is evil, and then there is evil, dark putrid, hellish evil—the kind that walks the smelly burning tunnels of damnation. The kind that must lie where Hitler, Stalin and other horrid tyrants lie in a Dante like circle of hell.

This is the evil that visited the Jewish nation, raping women, beheading babies, burning families, blowing young people to bits as they hid in terror. Turning a merry dance into Satan’s awful ball. The perpetrators were religious in the same way the ancients of several lands were religious—worshiping the god of this world who cares nothing for the dignity of humanity despising the image of the Creator. The ancients sacrificed their own children to the monster Moloch, The Hamas terrorists sacrificed Jewish babes to Hamas’ dark gods.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer a pastor during the Nazi years experienced what is called Kristallnacht (night of the broken glass), a night when many Jewish shops, synagogues and homes were destroyed by the Nazis. Many Jews were beaten and even killed. Bonhoeffer was reading Psalm 74 which he marked because it speaks of the houses of worship being destroyed: “They have burned your sanctuary to the ground; they have defiled the dwelling place of Your name. They said in their heart, “Let us completely subdue them.” They have burned all the meeting places of God in the land.” Psalm 74: 7,8.

There is much more but I found some verses at the end of this Psalm that in this time is so helpful:

Consider the covenant; for the dark places of the land are full of habitations of violence. Let not the oppressed return dishonored; -let the afflicted and needy praise your name. Arise, O God and plead your own cause; remember how the foolish man reproaches You all day long. Do not forget the voice of Your adversaries, the uproar of those who rise against you which ascends continually. (74 20-23)

Too many on the left and the very far right are following behind Hamas praising their evil, calling it good. We need to pray for the Jewish people, pray against Hamas, pray against those who are backing Hamas, and pray for a great repentance among those who are cheering such evil. And, yes pray for ourselves that we will walk faithful to the Lord of creation whose holiness includes truth, kindness, compassion, forgiveness and redemption.  

 

Snakes, light bulbs, Area 51, Sacha Stone & Scott McKay--Wolves

 

Over thirty years ago when I wrote an article for Christian Research Journal on a racist movement “Christian Identity,” I told a friend I would not write on racist groups anymore because the material was so ugly. God had other plans. While in the PCUSA I was constantly writing about a Presbyterian committee which are both progressive and extremely anti-Semitic.

 I am now Lutheran (Missouri Synod) and I just recently saw an article in the religious news that several white supremacists, (really Nazis) had recently been banned and excommunicated from a Missouri Synod Lutheran church. The President of The LCMS has written a faithful letter denouncing such ideology. While I want to write about one of the articles written by this particular racist fellow, he insists that Hitler was a Christian—I’ve spent several afternoons listening to some horrid garbage espoused by one of the speakers from the last Reawaken America Tour.

In my last article, The Second Coming of Fascism to the United States,  I wrote of how reporter and columnist Jake Tapper “ in a video on Facebook shows a small part of a video where Scott McKay [a sometimes speaker on the Reawaken America tour] states that Hitler was fighting the same enemies that he and others are fighting.” I added:

“Tapper contacted Eric Trump Jr. who is not only a part of Clay Clark’s Reawaken America Tour but also the son of ex-President Donald Trump. In the exchange with Trump Jr. and Clark it is still uncertain whether McKay was allowed to speak at recent conferences or future ones. What is certain is that McKay is still speaking at many of the rallies and conferences provided by different adherents of Christian nationalism.”

Now Scott McKay admits in a video, that he was not allowed to speak at the gathering. But one of his friends, Sacha Stone, did speak.. Both of these individuals are extremists with wild religious views and using Khazarian mafia conspiracy tales are rabid anti-Semites. Stone pushes the idea that aliens are in control of many governments’ referring to area 51.There was, according to Stone, a plan to place alien DNA in the human gene pool. Stone insists that millions of humans are hybridized He states:

 “Now the real interventionism or alien invasion are MRNA and DNA related that is connected to Fauci, connected to Bill Gates, that’s connected to Obama, Bill Clinton, Bush, … and obviously incumbent puppet Biden regimes are all directly connected … which is how the devil is being permitted, granted permission by the status quo on your behalf, on my behalf over the last fifty, seventy-five years or so-in the main to infiltrate the human MRNA and DNA. All of these systems have now been infiltrated by the kingdom of the devil through synthetic molecules.”

Stone insists that the alien invasion is now inside of us. He asks and states, “What are we discovering inside human biology? We are seeing microbe snakes … we are seeing what appears to be spontaneous induction spontaneous manifestation of reptilian serpentine microbes, little microbe snakes with scales … He goes on, “with the 5G infrastructure in place and the pulse waving, pulsing and happening to the 5G antenna …” Stone goes on to point not only to the 5G towers but also to vaccines and lead light bulbs as the means of invasion.. 

How is this all overcome?  Humanity according to Stone has to manifest utopia using Christ Consciousness or/and their Kundalini power. Christ Consciousness is a term McKay uses quite often. Many Christians hear it and think it applies to Jesus and is personal but instead it destroys the biblical understanding of Jesus. Christ consciousness is an impersonal power or force that eastern and/or new age teachers believe must be attained in order to do miracles or even to evolve into deity. Those advocates for Christ Consciousness do not believe Jesus is the unique Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, but that he is simply a man who attained Christ Consciousness and that we can all do the same.

The Scripture is very clear:

 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. 1John2:22.

It is a great sin that Eric Trump Jr. and Clay Clark and Michael Flynn keep inviting speakers to their gatherings who are horridly anti-Semitic. It is also a great sin, perhaps a greater sin, that the three men who call themselves Christians keep inviting absolute heretics, wolves who will bloody the sheep to be speakers.

It is not enough that pastors and speakers who call themselves Christian are invited to preach, or that there are shofars blown or even baptisms and prayers, they are being used for political purposes. And to be used that way among the ungodliness of unbiblical teaching is to be placed on the side of evil.