{"id":604,"date":"2022-02-13T16:19:13","date_gmt":"2022-02-13T16:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/?p=604"},"modified":"2022-02-13T16:20:26","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T16:20:26","slug":"the-offspring-of-judas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-offspring-of-judas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Offspring of Judas"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not a Hebrew scholar and cannot say I have checked this claim, but biblical Hebrew apparently has no word for “coincidence”.\u00a0 It is now a well understood fact that an ethnic group’s language, in the sense of its structure and semantics (big word for ‘what is meant’ and ‘how meaning is expressed’) is a reflection of their beliefs about reality, knowledge and how to judge between right and wrong – that is, their underlying metaphysics<\/em>,\u00a0epistemology<\/em> and\u00a0ethics.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Big words again, but perfectly understandable.\u00a0 Sometimes when people in the past have encountered tribal people who have had no contact with ‘outsiders’, particularly in missionary work and they want to translate the Bible into their language, they find that the people because of their ‘spiritual’ beliefs (part of what Westerners would call their metaphysics<\/em>), their languages lack words to translate certain concepts because they just do not think in the same way about certain issues.<\/p>\n

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As an aside here before I proceed, I immediately want to pause and say I am not arguing for a relentless and thorough-going relativism (of interest probably only to the philosophers or social scientists who might stumble upon this) understood in common parlance as “some things are true for me, some for you, but\u00a0<\/em>nothing is simply True”<\/em>, the absurdity of which is evident that the very sentence itself, if we are to consider it meaningful, is exempted from its own criteria.\u00a0 Clearly,\u00a0if\u00a0<\/em>that sentence is “True”, there must be other<\/em> truths out there.\u00a0 Rather, this is recognising cultural differences and diversity, but arguing these can be overcome when effort is made by both parties. The very fact that we recognise linguistic behaviour<\/em> means there is enough common ground between our conceptual schemes (or after Davidson) or to argue that we necessarily share the same<\/em> conceptual scheme.<\/p>\n

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This morning I was listening to a message<\/a> by controversial Afrikaans River Church senior pastor, Rodney Howard-Brown, who gained notoriety for being arrested for refusing to close his church at the beginning of the COVID lockdowns.\u00a0 He has gained my respect for his stand and I listen most days to “The Stand” (pun intended), their daily broadcast of daily services (except Saturday) that they have been doing with the aim of standing with those of us around the world who are not able to meet or travel without vaccination, sanction or harassment.<\/p>\n

He started to speak about “the offspring of Judas” and what I have understood from the message is that “Judas-es” are those who were once in our inner circle but then depart from us and betray us to Caesar’s agents, those that seek to discredit and destroy, and if they could get away with it, kill us for standing against their New World Order.\u00a0 They are those who might be described as “wolves in sheep’s clothing”<\/em> (Matt 7:15), those who “have two horns like a lamb but was speaking like a dragon”<\/em> (Rev 13:11) or perhaps even just “Fifth column” believers.<\/p>\n

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If you do not understand the term “Fifth column”, it is a fascinating story in its own right. Apparently it comes from the Spanish Civil War when a general had surrounded a city with four columns and was asked which one did he expect to take the city. He answered, “my Fifth column within the city”.\u00a0 Those closest to us, are always the most dangerous.<\/p>\n

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Whilst I have agreed with virtually nothing advanced by “prophets” since the early days of COVID and wrote strenuously and passionately<\/a> against some of what I had heard in the circles I was in (and consequently received the “left foot of fellowship”<\/em> for my refusal to capitulate to Romans 13 and nothing but), I would need to admit that the “planned-demic” has clearly sifted the wheat from the chaff, the true from the false, the authentic from the fake and in that sense, God has shown Himself fit to make use of the antichrist work of COVID.\u00a0 Mega-churches with multi-site campuses have now sold-up and gone “virtual” because when they tried to re-open, no one turned up; they tried to advertise and the 18 that did turn up was down to 12 the next week.\u00a0 Churches refused to make a stand for religious freedom but took government money and opened as vaccination centres – Ichabod<\/em> should be nailed above their doors!<\/p>\n

In short, they “sold-out” and the Holy Spirit left them to it, their flock we hope has found its way to those who refused to submit to tyranny.\u00a0 Some even now have the audacity to be putting on conferences discussing ministry post-COVID, despite the fact they now have no flock.\u00a0 In contrast to their compromise, the few churches that have stayed open have enjoyed explosive growth during the same period – people need courageous spiritual leadership<\/em>. One of the most remarkable stories I heard in that regard was that of a pastor of around 150 who refused to close and was publicly condemned on TV by pastor of a local mega-church who stood alongside public officials castigating him for refusing to close.\u00a0 When that same mega-pastor tried to re-open, no-one came and he contacted the pastor he had criticised requesting a meet.\u00a0 When the pastor arrived, the mega-church pastor handed him the deeds to the mega-church campus, transferred $1.5m balance from their bank to the pastor announcing “I am no longer fit to be in the ministry and should never have criticised you.\u00a0 I am moving to Florida, good bye.”<\/em><\/p>\n

However, what I had not appreciated fully until today was the depth of the complicity of the “evangelical elite” (a term I first heard when researching Trump’s detractors within evangelicalism) with propagating the official, duplicitous and false government lines during the pandemic which were known to be scientifically questionable, even by the end of 2020.\u00a0 Now there were some of the “Christian Intelligentsia”\u00a0 who broke ranks and paid a really heavy price for it, going from “heroes on the frontline”<\/em> to “conspiracy theorists”<\/em> and “a danger to public health”<\/em>\u00a0 (including “yours truly” in the case of the latter when I was booted off Medium<\/a>).\u00a0 Numbered amongst the collaborators are Wheaton College (Finney would turn in his grave if he was there), Christianity Today (founded by Billy Graham), various religious ethics organisations, the wider Billy Graham association (though in the case of the latter it has not received the endorsement of Billy’s son) and even “renowned [academic] theologian”<\/em> N T Wright.\u00a0 The latter, in particular, was a genuine shock to me as a British person and as a philosophical theologian (a pretentious title for someone who majors in defending the faith from philosophical attack).\u00a0 For a theologian of that stature to be part of what was a party piece of political propaganda, is as columnist Megan Basham<\/a> states particularly disturbing:<\/p>\n

“The same week MacArthur\u2019s church was in the news for resisting<\/a>\u00a0California Governor Gavin Newsom orders to keep houses of worship closed, Collins participated in an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with celebrated theologian N.T. Wright.<\/p>\n

During a discussion where the NIH director once again trumpeted the efficacy of cloth masks, the pair warned against conspiracies, mocking \u201cdisturbing examples\u201d of churches that continued meeting because they thought \u201cthe devil can\u2019t get into my church\u201d or \u201cJesus is my vaccine.\u201d Lest anyone wonder whether Wright experienced some pause over lending his reputation as a deep Christian thinker to Caesar\u2019s agent, the friends finished with a\u00a0guitar duet<\/a>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The jist of Basham’s critique is that the spiritual leaders co-opted the NiH director for the simple reason he has credentials as a believer (he authored some influential bio-Christian books in the 2000s)\u00a0 and a “pro-Lifer” (despite there being little public evidence pro\u00a0 and piles of it con the latter assertion).\u00a0 They provided platform and credibility for his government controlled message that reflected a profoundly anti-religious freedom and specifically anti-Christian agenda.\u00a0 Even with the recent exposures of the immoral “science” approved by the NiH, Collins’ abrupt ‘retirement’, those very same leaders have refused to distance themselves from this “guy you can trust”<\/em>.\u00a0 Failing even the most basic due diligence tests Basham again makes this telling expose of uncritical alliance:<\/p>\n

Since\u00a0news<\/a>\u00a0began breaking months ago that Collins and Fauci intentionally used their media connections to conspire to\u00a0suppress<\/a> the lab-leak theory, none of the individuals or organizations in this story has corrected their records or asked Collins publicly about his previous [false or inaccurate] statements. Nor have they circled back with him to inquire on record about revelations the NIH funded<\/a>\u00a0gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan. They also haven\u2019t questioned him on the increasing scientific consensus that cloth masks were never very useful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the key doctrines of the Reformation was the institutional<\/em> separation of Church and State to guard against the socio-political-economic hegemony that Roman Catholicism had progressively oppressed Europe with (especially after the founding of the Papacy around 600AD) for around about a 1000 years (though the Reformers themselves had difficulty working this out in practice, almost replacing one State-Church with their new and improved version).\u00a0 The divine source of the rights of the individual (rather than the divine right of monarchs to rule over us), the “inalienable rights of Man granted by the Creator”<\/em> (the language we find in the Americian Constitution) was probably their greatest gift to us in the political realm and it paved the way for understanding government as\u00a0slave<\/em> and\u00a0servant<\/em> of the people, rather than their master.\u00a0 That is why, despite the absolute imperative of our involvement in all levels of politics (which I arge passionately for and at great length here<\/a>), we are not called to be members of the political elite where our first allegiance is to some ideology or Party, but as principled and clear biblical thinkers who are prepared to be the moral force within whatever Party or group we are part of.\u00a0 We will become the prostitutes of Caesar if we are dull of hearing in the political realm:<\/p>\n

“In their presentation of Collins\u2019 expertise, these pastors and leaders suggested that questioning his explanations as to the origins of the virus or the efficacy of masks was not simply a point of disagreement but sinful. This was a charge likely to have a great deal of impact on churchgoers who strive to live lives in accordance with godly standards. Perhaps no other argument could\u2019ve been more persuasive to this demographic.<\/p>\n

This does not mean these leaders necessarily knew that the information they were conveying to the broader Christian public could be false, but it does highlight the danger religious leaders face when they\u2019re willing to become mouth organs of the government.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I do not want to peddle ad hominem<\/em> arguments or judge the individual status of a human being’s soul by calling them “Judas”. \u00a0That is not my business and people can be honestly deceived “doing what they believe to be right”.\u00a0 We must always grant grace to our brothers but that does not mitigate the need for correction and public repentance.\u00a0 As children of the Reformers, we should have the courage to “reprove, exhort and rebuke”<\/em> (2Tim 4 2) our brothers when they are in danger of apostasing our faith and our moral witness to culture by yoking ourselves with corrupt politicians and institutions.\u00a0 The greatest danger to us all is when the “credible” brother or sister spend their spiritual capital persuading others that legitimate dissent is “sinful”.<\/p>\n

In the interests of clarity, I have included Megan Basham’s article in its fullness below.\u00a0 I might disagree of some details as a European but it is well argued and reasonable.\u00a0 It is otherwise behind a very modest paywall ($4\/month) at https:\/\/dailywire.com\/<\/a>.\u00a0 That is barely the price of a cup of coffee for some of the best journalism I have seen in recent times; some ‘conservative’ journalism, including Christian versions, just seems like a mirror of the trashy Left, this is much better.\u00a0 If for some reason the article is no longer here, it is because I was asked to remove it!<\/p>\n

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How The Federal Government Used Evangelical Leaders To Spread Covid Propaganda To\u00a0Churches<\/h2>\n

By<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Megan Basham<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

DailyWire.com<\/p>\n

In September, Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer\u00a0interviewed<\/a>\u00a0National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on his podcast, \u201cChurch Leadership\u201d about why Christians who want to obey Christ\u2019s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.<\/p>\n

For those not familiar with Stetzer, he\u2019s not just a religious liberal arts professor and this wasn\u2019t just another dime-a-dozen pastorly podcast. To name just a few of his past and present titles in the evangelical world, Stetzer is also the executive director of the Billy Graham Center and the editor-in-chief of Outreach media group. He was previously an editor at Christianity Today and an executive director at LifeWay, one of the largest religious publishers in the world. That\u2019s to say nothing of the dozen-plus books on missions and church planting he\u2019s authored.<\/p>\n

In short, when it comes to leveraging high evangelical offices to influence everyday Christians, arguably no one is better positioned than Ed Stetzer. You may not know his name, but if you\u2019re a church-going Protestant, it\u2019s almost guaranteed your pastor does.<\/p>\n

Which is why, when Stetzer joined a line of renowned pastors and ministry leaders lending their platforms to Obama-appointee Collins, the collaboration was noteworthy.<\/p>\n

During their discussion, Collins and Stetzer were hardly shy about the fact that they were asking ministers to act as the administration\u2019s go-between with their congregants. \u201cI want to exhort pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work,\u201d Collins said. Stetzer replied that he sometimes hears from ministers who don\u2019t feel comfortable preaching about Covid vaccines, and he advises them, in those cases, to simply promote the jab through social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just tell them, when you get vaccinated, post a picture and say, \u2018So thankful I was able to get vaccinated,\u2019\u201d Stetzer said. \u201cPeople need to see that it is the reasonable view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their conversation also turned to the subject of masking children at school, with Collins noting that Christians, in particular, have been resistant to it. His view was firm\u2014kids should be masked if they want to be in the classroom. To do anything else is to turn schools into super spreaders. Stetzer offered no pushback or follow-up questions based on views from other medical experts. He simply agreed.<\/p>\n

The most crucial question Stetzer never asked Collins however, was\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0convincing church members to get vaccinated or disseminating certain administration talking points should be the business of pastors at all.<\/p>\n

Christians and Conspiracy Theories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stetzer\u2019s efforts to help further the NIH\u2019s preferred coronavirus narratives went beyond simply giving Collins a softball venue to rally pastors to his cause. He ended the podcast by announcing that the Billy Graham Center would be formally partnering with the Biden administration. Together with the NIH and the CDC it would launch a website,\u00a0coronavirusandthechurch.com<\/a>, to provide clergy Covid resources they could then convey to their congregations.<\/p>\n

Much earlier in the pandemic, as an editor at evangelicalism\u2019s flagship publication, Christianity Today (CT), Stetzer had also penned essays parroting Collins\u2019 arguments on conspiracy theories. Among those he lambasted other believers for entertaining, the hypothesis that the coronavirus had leaked from a Wuhan lab. In a now\u00a0deleted essay<\/a>, preserved by Web Archive, Stetzer chided, \u201cIf you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can\u2019t stop you.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may seem strange, given the evidence now emerging of\u00a0NIH-funded<\/a>\u00a0gain-of-function research in Wuhan, to hear a church leader instruct Christians to \u201crepent\u201d for the sin of discussing the plausible supposition that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory. This is especially true as it doesn\u2019t take any great level of spiritual discernment \u2014 just plain common sense \u2014 to look at the fact that Covid first emerged in a city with a virology institute that specializes in novel coronaviruses and realize it wasn\u2019t an explanation that should be set aside too easily. But it appears Stetzer was simply following Collins\u2019 lead.<\/p>\n

Only two days before Stetzer published his essay, Collins participated in a\u00a0livestream event<\/a>, co-hosted by CT. The outlet introduced him as a \u201cfollower of Jesus, who affirms the sanctity of human life\u201d despite the fact that Collins is on record stating he\u00a0does not<\/a>\u00a0definitively believe, as most pro-lifers do, that life begins at conception, and his tenure at NIH has been marked by extreme anti-life, pro-LGBT policies. (More on this later).<\/p>\n

But the pro-life Christian framing was sure to win Collins a hearing among an audience with deep religious convictions about the evil of abortion. Many likely felt reassured to hear that a likeminded medical expert was representing them in the administration.<\/p>\n

During the panel interview, Collins continued to insist that the lab leak theory wasn\u2019t just unlikely but qualified for the dreaded misinformation label. \u201cIf you were trying to design a more dangerous coronavirus,\u201d he said, \u201cyou would never have designed this one \u2026 So I think one can say with great confidence that in this case the bioterrorist was nature \u2026 Humans did not make this one. Nature did.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the\u00a0same<\/a>\u00a0message<\/a>\u00a0his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been giving to secular news outlets, but Collins was specifically tapped to carry the message to the faithful. As\u00a0Time Magazine<\/a>\u00a0reported in Feb. 2021, \u201cWhile Fauci has been medicine\u2019s public face, Collins has been hitting the faith-based circuit\u2026and preaching science to believers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The editors, writers, and reporters at Christian organizations\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/a>\u00a0question<\/a>\u00a0Collins any more than their mainstream counterparts questioned Fauci.<\/p>\n

Certainly The Gospel Coalition, a publication largely written for and by pastors, didn\u2019t probe beyond the \u201cfacts\u201d Collins\u2019 offered or consider any conflicts of interest the NIH director might have had before publishing\u00a0several<\/a>\u00a0essays<\/a>\u00a0that cited him as almost their lone source of information. As with CT, one\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0by Gospel Coalition editor Joe Carter linked the reasonable hypothesis that the virus might have been human-made with wilder QAnon fantasies. It then lectured readers that spreading such ideas would damage the church\u2019s witness in the world.<\/p>\n

Of course, Stetzer and The Gospel Coalition had no way of knowing at that point that Collins and Fauci had already\u00a0heard<\/a>\u00a0from leading U.S. and British scientists who believed the virus had indeed escaped from a Chinese lab. Or that they believed it might be the product of gain-of-function engineering, possibly with funding\u00a0from the NIH<\/a>\u00a0itself. Nor could they have predicted that emails between Collins and Fauci would later show the pair had a habit of turning to friendly media contacts (including, it seems, Christian media contacts) to\u00a0discredit<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0suppress<\/a>\u00a0opinions they didn\u2019t like, such as questioning Covid\u2019s origins and the wisdom of masks and lockdowns.<\/p>\n

What Stetzer and others\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0know was that one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the world was\u00a0calling<\/a>\u00a0on evangelical leaders to be \u201cambassadors for truth.\u201d And they were happy to answer that call.<\/p>\n

The question was, just how truthful was Collins\u2019 truth?<\/p>\n

Evangelicals of a Feather<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stetzer, CT, and The Gospel Coalition were hardly alone in uncritically lending their sway over rank-and-file evangelicals to Collins. The list of Christian leaders who passed the NIH director their mics to preach messages about getting jabs, wearing masks, and accepting the official line on Covid is as long as it is esteemed.<\/p>\n

One of the most noteworthy was the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), an organization funded by churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.<\/p>\n

While a\u00a0webinar<\/a>\u00a0featuring Collins and then-ERLC-head Russell Moore largely centered, again, on the importance of pastors convincing church members to get vaccinated, the discussion also moved on to the topic of masks. With Moore nodding along, Collins held up a basic, over-the-counter cloth square, \u201cThis is not a political statement,\u201d he\u00a0asserted<\/a>. \u201cThis is not an invasion of your personal freedom\u2026This is a life-saving medical device.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in late 2020, the claim was highly\u00a0debatable<\/a>\u00a0among medical experts. As hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in\u00a0City Journal<\/a>\u00a0this month, public health officials like Collins have had a truth problem over the entire course of Covid, but especially when it comes to masks. \u201cThe only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during Covid-19,\u201d Prasad reported, \u201cfound that\u2026cloth masks were\u00a0no better than no masks at all<\/em>.\u201d [emphasis mine].<\/p>\n

At this point, even the CDC is\u00a0backing away<\/a>\u00a0from claims that cloth masks are worth much of anything.<\/p>\n

Yet none of the Christian leaders platforming Collins evidently felt it was worth exploring a second opinion. And the list of pastors who were willing to take a bureaucrat\u2019s word that matters that could have been left to Christian liberty were instead tests of one\u2019s love for Jesus goes on.<\/p>\n

Former megachurch pastor Tim Keller\u2019s joint\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Collins included a digression where the pair agreed that churches like John MacArthur\u2019s, which continued to meet in-person despite Covid lockdowns, represented the \u201cbad and ugly\u201d of good, bad, and ugly Christian responses to the virus.<\/p>\n

During Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren\u2019s special broadcast with Collins on behalf of Health and Human Services, he mentioned that he and Collins first met when both were speakers for the billionaires and heads of state who gather annually in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. They reconnected recently, Warren revealed, at an \u201coff-the-record\u201d meeting between Collins and \u201ckey faith leaders.\u201d Warren did not say, but one can make an educated guess as to who convened that meeting and for what purpose, given the striking similarity of Collins\u2019 appearances alongside all these leading Christian lights.<\/p>\n

Once again, Warren and Collins spent their interview jointly\u00a0lamenting<\/a>\u00a0the unlovingness of Christians who question the efficacy of masks, specifically framing it as a matter of obedience to Jesus. \u201cWearing a mask is the great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself,\u201d the best-selling author of \u201cThe Purpose-Driven Life\u201d declared, before going on to specifically argue that religious leaders have an obligation to convince religious people to accept the government\u2019s narratives about Covid.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me just say a word to the priests and pastors and rabbis and other faith leaders,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is our job, to deal with these conspiracy issues and things like that\u2026One of the responsibilities of faith leaders is to tell people to\u2026trust the science. They\u2019re not going to put out a vaccine that\u2019s going to hurt people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that government does\u00a0have<\/em>\u00a0a record of putting out vaccines that \u201churt people,\u201d is it truly the pastor\u2019s job to tell church members to \u201ctrust the science?\u201d Is it a pastor\u2019s job to slyly insult other pastors who chose to handle shutdowns differently, as Warren did when he quipped that his \u201cego doesn\u2019t require\u201d him to \u201chave a live audience to speak to.\u201d<\/p>\n

And still the list goes on.<\/p>\n

The same week MacArthur\u2019s church was in the news for\u00a0resisting<\/a>\u00a0California Governor Gavin Newsom orders to keep houses of worship closed, Collins participated in an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with celebrated theologian N.T. Wright.<\/p>\n

During a discussion where the NIH director once again trumpeted the efficacy of cloth masks, the pair warned against conspiracies, mocking \u201cdisturbing examples\u201d of churches that continued meeting because they thought \u201cthe devil can\u2019t get into my church\u201d or \u201cJesus is my vaccine.\u201d Lest anyone wonder whether Wright experienced some pause over lending his reputation as a deep Christian thinker to Caesar\u2019s agent, the friends finished with a\u00a0guitar duet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even hipster Christian publications like Relevant, whose readers have likely never heard of Collins, still\u00a0looked to him<\/a>\u00a0as the foundation of their Covid reporting.<\/p>\n

Throughout all of it, Collins brought the message to the faithful through their preachers and leaders: \u201cGod is calling [Christians] to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And none of those leaders thought to question whether Collins\u2019 \u201cright thing\u201d and God\u2019s \u201cright thing\u201d must necessarily be the\u00a0same<\/em>\u00a0thing.<\/p>\n

Why not? As Warren said of Collins during their interview: \u201cHe\u2019s a man you can trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Man You Can Trust<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the evangelical elites\u2019 willingness to unhesitatingly credit Collins with unimpeachable honesty has something to do with his rather Mr. Rogers-like appearance and gentle demeanor. The establishment media has compared him to \u201cThe Simpson\u2019s\u201d character Ned Flanders,\u00a0noting\u00a0<\/a>that he has a tendency to punctuate his soft speech with exclamations of \u201coh boy!\u201d and \u201cby golly!\u201d<\/p>\n

Going by his concrete record, however, he seems like a strange ambassador to spread the government\u2019s Covid messaging to theologically conservative congregations. Other than his proclamations that he is, himself, a believer, the NIH director espouses nearly no public positions that would mark him out as any different from any extreme Left-wing bureaucrat.<\/p>\n

He has not only\u00a0defended<\/a>\u00a0experimentation on fetuses obtained by abortion, he has also directed\u00a0record-level<\/a>\u00a0spending toward it. Among the priorities the NIH has\u00a0funded<\/a>\u00a0under Collins \u2014 a University of Pittsburgh experiment that involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, as well as projects that relied on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies. Some doctors have even\u00a0charged<\/a>\u00a0Collins with giving money to research that required extracting kidneys, ureters, and bladders from living infants.<\/p>\n

He further has endorsed unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell research, personally attending President Obama\u2019s signing of an Executive Order to reverse a previous ban on such expenditures. When\u00a0Nature<\/a>\u00a0magazine asked him about the Trump administration\u2019s decision to shut down fetal cell research, Collins made it clear he disagreed, saying, \u201cI think it\u2019s widely known that the NIH tried to protect the continued use of human fetal tissue. But ultimately, the White House decided otherwise. And we had no choice but to stand down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when directly asked about how genetic testing has led to the increased killing of Down Syndrome babies in the womb, Collins deflected, telling\u00a0Beliefnet<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m troubled [by] the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena\u2026But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to pushing an agenda of racial quotas and partiality based on skin color, Collins is a member of the Left in good standing,\u00a0speaking<\/a>\u00a0fluently<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cstructural racism\u201d and \u201cequity\u201d rather than equality. He\u2019s put his money (or, rather, taxpayer money) where his mouth is,\u00a0implementing<\/a>\u00a0new policies that require scientists seeking NIH grants to pass diversity, equity, and inclusion tests in order to qualify.<\/p>\n

To the most holy of progressive sacred cows \u2014 LGBTQ orthodoxy \u2014 Collins has been happy to genuflect. Having\u00a0declared himself<\/a>\u00a0an \u201cally\u201d of the gay and trans movements, he went on to say he \u201c[applauds] the courage and resilience it takes for [LGBTQ] individuals to live openly and authentically\u201d and is \u201ccommitted to listening, respecting, and supporting [them]\u201d as an \u201cadvocate.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are not just the empty words of a hapless Christian official saying what he must to survive in a hostile political atmosphere. Collins\u2019 declaration of allyship is deeply reflected in his leadership.<\/p>\n

Under his watch, the NIH launched a new\u00a0initiative<\/a>\u00a0to specifically direct funding to \u201csexual and gender minorities.\u201d On the ground, this has translated to\u00a0awarding millions<\/a>\u00a0in grants to experimental transgender\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0on minors, like giving opposite-sex hormones to children as young as eight and mastectomies to girls as young as 13. Another\u00a0project<\/a>, awarded $8 million in grants, included recruiting teen boys to track their homosexual activities like \u201ccondomless anal sex\u201d on an app without their parents\u2019 consent.<\/p>\n

Other than his assertions of his personal Christian faith, there is almost no public stance Collins has taken that would mark him out as someone of like mind with the everyday believers to whom he was appealing.<\/p>\n

How did Collins overcome all this baggage to become the go-to expert for millions of Christians? With a little help from his friends, who were happy to stand as his character witnesses.<\/p>\n

Keller, Warren, Wright, and Stetzer all publicly lauded him as a godly brother.\u00a0 When presenting Collins to Southern Baptists, Moore gushed over him as the smartest man in a book club he attends that also includes, according to\u00a0Time Magazine<\/a>, such luminaries of the \u201cChristiantelligentsia\u201d as The Atlantic\u2019s Pete Wehner and The New York Times\u2019 David Brooks.<\/p>\n

In October, even after Collins\u2019 funding of the University of Pittsburgh research had become widely known, Moore continued to burnish his friend\u2019s reputation,\u00a0saying<\/a>, \u201cI admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and, most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis Collins.\u201d That same month, influential evangelical pundit David French\u00a0deemed<\/a>\u00a0Collins a \u201cnational treasure\u201d and his service in the NIH \u201cfaithful.\u201d Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson struck the most poetic tone in his\u00a0effusive praise<\/a>, claiming that Collins possesses a \u201crestless genius [that] is other-centered\u201d and is a \u201ctruth-seeker in the best sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Except, apparently, when those others are aborted infants or gender-confused children and when that truth pertains to lab leaks or gain-of-function funding.<\/p>\n

Since\u00a0news<\/a>\u00a0began breaking months ago that Collins and Fauci intentionally used their media connections to conspire to\u00a0suppress<\/a>\u00a0the lab-leak theory, none of the individuals or organizations in this story has corrected their records or asked Collins publicly about his previous statements. Nor have they circled back with him to inquire on record about revelations the NIH\u00a0funded<\/a>\u00a0gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan. They also haven\u2019t questioned him on the increasing scientific consensus that cloth masks were never very useful.<\/p>\n

The Daily Wire reached out to Stetzer, Keller, Wright, Warren, Moore, and French to ask if they have changed their views on Collins given recent revelations. None responded.<\/p>\n

Francis Collins has been an especially successful envoy for the Biden administration, delivering messages to a mostly-Republican Christian populace who would otherwise be reluctant to hear them. In their presentation of Collins\u2019 expertise, these pastors and leaders suggested that questioning his explanations as to the origins of the virus or the efficacy of masks was not simply a point of disagreement but sinful. This was a charge likely to have a great deal of impact on churchgoers who strive to live lives in accordance with godly standards. Perhaps no other argument could\u2019ve been more persuasive to this demographic.<\/p>\n

This does not mean these leaders necessarily knew that the information they were conveying to the broader Christian public could be false, but it does highlight the danger religious leaders face when they\u2019re willing to become mouth organs of the government.<\/p>\n

What we do know about Collins and his work with Fauci is that they have shown themselves willing to compromise transparency and truth for PR considerations. Thus, everything they have told the public about the vaccines may be accurate and their message a worthy one for Christians. But their credibility no longer carries much weight. It would\u2019ve been better had the evangelical establishment never platformed Collins at all and shipwrecked their own reputations to showcase their lofty connections to him.<\/p>\n

While these evangelical leaders were warning about conspiracy theories, Collins was waging a\u00a0misinformation campaign<\/a>\u00a0himself \u2014 one these Christian megaphones helped further.<\/p>\n

Why they did it is a question only they can answer. Perhaps in their eagerness to promote vaccines, they weren\u2019t willing to offer any pushback to Collins\u2019 other claims. Certainly, the lure of respect in the halls of power has proved too great a siren call for many a man. Or perhaps it was simply that their friend, the NIH director, called on them for a favor. If so, a friend like Collins deserved much, much more scrutiny.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an instructive moment at the end of Warren\u2018s interview with Collins. The pastor misquotes Proverbs 4, saying, \u201cGet the facts at any price.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, of course, is not what the verse says. It says get\u00a0wisdom<\/em>\u00a0at any price. And it was wisdom that was severely lacking when so many pastors and ministry heads recklessly turned over their platforms, influence, and credibility to a government official who had done little to demonstrate he deserved them.<\/p>\n

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not a Hebrew scholar and cannot say I have checked this claim, but biblical Hebrew apparently has no word for “coincidence”.\u00a0 It is now a well understood fact that an ethnic group’s language, in the sense of its structure and semantics (big word for ‘what is meant’ and ‘how meaning is expressed’) is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,6,14,24,17],"tags":[224,120,226,212,222,225,223],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-culture-politics","category-christianity","category-church-state","category-politics","category-science","category-science-and-religion","tag-caesar-or-christ","tag-church-and-state","tag-collins-and-fauci","tag-covid","tag-nih","tag-prophets","tag-reformation"],"yoast_head":"\r\nThe Offspring of Judas - Planet M Blog<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Offspring of Judas - 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