How Should We Respond to Christian Conspiracy Theories?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:02.000 | Christian conspiracy theories. That's today's theme. We need to address them as we hear from Lindsey, a listener with today's question.
00:00:11.320 | Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for this podcast. I have a friend who is convinced that the new COVID-19 vaccines are the mark of the beast.
00:00:19.320 | Anyone injected is given over to Satan and is thereby lost forever per revelation.
00:00:26.040 | I'm very much unconvinced of this, but how would you respond to Christians who are given to these types of spiritual conspiracy theories?
00:00:33.600 | And then if possible, what exactly is the mark of the beast in Revelation 16 - in
00:00:39.680 | 1920? My concern
00:00:42.860 | with this question relates mainly to the first thing that
00:00:47.680 | Lindsey asks about, namely, what should we think and do in
00:00:53.360 | response to people who gravitate to what Lindsey calls
00:00:57.000 | spiritual conspiracy theories. And that's not a new question.
00:01:02.040 | In every generation, there have been predictions of the end of the world and
00:01:08.280 | speculations about world leaders as the Antichrist and
00:01:13.840 | calamities which definitely signified the soon end of the world and
00:01:20.640 | political events that definitely fulfill
00:01:23.360 | last day
00:01:25.880 | biblical prophecies and bizarre
00:01:28.820 | sequences of
00:01:31.080 | events which cause the spinning out of
00:01:34.520 | conspiratorial webs which have an uncanny way of being self-confirming and
00:01:40.920 | then peter out in the end and are forgotten for a few decades until they start all over again.
00:01:48.000 | So that's not new. What's new is
00:01:50.760 | not the
00:01:53.560 | alarmist
00:01:55.080 | mentalities or conspiracy theories or vocal doomsayers.
00:01:58.720 | What's new is the presence of social media and the speed and ease and extent
00:02:06.160 | to which these theories
00:02:08.440 | spread.
00:02:09.560 | So how should we respond now, especially
00:02:14.240 | personally? If we know someone who is given to this kind of speculation and intrigue,
00:02:21.760 | what should we do if we know someone who always seems to be sniffing out
00:02:28.000 | something other than what is plainly there? And my answer to this is based on a certain
00:02:35.040 | diagnosis of what's going on in their mind.
00:02:38.680 | What I've seen over the years is
00:02:43.720 | that there's a certain kind of
00:02:46.040 | personality or more seriously, we could call it a certain kind of
00:02:51.640 | spiritual condition that seems unable to be
00:02:56.640 | profoundly engaged with,
00:02:59.320 | unable to be deeply moved by, unable to rejoice in the great central
00:03:06.400 | glorious realities of the Christian faith. They're always on the margins.
00:03:11.880 | It's as though their minds and hearts are like magnets that are constantly
00:03:17.560 | attracting little iron fragments from the edges instead of the big
00:03:22.840 | massive thing at the center. And ultimately the things of greatest importance get
00:03:30.400 | neglected. The glory, the wonder, the beauty of the Christian faith is
00:03:37.000 | passed over and they're always fascinated with marginal things that are not
00:03:43.200 | preeminent.
00:03:45.280 | Here's an example because I've felt this so personally over the years as I was a pastor because there were people like that in my
00:03:52.280 | church. I knew them. I knew how they responded to things.
00:03:55.080 | I recall preaching a sermon one time and pouring out my heart
00:03:59.240 | concerning Christ and his work and his beauty and his brightness and his worth, his
00:04:05.600 | humble perfections as a man, his agonizing death, his
00:04:10.240 | triumphant resurrection, his victory over Satan and hell and death, his reign in heaven,
00:04:17.800 | just giving everything I've had to show the magnificent, glorious, weighty, central reality of
00:04:23.600 | Jesus Christ and the way of salvation. And a man
00:04:26.680 | took my hand at the door
00:04:30.400 | afterward and with great excitement said,
00:04:35.320 | "Have you seen this article that put another puzzle piece in place
00:04:40.800 | for his little
00:04:43.480 | conspiratorial fascination?"
00:04:45.880 | Now that response wasn't new for him. It was typical. It didn't surprise me, but it was just sad.
00:04:54.000 | He could sit under the passionate biblical
00:04:58.240 | preaching of the greatest realities in the universe and
00:05:03.400 | be absolutely
00:05:05.400 | unfazed,
00:05:07.280 | unfazed
00:05:09.040 | by that because of his controlling
00:05:12.920 | interest in marginal
00:05:16.080 | speculations.
00:05:18.160 | Amazing. Now that, I would say, is a spiritual disease and our response to it,
00:05:25.000 | I think, should be personally,
00:05:27.240 | relationally,
00:05:29.360 | prayerfully to constantly do our best to direct that person's attention
00:05:36.120 | toward grand,
00:05:38.800 | central realities of the Christian faith that are
00:05:42.880 | right at the heart of what God is doing in Jesus Christ.
00:05:47.480 | They think they are being biblical and
00:05:51.800 | passionate for truth,
00:05:54.360 | but in fact the main truths
00:05:58.040 | hold no interest for them.
00:06:00.280 | It does little good to try to address their speculations directly.
00:06:06.320 | There's just so much conjecture that you can't get anywhere.
00:06:10.600 | What's needed is an awakening of the heart to the superior worth and greatness and beauty of the most
00:06:19.320 | important things in Scripture.
00:06:21.960 | So here's a picture that may capture it. The right ordering of our thoughts about reality
00:06:28.600 | comes from a right view, a right
00:06:32.240 | valuing of God and Christ and salvation at the center of all of our other thoughts.
00:06:38.600 | The picture is like a solar system, right?
00:06:41.240 | The Sun is at the center of the solar system and when the Sun is central, the planets are all orbiting
00:06:49.360 | safely, beautifully in their proper place. That's a picture of God at the center and all of our thoughts
00:06:55.440 | assuming their rightful place.
00:06:58.000 | But what happens if the Sun is displaced and
00:07:03.720 | Mars, the planet Mars,
00:07:06.720 | becomes the center? What happens is that when you try to draw the orbits of the planets,
00:07:16.000 | when you try to understand the other realities in your life, when God has been replaced by Mars as
00:07:22.720 | the center,
00:07:25.160 | things look terrifyingly chaotic. They're out of order and surely
00:07:31.400 | Mercury is going to crash into our planet. It is. It is. Just look at this orbit.
00:07:38.040 | In other words, the root problem
00:07:41.880 | with disordered thinking is that the center has been removed.
00:07:46.800 | The Sun doesn't function as a massive
00:07:50.080 | gravitational force in our minds anymore and that can't be addressed by telling them that the orbit of
00:07:57.600 | Mercury is not going to crash into the earth because from their standpoint with Mars in the place of the Sun, it is. Just look.
00:08:05.200 | There it is. I've drawn it on paper. It's going to happen.
00:08:09.240 | Our whole effort seems to me needs to be by prayer and
00:08:13.800 | teaching to try to reawaken a God-centered universe of thought in their mind and a
00:08:21.200 | God-centered solar system of well-ordered affections for God and his
00:08:26.720 | central biblical
00:08:29.240 | realities. Now, I can't deal with the mark of the beast. That's what she wanted me to do. Secondly,
00:08:34.880 | like that tell me what the mark of the beast is, but here's how I think about it. And I think this is
00:08:40.360 | just as important. The mark of the beast is a sign from in the book of Revelation that you have
00:08:47.120 | forsaken the Lord Jesus and worshiped a false deity.
00:08:50.600 | It keeps you from having to be persecuted.
00:08:54.360 | It gets you privileges.
00:08:56.880 | This sign that you have forsaken Jesus and embraced an alien deity gets you privileges in a culture of
00:09:04.720 | anti-christian forces where they hold sway. And the way to victory in
00:09:08.600 | that culture is described in Revelation 12 11. They have conquered Satan, who's the power behind the beast.
00:09:16.320 | They have conquered Satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony,
00:09:22.600 | for they love not their lives even unto death. So what will we devote ourselves to?
00:09:30.120 | Fascination with the number and the name of the mark of the beast, which is not of the essence,
00:09:34.560 | or with an understanding of and a love for the blood of the Lamb and
00:09:41.440 | the readiness to bear public witness to his greatness and a willingness to sacrifice our lives because of his supreme value.
00:09:48.920 | Once that question is settled, will we operate from Christ's glorious central
00:09:55.320 | realities or will we dabble at the margins? Once that question is settled in our hearts,
00:10:02.040 | then we can calmly go about studying. What is the number of the beast? But when the center is missing,
00:10:09.920 | dabbling at the edges of numbers and names is not going to satisfy or help. The main thing is not
00:10:17.600 | identifying that
00:10:19.880 | mark. The main thing is loving Christ so deeply we are ready to die for him as
00:10:26.760 | we depend on his redeeming blood. His infinite, all-satisfying
00:10:31.800 | value is the sun that keeps the planets of our thoughts and affections in order.
00:10:38.760 | Amen. Riveting our attention on the greatest glories and not getting carried away by the lesser and marginal details. That's an important word.
00:10:46.160 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening today. You can ask a question of your own, search through or browse our
00:10:51.680 | 1,600+ episodes or subscribe to the podcast. Do all that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:59.840 | Well, what are angels up to today? It's a great question and it's coming up next time. I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:11:07.760 | We'll see you back here after the weekend.
00:11:10.000 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor John Piper.
00:11:14.800 | See you Monday when we talk about what are the angels up to today? We'll see you then.
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