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Does an active, conscious, organized conspiracy against Christ, the Bible, and the Gospel really exist within the organized church? A great deal of evidence says there is.
In another article, I spoke of what I described as "an active, conscious conspiracy against the Gospel of Christ, and against the sole authority of the Bible in the church." More and more frequently I am asked, "Does such a thing really exist?" I believe it does, and I believe we find a parallel in the Communist conspiracy in America that began in 1930s and 40s, and continues today.
Living Life in "Separate Compartments"
In the late 1940s, former Communists Walter Krivitsky, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley and others exposed a conspiracy that, beginning in the early 1930s, had placed committed Communists in the highest levels of the United States government. The most notorious of these was Alger Hiss, a key adviser to Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference where Eastern Europe was handed over to Stalin, and later secretary-general of the San Francisco conference at which the United Nations Charter was ratified.
In his autobiography Witness, Whittaker Chambers explained that Hiss and the others who were later exposed were committed Communists, dues-paying Party members. But they were not the outspoken radicals to be found in the "open" Communist Party. They had been recruited to operate under "deep cover." They had been educated at the most prestigious universities such as Harvard, Columbia, Yale, New York University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Chicago. They were recruited into the conspiracy while students, and were gradually and secretly groomed for action that would take place years later. Much of what they did involved exerting influence on government policies that would bear fruit later - in other words, efforts to poison the well at its source by changing the belief system on which government operated. They were under strict instructions to have nothing to do with the "open Party" and even to repudiate its activities, all the while setting the stage for revolution from within the government itself by furthering the New Deal's un-Constitutional expansion of government. Their contacts with their Soviet handlers and fellow conspirators took place in extreme secrecy.1
As Sam Tanenhaus puts it in his biography of Chambers, "Protocol was strict. Underground members were instructed to sever all ties to the visible left....The most exacting discipline was imposed on those in [this] elite nucleus....Of course this required powers of dissimulation and self-control. One had to live one's life in 'separate compartments'."2
Let me add that I highly recommend Witness3 to anyone who wants to understand how such conspiracies work. Witness also explains how it became possible for a man committed to achieving all of the God-hating Marxist goals for America, articulated by the open Communist party ever since the 1920s, to be elected President of the United States in 2008, and how it has been possible for him to implement so many of those goals at breathtaking speed.
Evidence of a Conspiracy in the Church
Based on my own research over the past several years, I am convinced that a similar conspiracy exists within the organized church, in Evangelical and Reformed circles.4 As in the case of the Communist conspiracy during the period of the 1930s and 1940s, much of the evidence of conscious conspiracy is, at this stage, circumstantial. There are as yet no defectors to offer direct corroboration. But the evidence is mounting.
For the past several decades, men whose first loyalty is clearly not to the authority of the Word of God or the truth of the authentic Gospel have been working their way into influential positions in once-conservative Christian academia.
Many of these men hold degrees from "mainstream" liberal seminaries and universities such as Cambridge, Chicago Theological Seminary, Columbia, Dartmouth, Goettingen, Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, Notre Dame, Oxford, and Yale, and the schools of apostate denominations such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Presbyterian Church USA, and United Methodist Church. These institutions are openly and often aggressively hostile to authentic Biblical Christianity.
Men with these connections have been hired onto the faculties of formerly-sound institutions such as Biola University, Biblical Theological Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, and many others. Often they have gained their positions because administrators and boards believe that their "mainstream" degrees will add to the prestige of their institutions, help them gain acceptance in mainstream academia, and open up otherwise-off-limits sources of financial support.
In one of my books I documented the behind-the-scenes role of In Trust, a consortium of seminaries and divinity schools, in undermining the Bible and the Gospel in reputedly conservative seminaries.5 Over one hundred schools are In Trust members and associates. The vast majority are Roman Catholic, Jewish, and mainline liberal Protestant institutions. But also among In Trust's members are Biblical Theological Seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, Multnomah Seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and Westminster Seminary in California.
Parallels to the Communist Conspiracy
Like the Communists of the 1930s and 40s, the conspirators against the Bible and the Gospel have worked their way into the highest echelons of Christian academia and church leadership. Like their Communist counterparts, these theological conspirators have poisoned the well at its source. Through their influence, whole generations of students - who are now in pulpits across America and around the world - have taken in the poison of false gospels and the ascendancy of human wisdom over Scripture. They, in turn, have passed the poison on to their congregations and to a succeeding generation of pastors and seminary professors.
One parallel with the Communists of the 30s and 40s is, I think, particularly dangerous. Just as the underground Communists were required to distance themselves from members of the "open Party", many of these men, who hold the most liberal theological views but more subtly and quietly, try to distance themselves from men who are more outspoken in expressing the same views. For example, men like Douglas Wilson and N. T. Wright openly trumpet the Federal Vision and the New Perspective on Paul, both of which teach that salvation commences with baptism and that justification is by faith plus works. At the same time, men like Richard Gaffin of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, holding essentially the same views but communicating them in more subtle forms, attempt to distance themselves from more "open" members of the conspiracy. It is a distinction without a difference, but many are deceived into believing that men like Gaffin are sound, while the more outspoken men are not.
Just as Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Nathan Witt, and other deep-cover agents of the Communist conspiracy had their defenders who would not honestly examine the evidence, men of the conspiracy in the church have their defenders who refuse to see the truth. But just as the evidence of a Communist conspiracy began in the realm of the circumstantial but subsequently was corroborated by direct evidence and eyewitnesses, I believe such direct evidence and eyewitness accounts of a conspiracy against Christ, the Bible, and the Gospel will be forthcoming in the church. The identity of the conscious deep-cover conspirators will be revealed - if not in this world, most certainly at the Last Judgment. Their true loyalties, and the extent of their well-controlled dissimulation, will be made plain to all.
The Source of the Conspiracy
What is the source of the conspiracy within the church? Organizationally, I believe that as the fountainhead of the Communist conspiracy was Moscow, the fountainhead of the conspiracy in the organized church is Rome. Most of the theological deviancies that are being taught in Evangelical and Reformed circles today have one thing in common: They either echo Roman Catholic doctrine, or they pave the way for Roman Catholicism's acceptance. I believe that a strong case can be made that the "man of sin" spoken of in 2 Thessalonians chapter two, the Antichrist, is the Roman papacy. Ultimately, the source of the conspiracy is Satan himself, whose tool Antichrist is.
Is This Paranoia?
Is it paranoid to think this way? Absolutely not. We find a pattern of active, conscious, but well-concealed conspiracies against Christ, His Word, and the Gospel throughout the pages of Scripture, and many warnings against them:
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us" (Psalm 2:2-3).
And the scribes and chief priests heard it and sought how they might destroy Him; for they feared Him, because all the people were astonished at His teaching (Mark 11:18).
Now a great many of the Jews knew that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus (John 12:9-11).
And when they had come to him, he [Paul] said to them: "You know, from the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I always lived among you, serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews..." (Acts 20:18-19).
For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works (2 Corinthians 11:13-15).
Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple (Romans 16:17-18).
...that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting... (Ephesians 4:14)
For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ (Jude 4).
References:
1. Many of the accusations made under oath by former conspirators in the 1940s and 50s were attacked as unfounded in the liberal media, and are still denied today. But after the fall of the Soviet Empire, declassified documents from Russian, East German, and Hungarian secret police files proved that many of the people named were active Communist agents. Despite overwhelming evidence, many still refuse to believe there was - and is - an active, conscious conspiracy.
2. Samuel Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1997), 94-98.
3. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, 1951; reprinted by Regnery Publishing, 2001).
4. A sampling of works that outline the conspiracy includes: Mark W. Karlberg, The Changing of the Guard (Unicoi, Tennessee: The Trinity Foundation, 2001); O. Palmer Robertson, The Current Justification Controversy (The Trinity Foundation, 2003); John W. Robbins, A Companion to The Current Justification Controversy (The Trinity Foundation, 2003); Paul M. Elliott, Justification by Faith Alone: Timeless Truths & Contemporary Errors (TeachingTheWord, 2004), Christianity and Neo-Liberalism (The Trinity Foundation, 2005), A Denomination in Denial (TeachingTheWord, 2006), While Wolves Devour the Sheep (TeachingTheWord, 2007), What's The Purpose? A Biblical Analysis of the Purpose-Driven Church Movement (TeachingTheWord, 2009), and a two-part essay, The Emergent Church's Retreat Into Pre-Reformation Darkness, to be published in The Trinity Review's first two issues of 2010.
5. Christianity and Neo-Liberalism, 303-307.
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