Diane Langberg, PhD
A system can be so powerful and controlling that the actions of people look like insanity to an outsider.
— Diane Langberg, PhD (@DianeLangberg) November 10, 2017
Cult
“Hello, I am here representing my father the devil, and I would like to share a false gospel with you.”
Some such attempts at twisting the message have had more success in deception than others, and of course none of them has been completely honest in the advertising. No one comes to the front door, hands you a tract, and says, ‘Hello, I am here representing my father the devil, and I would like to share a false gospel with you.’ Rather, these subversions of the gospel have regularly come in the name of Christ. ‘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 Cor. 11:14–15).
Douglas Wilson
“that pig in the pulpit”
“The state is failing this child, but how much worse the congregants who continue to sit week after week supporting that pig in the pulpit, where this child will grow up believing that this is the best the church had to offer him.” 🙁
“Drink the Kool-Aid. Join the cult. Surrender your independence. . .”
When it comes to life in our modern congregations, we think we have to guard against mindless conformity when what really threatens our spiritual health is our radical individualism. The Scriptures tell us what we should be laboring for, striving for, and praying for. We are not told to work at maintaining independence of thought. We are not told to build some ecclesiastical variant of academic freedom. We are commanded to strive for likemindedness, to be of one mind.
‘Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits’ (Rom. 12:16).
‘That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom. 15:6).
‘Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you’ (2 Cor. 13:11).
‘Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel’ (Phil. 1:27).
‘Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind’ (Phil. 2:2).
‘Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous’ (1 Pet. 3:8).
‘Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 15:5).
‘For I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state’ (Phil. 2:20).
Allow me the privilege of translating all of this into modern American English for you. Drink the Kool-Aid. Join the cult. Surrender your independence. Swallow the party line. Go baaa like a sheep. Strive for the nirvana of acquiescence.
Douglas Wilson
“One of the laws of leadership”
One of the laws of leadership in this fallen world is that people will put up with far more from ungodly leaders than they will from godly leaders.
Douglas Wilson
“Hello, I am here from the devil. . .”
False teachers do not knock on your door with a brief case full of literature, and say, ‘Hello, I am here from the devil, and I have come to lead you into eternal torments.’ That kind of stuff never makes it into the brochures.
Douglas Wilson
“These men have bent minds and hearts and so they produce bent disputes.”
What Paul says about koinonia reformation is healthy — wholesome. But some don’t consent to it (v. 3). The false teacher’s empty head does not keep him from being full of himself (v. 4). His heart and tongue are tangled — he has questions and verbal clashes. These produce envy, quarrels, verbal hostility, and jumping to conclusions about the motives of others. These men have bent minds and hearts and so they produce bent disputes. They think that piety is supposed to be a means of personal advancement, particularly theirs (v. 5). Get away from such people. This is a wonderful picture of the rabid revolutionary of the early nineteenth century, and it is a vivid picture of some of the people we had to deal with on our slavery controversy.
Douglas Wilson
The Only Litmus Test
“But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. You may say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’ When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.”
Deuteronomy 18:20–22
“No, we don’t think we’re anybody special; no Reformer ever has been actually.”
Are we in the middle of a new Reformation?
I believe that we are.
Is this megalomania on our part? — ‘Who do you guys think you are?’
No, we don’t think we’re anybody special; no Reformer ever has been actually.
Douglas Wilson
“A beast is a persecutor; an antichrist is a false teacher”
Never Open Up Constructive Theological Dialogue With An Antichrist
Topic: Chrestomathy
“At the same time, precisely because the Church is the household of the faithful, the enemy outside hates it. One of the ways he expresses that hatred is by various attempts at subversion, corrupting the Church from within. It is simply naive to maintain that all assaults on the faith come from persecuting tyrants. Most of the threats to biblical integrity come from men who went to seminary. The beast in Scripture is a civil ruler, persecuting from outside. There have been many such beasts in the history of the Church, from Nero to Stalin. But the antichrist in Scripture is a spirit of corruption from within the body. Who is the antichrist but the one who denies that Jesus came in the flesh? (1 Jn. 4:3). A beast is a persecutor; an antichrist is a false teacher. In the scriptural categories, Hitler was a beast, but to find our modern antichrists we have to look for liberal Methodist bishops and the lesbians who love them. Now the Bible requires that the Word be brought against both kinds of threats, which is just what the apostle John did. He brought the Word against the beast in Revelation and against the antichrist in 1 John. And when that Word comes, it does not do so as an invitation to dialogue” (A Serrated Edge, pp. 99–100).
Posted by Douglas Wilson — 12/28/2005 12:45:29 PM
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“amoral totalitarians” & “glassy-eyed moral idiots”
When the history of our era finally written, it is hard to say which group will deserve the greater condemnation — the amoral totalitarians who run the Soviet Union, or the glassy-eyed moral idiots in the West who were incapable of seeing what was happening.
Douglas Wilson
“Every culture has a religious center”
Like a Seed
‘Every culture has a religious center, and every religion, like a seed, given water, sunlight, and nutrients, grows up into a particular plant’ (Writers to Read, p. 62).
Douglas Wilson
Jeremiah 8:20
“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
Jeremiah 8:20