Sono pazzi questi Romani!
According to James White, God did it.
According to F. J. De Angelis of the Semper Reformanda website, writing in response, the Jews did it.
Which is true? Well, they're both true.
But which is more fundamental?
Once again from jolly old England, the capital of bizarre news:
An Oxford engineering student was surprised but undaunted when he was approached to deliver a series of lectures in Beijing on global economics.
Matthew Richardson knew "next to nothing" about the subject but, believing he would be addressing a sixth-form audience, he felt he could "carry it off".
Mr Richardson, 23, borrowed an A-level textbook entitled An Introduction to Global Financial Markets from a library and swotted up on its contents on the flight from London to China.
Short summary of the rest of the story: He went, and much to his surprise was lecturing over several days to doctoral candidates. Speaking through a translator, he cribbed and ad-libbed his way through an economics textbook that he had torn up and disguised as his notes, until he realized he was running out of material . . . at which point he blew outta Dodge.
I always figured Economics was about 95% BS (that is, Boastful Statements), and this doesn't do anything to refute that notion . . .
It wasn't long ago that conspiracy theory was the exclusive domain of a few rural, hard-right-wing Americans with a shortwave radio or satellite dish. But then TV shows like The X-Files and movies like Conspiracy Theory or Men in Black, or my personal favourite, Arlington Road, came along and propelled these underground ideas right into the mainstream. I'm guessing that the majority of my readers have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald really shot JFK. Probably most have heard claims that debit cards or "smart cards" or some other sort of biometric technology will be part of the new "cashless society" of the Antichrist’s one-world government. And what do you think of when you hear the words "new world order"?
Probably you have connected with at least one of the things on that list. That’s because in the last ten or so years, conspiracy theory and the American ultra-conservative subculture have become mainstream. This is in part due to programs like The X-Files. I think that when Chris Carter created that program, he really touched a nerve. It is also because of the escalation of right-wing domestic terrorism, most notably the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Fin-de-siècle anticipation contributed to this too, as it always does. But within the Christian Church, this has been mainstream thought for much longer. Here’s an example, taken from a video by Grant Jeffrey produced in the mid-90s:
They have already created a new European currency called the ECU - the European Currency Unit. And they have chosen a phenomenally interesting prophetic symbol to put on that currency. Unlike the Canadian dollar that has the picture of the Queen or the American dollar that has the picture of the pyramid, the Europeans have chosen for the symbol on their new European currency, which today is used only by banks and governments but by 1998 will be used by all citizens in Europe instead of the French franc and the Italian lira and the British pound, they’ve chosen the symbol of a naked woman riding a bull with two horns. Those who remember prophecy will remember that in fact John in Revelation prophesied that the Antichrist in his kingdom was represented by a beast with ten horns, representing the ten nations, and another beast with two horns. But then the false apostate church of the last days, an ecumenical world church would come together and would ally itself with this false dictator, the Antichrist. And John in Rev. 17 said I saw this false church symbolized by a harlot, a naked woman riding the beast with the horns. The European Parliament for their second election chose that very symbol of the half-naked woman riding the bull with two horns over the sea as their symbol. My friends, we’re living in amazing times.
The mainstream of Bible prophecy studies is awash in conspiracy theorists, including Jeffrey, Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, and Texe Marrs. What they all have in common is that they believe, to some extent, in conspiracy theory, which I define as follows:
Conspiracy theory is a philosophy of history, based on fear, that claims secret alliances of evil men are manipulating world events to create a totalitarian world government.
Nothing ever happens by accident: wars, assassinations, depressions, elections - it’s all been planned in secret by an intellectual or political elite.
It certainly sounds plausible, which accounts for its popularity. And when you hear someone like Jeffrey explain it, it sounds biblical. But is it? Listen to what God told Isaiah:
For the LORD spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A confederacy [conspiracy], to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. (Isaiah 8:11-12)
The combined kingdom of Israel and Judah had a total of 13 kings in Micah’s career. It was a time of great uncertainty and instability. No doubt many people felt that events were spinning out of control, or that someone was plotting in secret to bring about Israel’s downfall. The times were not terribly different from our own day in that respect. And yet here is God with a message to one of his people: "Don’t be like these people, living in fear and blaming everything on conspiracies."
I am not trying to tell you that there is no such thing as conspiracy. That would be foolish. Certainly real conspiracies exist. One need only to look back a few years to September 11, 2001 to see the proof of that. But a proper view of conspiracies, a right philosophy of history, has to be informed by the Scriptures.
One of the most memorable stories in the Scriptures is that of Daniel and the lion’s den in Daniel 6. In this story, a hundred government officials were jealous of Daniel’s favour with King Darius, and so they manipulated the king into writing a law that specifically singled Daniel out. I take this story to be a good model of the biblical view of conspiracies, over and against the conspiracy theory view.
First, it says that real conspiracies are plotted in secret. This goes without saying; after all, the conspirators’ plan would have gone nowhere if they had been open about it! This is really the only thing that real conspiracies and conspiracy theory have in common. Whereas conspiracy theory deals in plots that stay under wraps, seemingly forever, real conspiracies don’t stay secret. At some point the conspirators must "go public." The plot against Daniel depended upon the conspirators making themselves known to the king.
The goal of real conspiracies is generally immediate. Daniel’s enemies wanted him gone now, not years from now. Conspirators want instant gratification. They are not idealists who are working for some sort of "new world order" that might occur centuries or even millennia after the plot is begun!
That brings me to a related point: real conspirators act out of selfishness. Daniel’s rivals were motivated by jealousy. So were Joseph’s brothers when they conspired to sell him into slavery. The Jews who plotted the death of Christ feared for their power. But in conspiracy theory, the conspirators are always driven by some sort of altruistic idealism - they don’t seek their own advantage, but they are supposedly working toward some glorious future that they will likely never see in their lifetimes.
Finally, real conspiracies are often not as successful. The Babylonian officials who hated Daniel didn’t manage to get rid of him. In fact, the king realized that he was being used to destroy his friend and, after God spared Daniel’s life in the lion’s den, Darius used that very punishment to turn the tables on all the conspirators. In conspiracy theory, on the other hand, the grand conspiracy is said to be so successful and so well planned that the lack of evidence for their existence is taken as "proof" of how successful they were! But I am not aware of a single successful conspiracy in the Bible in which the conspirators got away with it completely. If the conspiracy theorists are right, then why does the Bible paint a completely different, even inaccurate, view of things? Obviously, it isn’t the Bible that is wrong.
The conspiracy theorists have this much right: History is not accidental. It is being worked out behind the scenes - but not by whom they think. Turning again to Daniel, we find Daniel praying in response to another crisis that could have cost him his life, and we read, in Daniel 2:19-21:
Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding. . . .
So it is God, not men, that decides who rules the nations. Even a pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar, was forced to acknowledge this in order that God would restore his sanity after taking it away:
I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever,
whose dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom is from generation to generation:
And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing:
and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven,
and among the inhabitants of the earth:
and none can stay his hand,
or say unto him, What doest thou? (Dan. 4:34-35)
And this admission, that God does as he pleases, comes from the man who was at one time the most powerful and proud man on earth.
The whole book of Daniel has this one theme that recurs, over and over again: Despite present appearances, God is in control. Here is one more quotation from this book, just to drive the point home:
Seventy weeks are determined
upon thy people and upon thy holy city,
to finish the transgression,
and to make an end of sins,
and to make reconciliation for iniquity,
and to bring in everlasting righteousness,
and to seal up the vision and prophecy,
and to anoint the most Holy. (Dan. 9:24)
Whatever interpretation of the prophecy of seventy weeks you happen to hold (and there are several), this much is undeniable: God’s prophetic pronouncements are not mere predictions. God knows the future, because God has decreed the future - determined what the future will be. The sovereignty of God in history is a recurring theme all the way through the Bible, especially the Old Testament.
So again, by way of contrast: Conspiracy theory claims that it is shadow governments of shadowy men who decide who gets to rule. But the Bible is clear that it is God’s decision. Conspiracy theory claims that these manipulations go on in secret (indeed, that it’s one of the best-kept secrets in history!). But God works in the open. Amos 3:7 says, "Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets." While the Bible doesn’t tell us everything about God’s plan, we can catch a glimpse of it through the prophets. And all we need to do is skip to the back of the book, and we find out that we win!
And so we come to the second part of our text:
Say ye not, A confederacy,
to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy;
neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid.
Sanctify the LORD of hosts himself;
and let him be your fear,
and let him be your dread. (Isa. 8:12-13)
We have no need to be afraid of men who have no real control over history. But we should be ` in awe of the awesome God who has determined the path of history from beginning to end.
To sum up the fundamental differences, then, between the conspiratorial and Biblical views of the world:
Conspiracy theory is based on fear of powerful men. Listen to radio programs like Texe Marrs, Alex Jones, and so forth, and you are left with the impression that the next Presidential election is going to be the last, and that whoever gets elected is going to turn the United States into a dictatorship. It’s fear-based: fear of the government, fear of the rich and powerful, fear of the police, whomever.
But the biblical view is based not on fear, but on confidence. 2 Tim. 3:7 says that "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Thirteen times in the New Testament, someone is told to "fear not." We need not fear for the future because God cares about us; we know it will work out for the best because Rom. 8:28 tells us that "all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose."
Conspiracy theory says that conspiracies are the driving force of history. As I said earlier, nothing seems ever to happen by accident. When the plane John F. Kennedy Jr. was piloting crashed, killing him and his passengers, assassination theories started circulating within 24 hours. Apparently important or famous people never have bad luck or make mistakes - especially Kennedies! It’s all masterminded.
But if a grand conspiracy drives history, why is the Bible completely silent about it? No, the Bible puts conspiracies in their proper place: they are an occasional spectacle in history.
Conspiracy theory says that despite Biblical assurances, men, or Satan, are in control. To read or hear some conspiracy theorists, you would think that we were caught in a downward spiral so steep that even God couldn’t pull us out.
But the story of Daniel says differently. Every chapter virtually screams out that despite present appearances, God is in control.
Lastly, our only hope according to the conspirinauts seems to be escape. For some, this seems to mean that God will rescue his people at the last minute via the Rapture, and the best thing we can do is to sit tight and wait, and not try to avoid the inevitable in the meantime. For others, escape means buying provisions and ammunition and heading for the mountains to wait it out.
But both of these attitudes are defeatist. Our real hope is in victory. God wins! 1 John 5:4 says that if we are born of God, our faith shall overcome the world - not be overcome by it.
I’d like to close with two applications. The first of these is a warning, the second an encouragement.
Read the story of Balaam (Num. 22-24) or the book of Ezra. Both of those lessons stress the importance of not being like the world or opposed to God, and that warning applies just as much here as there. If you hear someone argue a view of things that seems to encourage you to fear some man or group of men, or some new law, or some new technology, he is not arguing biblically. He is imitating the world. Those outside of Christ have a good reason to fear; they have no hope. We do not.
For the LORD spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A confederacy [conspiracy], to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. (Isaiah 8:11-12)
But you also have to consider the source of these stories. Sadly, many "Christian" conspiracy theories, especially those dealing with money or banking, have their roots in the same sort of anti-Semitic scapegoating that fueled the Holocaust. Christian conspiracy theorists might talk about the "world bankers" or "global elite" instead of "the Jew," but the stories are the same. Hating Jews is the world’s way of thinking, not the Christian’s. "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God," (Rom 12:2).
But here’s the good news. We have no reason to be afraid. Romans 8:28 says that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." We can’t tell the whole future. We don’t know what God has in store for us, whether it will be easy living or trial. But we can be confident of this: Whatever plan God has for the rest of this age, it is for our good. Why be afraid? History will wrap up in the best way possible. Christ wins. Praise God!
A few days ago on the Fightin' Fundamentalist Forum, a poster named "dt" posted an editorial that essentially called the conventional view of the 9/11 attacks a wacko conspiracy theory, in so many words. This commentator, who has apparently never heard of Ockham's Razor, essentially contends that it strains credulity more to believe that 19 Islamic terrorists of Middle Eastern origin successfully hijacked four commercial airliners and then succeeded in flying three of them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, than to believe they did so with the help of the U.S. government to further its own agenda.
It often happens on the FFF that someone will post something completely off-the wall just to see what kind of response it gets, or to stimulate discussion. It soon became quite apparent that this was not the case with "dt" - in fact, he quite seriously actually believed this. And so the thread actually became an entertaining afternoon's diversion.
I am a big fan of conspiracy theories - not that I tend to believe in them myself - and so I was aware that there were those factions on both the extreme right and left that believed the 9/11 attacks were engineered by the powers-that-be. Until Thursday, however, I had not been aware that any of the conspirinauts had actually attempted to hypothesize on how this was to be carried out. However, "dt" posted links to two sites that explain how the U.S. government faked the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
The first of these, authored by an Eric Bart, which deals primarily with the Pentagon attack, is the briefer of the two, so I will summarize it: What hit the Pentagon, the author argues, was not American Airlines flight 77, but a "plane bomb" disguised as American Airlines flight 77. This flying bomb was piloted by remote control, perhaps by someone in a military C-130 plane that was seen in the vicinity at the time. The bomb contained shaped charges that detonated a moment before impact, thus blasting a hole in the wall and allowing the "plane" to penetrate.
This author says, as supporting evidence for his hypothesis:
If the whole plane entered the building, we should see a hole in the front wall the size of the plane, like in the WTC attacks. We don't see this plane print on the Pentagon front wall, neither in the reconstructed photo above, neither in the original photos below.
Our original commentator agrees, saying: "I would have thought that the observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science." Well, OK, except that an airplane isn't a solid object, it's a big hollow tube. Sure, if I poke my finger into a stick of butter it will leave a finger-shaped hole. But if I poke a stick of butter into my hand, it doesn't leave a butter-shaped hole. You don't have to be an architect or a civil engineer to deduce that a big hollow tube travelling at 450 mph might penetrate the thin shell of a skyscraper, but that a big hollow tube travelling at 350 mph might not penetrate the newly renovated, reinforced heavy walls of a low-rise office building. In fact, at the point of collision the plane might come out the worse in the deal.
Anyway, the whole "plane bomb" scenario raises the question: If flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon (and presumably Flights 11 and 93 didn't hit the Twin Towers either), then where are the planes and passengers? Eric Bart doesn't provide an answer. Others step in to tie up this loose end: Dick Eastman speculates that Flight 77 actually overflew the Pentagon at the moment of impact but made a getaway obscured behind the fireball from the explosion. The plane then blended into the traffic landing at Reagan International. (It's a good thing there were no eyewitnesses standing on the other side of the crash site, or this trick wouldn't have worked so well, the Curmudgeon notes sarcastically.) But it doesn't answer the question, does it? What happened to the plane?
"dt" suggests:
I believe Flight 77 was forced to land by the government along with another of the doomed flights that day, and transferred onto the second flight, which then would have headed for PA or the WTC. With Flight 77 grounded the government sent their drone or C-130 to the Pentagon.
Another one of his sources agrees: "Eastman's account of the fate of Flight 77 also implicates the government, by suggesting that most of the crew and passengers were either insiders in this deadly covert operation, or were silenced after being taken into custody.
Yes, you read that right, folks. The passengers were in on the plot! "Killtown" actually tries to argue that the passenger list of the plane was unusual, noting the numbers of defense/aerospace contractors, military personnel, and of course Barbara Olson, the wife of the Solicitor General. This circumstantial evidence is tenuous enough as it is, but when he even tries, vaguely, to implicate the half-dozen children and schoolteachers on a field trip, you just gotta laugh.
Other, contradictory theories suggest that the four planes were forced to land at a nearby military base under false pretenses, and all the passengers were transferred to Flight 175, which then flew off to Shanksville where it crashed (or, more likely, was shot down) or into one of the WTC towers, thus wrapping up the fates of the passengers in a neat little package.
Except that it still doesn't explain what happened to Flight 77! What happened to the plane?
I could go on.
But suffice it to say that this kind of theorizing violates Ockham's Razor in the worst possible way. Ockham's Razor, for those not familiar with the jargon of logic and critical thinking, is a logical axiom that says, more or less, when you have multiple theories to explain the a given phenomenon, the preferred theory is the simplest one that accounts for all the data. Judge for yourself which one of these theories Ockham would have preferred:
The important thing to note is that there is not a scrap of evidence for any of this. It is all theory - bad post hoc theory at that - based on secondhand evidence and media reports. Conspiracy theorists are like armchair quarterbacks: having never done any of the firsthand research or investigation, having presented no primary evidence of their own, they simply concoct a version of events that fits their own particular presuppositions: in this case, the presupposition that nothing on the scale of 9/11 could possibly have happened without the willing complicity of the U.S. government or the mysterious powers-that-be that run things from the shadows, be it the Illuminati, "international bankers," Skull and Bones, or what have you.
Moreover it is sad that so many Christians are caught up in this kind of conspiratorial thinking, because at its core, a conspiratorial worldview is anti-Biblical and anti-Christian. Some years ago, well before the 9/11 attacks, I presented a Sunday school lesson on this topic, which I will soon prepare and post. Stay tuned.
Truth be told, David was being perfectly honest (and probably a lot nicer than I would have been after being asked such a blatantly emotionally loaded question). Read through the comments; in this corner, David Heddle and the exposition of Scripture; in that corner, a whole blort of Catholics repeating the same old rhetoric.
My friend Cindy Swanson keeps bugging me to read her blog. Little does she know I drop in a couple times a week.
Cindy is a news person at a Christian radio station in Rockford, Illinois. This makes her an incorrigible namedropper since she manages to wangle interviews with all sorts of celebrities. (Have I mentioned recently that I once had lunch with J. I. Packer?)
And now . . . this, courtesy of the Beeb:
Nine new church products, including a karaoke hymn player, will be battling it out for a new award at an exhibition in Devon.
A solar-powered electronic Bible and a JCUK (Jesus Christ, United King) T-shirt are among the products pitching to win the first My Church Needs One of Those (McNoot) Award to be held in Exeter on 5 February. . . .
Church leaders hope the new ideas will appeal to the younger generation and reverse the steep decline in church attendances.
Yeah, nothing says "Generation Y" quite like a karaoke hymn player.
Unless indicated otherwise, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Created September 4, 2003 by Scott McClare.
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