More Cowbell Award IV
April 20, 2006
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Best of Cerulean Sanctum, More Cowbell! Functions : Trackback,
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Sometimes it’s just silly, and sometimes it’s on a scale of utter mental vacuity that deserves its own prize. That’s why I must hand out another More Cowbell Award. Yes, “The Award That No One Wants to Win” is back with a vengeance. Perhaps it’s been holed up in a cubbyhole plotting its return in a blaze of black helicopter glory that will bring down democratic nations and establish a one world….
Hey, wait a second!
I hereby bestow the fourth More Cowbell Award on a group of folks who can’t disengage from the latest Jack Van Impe scarefest. Lately, their ilk has dominated so many discussions that even I’m growing paranoid listening to them.
Here’s a sampling of their wares:
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“Don’t ever buy anything from a Christian bookstore with a credit card. Those transactions are routed to a data vault in Antwerp and correlated. That’s how they know whom to round up for extermination.”"The Roman Catholic Church has infiltrated the National Association of Evangelicals. Ted Haggard is nothing more than a papist stooge installed by Opus Dei.”"Did you know that the U.S. Government has a warehouse in upstate New York filled with guillotines to use on Christians during the Great Tribulation?”
“Zionist bankers in Switzerland are even now funding a phony vaccine that will actually be targeted for use on believers. We’ll be told its an avian flu vaccine, but its most devastating component won’t actually kick in until a year after UN workers administer the shot. Think Ebola here, except a thousand times more powerful. Ever seen an eyeball melt?”
“Rick Warren’s PEACE initiative is an attempt by Illuminati groups to undermine the true Church and diminish its power so the antichrist can be more easily installed after the Temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem. This is all Bill Hybels’s fault.”
“Whenever a church that uses electronic tithing methods receives your monthly tithe out of your bank account, one percent of your tithe is routed to the estate of Aleister Crowley in order to print more copies of The Necronomicon.”
“Today, a red heifer was born in Bethlehem…”
Frank Black (guess the reference) couldn’t make this stuff up. Nor could he track it all down to a shadowy group portrayed in an eponymous TV show. Nothing about these crackpot ideas is shadowy.
Anyway, the fourth More Cowbell Award goes to
Honestly, I’ve had to unsubscribe from a number of formerly rational blogs of formerly respectable Christian organizations. They once legitimately pursued heretical thinking in the Church, but now resemble little more than conspiracy sites run by folks who find nefarious global plots against Christians under every rock. There’s healthy discernment and then there’s just fearmongering.
Part of the problem is a lack of love. If perfect love drives out all fear, then we have to ask if folks are being loving (and loved) when the conspiracies start flying. Bad eschatology comes into play, too. Hyperkinetic dispensationalism run amok is threatening to drive hardcore orthodox amil- and premillennialists to drink. Maybe now’s a good time to be a Preterist!
Christians everywhere are up in arms about the pending DaVinci Code movie, yet we’re totally unwilling to silence our own who simply cannot shut up about harebrained conspiracies against Christians. By comparison, some of the cranium-busting hysteria trotted out as normal Christian thought today makes The DaVinci Code read like The Pokey Little Puppy.
Honestly, if someone can track down the company making all those guillotines being supplied to the U.S. Government, I want to buy their stock because they’re going to make a killing.
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Comments
AAaAhhh, great post… I haven’t heard the Illuminati being bantered about since those John Todd tapes hit Evangelical Christianity in the late 70’s…
{{{Candleman}}}
I became a preterist (partial preterist, technically) essentially after one run-through of the basis for that position, just as I became a Christian after one presentation of the gospel, albeit over a period of several months. It’s amazing that people can create such fantastic scenarios seemingly out of nothing, like watching a cotton candy machine at work.
How unimaginative these conspiracy theorists are in their imagined conspiracies. Do they not know that the Devil has been carrying out far more wicked, far more complicated plans against us for millenia? Good thing Jesus “disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.” Peace.
“Hyperkinetic dispensationalism run amok is threatening to drive hardcore orthodox amil- and premillennialists to drink. Maybe now’s a good time to be a Preterist!”
Or maybe it’s a good time to be a hardcore orthodox amil or premil!
“It was a woman that drove me to drink,” W.C. Fields once said, “and I never had the decency to thank her for it.”
I liken conspiracy theorists, as well as many of the “hate mongering”, so called Christian activists, with the Pharisees of old, in that they survive by promoting fear and guilt into their followers, and those around them. I wonder, sometimes, how we can call ourselves Christians when we so often fail to follow even the simplest of Christ’s teachings.
Dan! Don’t insult The Pokey Little Puppy like that!
hyperkinetic dispensationalism
That is a classic term I will never forget.
Milton has already forged my own stated opinion: People looking for conspiracies always seem to forget the deeds of the Father of Lies is well-documented from Genesis to Revelations.
As for Christian conspiracy theorists, they must be convinced the Bible cannot be well known, that we have something other than the awesome, holy nature of God to decipher, and God speaks to us in riddles like some mythical gatekeeper who does not wish to be known or recognized. That worldview, IMO, is not just extra-Biblical, it’s aBiblical. Gosh, I guess God in the flesh wasn’t enough of a revelation.
*sigh*
As a baby-Christian, can I ask a dummy question?
Why does it matter whether you’re a preterist, a millenialist of any stripe, or whatnot? I was under the impression that you were either in or out, so to speak, and if you’re washed in the blood, you’re in. I wasn’t aware there was going to be a quiz at the gate: it sounds like some kind of monty python sketch. “Welcome to the pearly gates, so happy to have you hear, but before we let you in, we have a little game we’d like to call ‘Pick the appropriate eschatology’!”
Alierakieron,
Here’s a past post you should read. It answers some of your questions about why eschatology matters.
If you’re a baby Christian, I would warn you on holding to the idea of “being in or out.” If you’ve repented and placed your faith in Christ and His finished work, then believe with your faith that you’re in, but LIVE like you’ve got a long race to run ahead of you. Too many people come to Christ and “crawl onto a shelf” and stay there; they accomplish nothing for the Lord with their lives. I would question whether those people are truly “in” or not. I know that goes against some thinking out there, but too many Christians think of discipleship as coming to Christ and then going off and doing whatever they want. That’s not understanding Christ as Lord. Don’t be like those folks.
Does that make sense?
Alierakieron,
I guess Dan is warning you of the heresy of antinomianism…
Francisco
Dan,
Thanks for the response! I’ll take a look.
I absolutely agree with your warning – but then I think any ‘faith’ without the walk is inherently empty.
I was raised in the Methodist Church, and attended regularly until I was fourteen. 14 years later I’m heading back, and while I still remember my most basic ‘catechism’ a lot of the talk in the godblogosphere goes right over my head.
Then again, seeing a lot of the anger and squabbling related, I wonder if I’m better off. The Christian equivolent of the “beginners mind” as it were?
This post made me smile.
…if someone can track down the company making all those guillotines being supplied to the U.S. Government, I want to buy their stock because they’re going to make a killing.
Hahaha, you made a pun!
Seriously though, Dan, I have it on good authority that it ain’t paranoia if they really are out to get you…
There is a sure-fire method of getting oneself off of these fellows’ mailing lists.
One day, I got an (unsolicited) newsletter from Texe Marrs. (For those who don’t know, Marrs is an “evangelist” whose penchant for conspiracy theories makes Art Bell look like the Amazing Randi.) I sent back the reply envelope with the following note -
“Do not call conspiracy everything that these people call conspiracy;
do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, He is the one you are to fear, He is the one you are to dread. – Isaiah 8:12-13 (Please remove me from your mailing list.)”
It worked like a charm. ;-}