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Satan did not mind surrendering his authority to Jesus. He didn’t mind a universe without pornography or Islam or abortion or nuclear weaponry. Satan did not mind Judeo-Christian values. He wasn’t worried about “revival” or “getting back to God.” What he opposes was the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected for the sins of the world.
In the past 6 months or so I, and with me millions of other Christians, have turned to Glenn Beck’s The Blaze channel to circumvent the MSM and get a glimpse of the (other half of the) truth. Beck has shown himself to be a courageous reporter of news that did not make, or was disputed by, the CNN’s of this world. He provided insights that were missing elsewhere, in places where Republicans, Trump, conservatism and Christianity had become four letter words. I often find myself agreeing with him and admire him for his passion and courage.
There is something about Beck though. For a long time I could not quite put my finger on it why Beck somehow seemed like the real deal, but not quite. Then I found out: Beck is a Mormon. Mormons believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three separate gods. And they do not consider the Bible to be the only word of God. In LDS teaching, all the Father’s children (including humans) possess the same potential to become gods (like the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost) since they are of the same species.
Besides, LDS has for more than a century had an extremely dicey doctrine on race. It is only since 1978 that black Mormons can become priests. Before that it was believed that black people could not go to the Celestial Kingdom (heaven). And even as recently as 2016 almost two-thirds of Mormons surveyed thought that it had been God’s will that African people were excluded from priesthood.
So, Mormons are not Christians. Yet a substantial part of Christian America and the “rest of the West” seems to have been led to believe that Beck could do their bidding, because what he said seemed close enough to what they wanted to hear.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that Beck is one of the bad guys. His investigative skills and beneficial work for the conservative cause still qualify him as a natural enemy of the extreme left, and on account of that, in our camp when it comes to the political realms.
But we should not forget that Glenn Beck is on a mission. He wants us to understand that Mormons are Christians too. His goal is to make Mormonism and its beliefs acceptable to the Christian community. His goal is to bring Mormonism into Orthodoxy.
This means is that when it comes to spiritual and, yes, race issues, we should remember where he is coming from. Please note, I am not accusing him of racism. However, we must not forget that, ultimately, he is not one of us in the spiritual sense.
So there you have it. There are differences between being a conservative and being a Christian. As the first few lines in italic above this article indicate, just being against abortion and pornography and Islam does not worry Satan. And it does not make you a Child of God.
I bumped into an interesting article by Dr. Russell More who explains this much more eloquently. Moore is Dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
GOD, THE GOSPEL, AND GLENN BECK
A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital.
The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that.
If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But it’s not. It’s from this week’s headlines. And it is a scandal.
Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, of course, is that Mormon at the center of all this. Beck isn’t the problem. He’s an entrepreneur, he’s brilliant, and, hats off to him, he knows his market. Latter-day Saints have every right to speak, with full religious liberty, in the public square. I’m quite willing to work with Mormons on various issues, as citizens working for the common good. What concerns me here is not what this says about Beck or the “Tea Party” or any other entertainment or political figure. What concerns me is about what this says about the Christian churches in the United States.
It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined “revival” and “turning America back to God” that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.
Rather than cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes at odds with our political allies), we’ve relied on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads. We’ve tolerated heresy and buffoonery in our leadership as long as with it there is sufficient political “conservatism” and a sufficient commercial venue to sell our books and products.
Too often, and for too long, American “Christianity” has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it. There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah.
Leaders will always be tempted to bypass the problem behind the problems: captivity to sin, bondage to the accusations of the demonic powers, the sentence of death. That’s why so many of our Christian superstars smile at crowds of thousands, reassuring them that they don’t like to talk about sin. That’s why other Christian celebrities are seen to be courageous for fighting their culture wars, while they carefully leave out the sins most likely to be endemic to the people paying the bills in their movements.
Where there is no gospel, something else will fill the void: therapy, consumerism, racial or class resentment, utopian politics, crazy conspiracy theories of the left, crazy conspiracy theories of the right; anything will do. The prophet Isaiah warned us of such conspiracies replacing the Word of God centuries ago (Is. 8:12–20). As long as the Serpent’s voice is heard, “You shall not surely die,” the powers are comfortable.
This is, of course, not new. Our Lord Jesus faced this test when Satan took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth, and their glory. Satan did not mind surrendering his authority to Jesus. He didn’t mind a universe without pornography or Islam or abortion or nuclear weaponry. Satan did not mind Judeo-Christian values. He wasn’t worried about “revival” or “getting back to God.” What he opposes was the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected for the sins of the world.
We used to sing that old gospel song, “I will cling to an old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a crown.” The scandalous scene at the Lincoln Memorial indicates that many of us want to exchange it in too soon. To Jesus, Satan offered power and glory. To us, all he needs offer is celebrity and attention.
Mormonism and Mammonism are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They offer another Lord Jesus than the One offered in the Scriptures and Christian tradition, and another way to approach him. An embrace of these tragic new vehicles for the old Gnostic heresy is unloving to our Mormon friends and secularist neighbors, and to the rest of the watching world. Any “revival” that is possible without the Lord Jesus Christ is a “revival” of a different kind of spirit than the Spirit of Christ (1 Jn. 4:1-3).
The answer to this scandal isn’t a retreat, as some would have it, to an allegedly apolitical isolation. Such attempts lead us right back here, in spades, to a hyper-political wasteland. If the churches are not forming consciences, consciences will be formed by the status quo, including whatever demagogues can yell the loudest or cry the hardest. The answer isn’t a narrowing sectarianism, retreating further and further into our enclaves. The answer includes local churches that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and disciple their congregations to know the difference between the kingdom of God and the latest political whim.
It’s sad to see so many Christians confusing Mormon politics or American nationalism with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, don’t get me wrong, I’m not pessimistic. Jesus will build his church, and he will build it on the gospel. He doesn’t need American Christianity to do it. Vibrant, loving, orthodox Christianity will flourish, perhaps among the poor of Haiti or the persecuted of Sudan or the outlawed of China, but it will flourish.
And there will be a new generation, in America and elsewhere, who will be ready for a gospel that is more than just Fox News at prayer.