By W. D. Penfield. First published on Substack.
Not many years ago—in August of 1974—a delegation of congressmen led by Republican senator Barry Goldwater visited Republican president Richard Nixon. They informed him he would be convicted by the Senate in an impeachment trial and removed from office. He promptly resigned.
What Nixon had done hardly compares to some of the crimes and misdemeanors committed by conservative right wing leaders since then. Now, Republicans give them a pass.
What changed? Several things. Among them, the populace has changed. Republican politicians in Nixon’s day knew their constituents would call them to account if they did not uphold their and the government’s integrity.
In the few decades since then, the conservative and evangelical populace has been immoralized and radicalized into overlooking and excusing criminality (even treason), and approving of things like lying under oath (or at least being deceitful under oath)—as long as their agenda gets advanced and implemented. And they think this is pious and noble strategy: “Let us do evil, that good may come”. The apostle Paul characterized such doctrine as slanderous. (Romans 3:8)
The “good” they hope to see done is often not good at all, but evil—cruelty and abuse falsely characterized as good.
That change in moral stance is part of a larger trend. For some time, evangelical Christianity has been throwing their own established doctrinal positions overboard in their plunge into Christian nationalism and fascism.
Part of that plunge is their participation in a movement intent on seizing control of government and using its power to inflict abuse, to hurt people they don’t like, or even kill them.
Yes, it is really happening. Here is a video of a Christofascist rally featuring a recitation of a dominionist manifesto, which includes references to “Seven Mountain” doctrine and a supposed mandate to seize government power and rule politically.
It’s chilling. And stunning in how openly and directly they’re declaring what they intend to do. It’s just raw lust to hurt people and take out endless grievances, wrapped in robes of piety and Christianity. It’s a thin disguise.
In case you’re not sure what’s happening in that video, it’s a Nazi rally. It happens to be in American English, and attended by American professing Christians, in a venue adorned with American and Christian symbols instead of swastikas, but it’s a Nazi rally. There’s no need to wonder what things would have been like if Nazi Germany had happened here in America. It is happening here in America, and this is exactly what it looks like.
The movement has grown and spread and infiltrated the highest levels of government and business and private institutions as well as religious institutions. It’s gasoline splashed all over the country, and before long the right leader will show up to serve as a lit match.
The far-right evangelicals participating in it are like the sons of Eli in 1 Samuel 2:12–17. Their onerous hate-based positions, their naked ambition for earthly power—and parallel trend toward bullying and violence, toward singling out and hurting people—are causing people to abhor the offering of the Lord, driving people away from the faith. (The offering of the Lord is a picture of the offering of the Lord Jesus Christ for our sins.)
You may wonder why so many Christians have embraced unbiblical and extra-scriptural doctrine. They were deceived, seduced by people using tactics like pushing emotional buttons and provoking sanctimonious frenzies over fabricated causes and issues.
And they were misled through myths of direct and open Divine communication, myths about God supposedly sending direct messages to current-day “apostles” (when apostles actually are only appointed in Kingdom ages, not our current one). They have been convinced to set their critical thinking aside and allow themselves to be led—and misled—by supposedly Divinely called “men of God.” Such "calls" are not even needed in this age of liberty—if you want to be a preacher, you are perfectly free to pursue that vocation.
And by the way, those “calls” violate scripture. The Bible says every word should be confirmed by two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15, Matthew 18:16). Paul’s Divine call on the road to Damascus was accompanied by observable phenomena and witnesses (Acts 9:7, 22:9). In this current age of no open Divine activity, the only real witnesses to their supposed calls are themselves (though sometimes other “called” leaders might back them up with a claim of Divine confirmation or some word they supposedly received about them).
With their leaders’ having supposed Divine calling and special access or closeness to God, followers simply presume those leaders know what they’re talking about and can’t be wrong. And believing those leaders have a communication pipeline into the mind of God Himself, the special “words” and “messages” such leaders claim to receive can completely contradict scripture but be sold to followers as “new revelation,” and accepted as superseding and replacing the Bible.
So, many evangelicals don’t care what the Bible actually says, but only what their leaders say God told them.
Do they think God changed His position on those issues, that He’s evolving with the times? Really? When the Bible says He does not change (Malachi 3:6), and that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)?
Do they think the Bible is an unfinished work, that what we have is only an early draft or something, and God is still revising and working out details?
If this were the Tribulation, the people adding “new revelation” to scripture might be in deep trouble. See Revelation 22:18–19.
Changes in evangelicals’ doctrinal positions facilitated a “strange bedfellows” alliance between them and far right Catholics, a coalition moving headlong toward bulldozing away democracy and establishing a Christian nationalist fascist theocratic autocracy.
Christians are being used. The core of the far-right movement is pseudo-Christian, not believers at all. They’re just pretending, pandering, and agitating in order to get the Christian votes needed to stay close enough to pull off a coup and overthrow democracy. With evangelical support, they’ll succeed.
In mobilizing for this, evangelicals’ many doctrinal pivots have been head-spinning. Stunning.
So let’s take a look at six significant Biblical doctrines that evangelicals abandoned—or, in the case of the first one, never really embraced:
The “one body” doctrine, the doctrine that there are no racial divides in Christ.
The root of this doctrine is that in Christ there is no more distinction between Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews). The Old Testament law, given through the Jews, and which the Jews committed to observe and keep, gave Jews an advantage in position. Jews were mandated to stay separate from Gentiles so they wouldn’t be drawn away from God’s law and lured into serving Gentiles’ less moral and more corrupt gods and religions. Gentiles were welcome to convert to Judaism (Exodus 12:48), but Jews were not to become as Gentiles.
But the law worked death. It’s standards are above the realities of our humanity. No one could keep it. All were slain by it. And a lot of slaying was done by it. To this day a lot of mayhem is inflicted for its sake, even by Christians.
Atrocities are committed in the guise of sanctimony and honoring and upholding the unbending law. People think a state of perfection and heavenliness can be reached by violence and brutality and even inflicting horrors on people. And they think God approves. This is all man’s terrible folly.
Through the atonement and resurrection of Christ, the law was put away as means of salvation, being now superseded by the means of simply believing on Jesus. Simple faith—including simple faith that one is forgiven of all things and beloved simply for having believed—is counted for righteousness.
The veil of separation between Jews and Gentiles was rent from top to bottom, the law taken away, nailed to the cross of Christ. Jesus’ completed work of atonement ended that social-racial divide between Jews and Gentiles.
There’s more. The end of racial divides applied to all races. All are one in Christ, united by the common means of salvation through belief in Jesus, available to all alike. (See Romans 4, 10:12; Galatians 3:11 and 3:28; Colossians 2:14 and 3:33.)
But many evangelicals (and others) instead held onto racial segregation “proof texts.” Until relatively recently, many also held onto slavery-justifying texts. They ignored that Galatians 3:28 also said that in Christ there are no slaves and masters. They ignored the clearly implied plea from Paul to Philemon to free his slave Onesimus (Philemon 1:21).
There are no gender divides either (also Galatians 3:28). In Christ, a woman stands equivalent to any man. In the life to come, there will be no marrying or giving in marriage, but all will be as the angels in heaven (Matthew 22:30). When life is eternal, reproduction won’t be needed to perpetuate it. And with eternal joy and fulfillment, there won’t be a need or longing for that carnal pleasure. Sex won’t be missed at all, in other words.
And there are no age divides. Children, adults, and the elderly are equally treasured and beloved in Christ.
The short of it: Love one another. Respect one another.
Far right evangelicals lost the plot on that simple, core principle of true Christianity.
The Millennial Kingdom will be brought in and established by God at Christ’s return, not by men.
See 2 Samuel 7:12–13, 1 Chronicles 17:14.
Also, after His return, Jesus Himself, not men, will oversee the building of a new temple for the Millennial Kingdom, the temple described in detail in the book of Ezekiel. See 2 Samuel 7:13, 1 Chronicles 22:10.
They used to know this. It was settled evangelical doctrine for decades, and the basis for evangelical disapproval of organizations like the League of Nations, United Nations, and European Union. They derided such efforts as leading to much bloodshed and war and paving the way for the Antichrist rather than patiently looking for the return of Jesus.
Now, having done a complete one-eighty and embraced Dominionism and the “Seven Mountain mandate” trope, they’re moving to oppress and persecute people and make war themselves in order to, supposedly, bring in God’s Kingdom.
There’s an irony: At the end of the Tribulation, Jesus will return to intervene to end a horrifically violent and bloody religious war being waged in large part to establish God’s Kingdom under the rule of the wrong Messiah.
If He didn’t return and end things, mankind would end up exterminated from the planet (Matthew 24:22, Mark 13:20).
Christians should stay out of politics.
This was once an evangelical tenet. Their reasoning was that their business was a transcendent, eternal, heavenly kingdom, not earthly power grabs and squabbles.
They also had an awareness that America was a nation of religious freedom, one that happened to be majority Christian, but not an exclusively Christian one.
They protected the religious freedom and rights of others so as to protect their own rights. They were aware of sectarian ambitions and hostilities among Christians of differing beliefs. They well knew, for example, of the historic and sometimes violent animosity between Catholics and Protestants. There has also been quite a bit of friction between Pentecostals and traditionally mainstream Protestant Christianity.
Now they’re up to their necks in politics, united in seeking to overthrow democracy and impose a Christian theocracy in its place.
Here is a video of a Christofascist rally featuring a recitation of their manifesto, which includes references to “Seven Mountain” doctrine and a supposed mandate to seize government power and rule politically. It’s a distortion of Bible doctrine, and some of it completely fabricated. And it’s chilling.
They have no idea they’re being exploited and manipulated and pandered to, seduced to get their political support. They are unaware that they’ll eventually be turned against by that same movement and the people in it, who they currently, wrongly believe are “brethren” (Genesis 19:7).
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries."
– James Madison
It won’t be kept away forever. The blood of Americans will run in American streets in a second civil war (Jeremiah 51:46). And that blood will be spilled by their fellow Americans, many of whom will be professing Christians convinced they are doing the Lord’s work.
There is no obligation to serve immoral leaders or obey immoral laws, and there is at times a moral obligation to not serve them or obey them.
Several scripture passages support this. For example, the Hebrew midwives defied Pharaoh (Exodus 1:17), and the apostles defied orders to stop preaching the gospel (Acts 4:18–20).
Now evangelicals lean heavily on Romans 13:1–5 (which says there is no power but of God; whoever resists the power resists God), to justify enthusiastic and militant support and servitude to cruel and evil movements and leaders. And they believe this is a moral, God approved position.
They’re unaware that it is actually a moral imperative to set aside observing a rigid law when it means it will save a life or help someone, or when you know the intent behind the law or command is to do or to support evil.
In Luke 10:29–37, the famous parable of the Good Samaritan, the men who refused to help the wounded man by the roadside were probably observing the letter of the law, keeping themselves ritually unpolluted. The Samaritan—and Samaritans were types of Gentiles and less religious and observant than the Jews—stopped and helped the man despite the law. And he was the one Jesus commended for doing the right thing.
The law says to not do any work on the Sabbath (Deuteronomy 5:12–14), which would include harvesting grain. But Jesus’ disciples did it when they were hungry (Luke 6:1–5). When the scribes and Pharisees confronted them over it, Jesus reproved them.
Jesus healed several people on the Sabbath. And the scribes and Pharisees tried to condemn Him as a sinner for it. He responded by asking them a rhetorical question: Isn’t it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, even if that means “violating” it by doing work?
Clearly, compassion supersedes the law, and the law should be interpreted and applied and observed from a standpoint of compassion and protecting people and life.
But remember in this discussion about law, observing the letter of the law is not necessary for salvation anymore. In Christ, we are no longer under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6:14)
Striving to live good lives and be good people is not something we do to get saved or get God’s approval or because we’re ordered by law to do it—or else. It’s something we do willingly because by faith we have His acceptance, approval, and love, and we rest in this by faith.
Life begins at birth.
This was settled doctrine for decades, and fully, biblically supported (Genesis 2:7). It parallels the doctrine that new life begins at new birth (John 3).
Both require taking something into the body. In the first, it’s breath. In the second, it’s the Spirit of God, taken in when one receives and believes the gospel of Jesus Christ as true.
The ensoulment of the fetus was regarded by evangelicals as a Catholic doctrine. It parallels the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, the belief a person can be saved by a rite of baptism (babies, for example), that it can be bestowed by the church, without a need for the person to take anything in themselves.
A corollary of the position that life actually begins at birth is that the fetus is a part of a woman’s body and is hers and her husband’s property until birth. This is supported by the Bible passage that decrees the penalty for causing a miscarriage is not the penalty for murder (life for a life), but compensation for the loss of property (Exodus 21:22).
Here’s a story that explains the evangelicals’ shift on this doctrine, who engineered it, how they did it, and why. Here’s a BBC podcast episode that provides a few more details.
It was a political ploy, an invented, unscriptural cause, calculated to push emotional buttons and agitate and rally Christians into uniting into a single-issue voting block. It worked. It also brought in lots of donations.
And it provided a darker reward: The twisted satisfaction of sanctimonious power tripping and afflicting people, mainly women in this case, and causing suffering and anguish.
Grace is God’s provision for man’s humanity, including the statistical realities of human existence.
Grace is the doctrine of compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, and acceptance. It is the doctrine of accepting and loving people as they are, and no matter who they are. It is the doctrine of no longer imposing conditions on love, and instead just loving people unconditionally. Unconditional love, and being loved unconditionally—simply because you are, and you are who you are, unique, valued, and treasured—is much higher love, greater love than transactional, quid pro quo, conditional love.
Jesus changed everything. Instead of having to meet conditions, God’s approval and love is now given freely, simply for believing on Jesus. That approval and love is enjoyed by simply and resolutely believing you have it.
Man was created to first populate earth, not heaven. We’re earthly creatures with animal bodies, “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:5), below the level of heaven. We needed something to bridge the gap between our earthly reality and heavenly standards of holiness and perfection.
When man first went into the knowledge of God’s holy, heavenly standards of perfection without protection from those standards, because of the realities of his humanity, he was a sitting duck, easily shamed and slain by those standards. And he was poised to become a violent ghoul.
That something needed to bridge the gap and protect us from the unyielding, uncompromising law turned out to be someone. That someone is Jesus Christ, who is the provision of God for us in our humanity, a means for us to rest in confidence and peace and joy that we are forgiven of all things and accepted and beloved for having believed on Him. That is grace.
There are statistical and existential realities about humanity, such as statistically occuring genetic differences, and our common primal needs and bodily functions. Grace—acceptance and being counted righteous and beloved by God simply for believing on Jesus—made the provision for those realities. So, instead of cold rejection based on the standards of the law, came unconditional acceptance—love. It’s up to us as individuals to take it by faith and enjoy it. And from there, we’re to reach out and extend tolerance and love toward others.
Applying grace is the means of rising above imposing carnal and earthly conditional acceptance, a means of rising above being someone who loves only in terms of “what you can do for me” or how well someone meets standards. And that makes a person much more fit to actually inhabit heaven one day.
Grace gives men the option to not be ghouls. There is no need to purge anomalies from the gene pool. Grace makes up all the difference, and is the pattern for love and acceptance.
But even now there are people who seek to perfect humanity and build a tower to heaven through abuse and persecution and eugenics and slaughter—ghoulish, unspeakable, horrifying means.
Holding onto those impossibly holy standards (and thinking they themselves meet them, or that forcing them on others makes them acceptable and holy) is the justification for committing atrocities. In their pious quest to purge and purify humanity and shape it into a holy state, they themselves become unspeakably evil.
Somehow evangelicals lost the plot on this, and are, for example, singling out statistically occuring gays for persecution and discrimination. They’re just one of many groups that will be targeted. Abusive movements start with easy first targets, easy because not enough people will unite to defend them and speak out against their mistreatment. Other targets quickly follow as they work their way up the ladder. The movement is all about bullying and abuse. And the fascist appetite for inflicting it is insatiable.
Women have already been targeted with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. People of color are targets. Immigrants are targets. Non-Christians are targets. Children are targets (as shown by the family separation policies and refusal to tighten gun laws to help end school shootings, and the tightening of financial support for children).
Eventually, Jews will be targets. When evangelicals speak out against antisemitism, they’ll become targets too. But they’ll have no power to reverse anything, having given up even their own power to vote.
That’s when God will step in. (Genesis 19:1–16, Jeremiah 50–51, Revelation 18)
This is not a complete list of evangelical doctrinal shifts. There are other doctrines they’ve changed position on.
For example, they once believed biblical Magog is Russia, and that it is evil, foretold in the Bible to be an enemy of Israel. And they detested communism and the official atheism of Soviet Russia. Lately they’ve softened quite a lot on their feelings toward Russia.
They’ve also shifted, amazingly, on whether Christians should bow to an antichrist. In past years they unceasingly warned about the Antichrist, but when one showed up, meaning someone who ticked a lot of the boxes, they were among the first to embrace him—enthusiastically.
That may provide a glimpse into how things will unfold in the Tribulation when the actual Antichrist shows up. A lot of Christians may use the same rationalizations to justify going along as followers and supporters. And, tragically, they’ll lose their salvation, which will be possible to do during the Tribulation.
But it’s not possible to lose salvation in our current age. Anyone who believes on Jesus is saved and sealed unto the day of redemption the instant they believe (John 3:16, Ephesians 1:13–14 and 4:30). This is the best time to get saved. Why wait and take chances? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved!
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