By Theodore Shoebat & Walid Shoebat
Major American pastor, Andy Stanley, recently said that Christians “are not required to obey any of the commandments found in the first part of their Bibles”. In an article written by Stanley, the pastor effectively argues for indifference for the removal of the Ten Commandments from courthouses because, as he affirms, they don’t apply to Christians:
“You’ve heard the story before: A group of Christians puts up a monument of the Ten Commandments in a public space or on government property.
Someone says it violates the separation of church and state.
The Christians say taking it down would violate their freedom of speech.
There’s some back and forth in court and both sides say some not-so-great things about the other.
Rinse and repeat.
…
But if we’re going to create a monument to stand as a testament to our faith, shouldn’t it at least be a monument of something that actually applies to us?”
Stanley goes on to make the usual statement for this very typical and insidious worldview: “Jesus issued his new commandment as a replacement for everything in the existing list. Including the big ten.” He then promotes his ideology of lawlessness and says:
“Participants in the new covenant (that’s Christians) are not required to obey any of the commandments found in the first part of their Bibles.”
Stanley goes so far as to say that the Christians of ancient times actually “kidnapped” the Jewish scriptures and used them as their own, as if the writings of the holy prophets are not foundational to the Christian spirit, as if the Christian faith is a hijacking of Judaism and not the continuation of Judaism (something that Jews today like to argue). As Stanley the heretic wrote:
“The blended model began as early as the second century when church leaders essentially kidnapped the Jewish Scriptures and claimed them as their own. In the fourth century, following the legalization of Christian worship under Constantine, church officials began leveraging old covenant concepts to validate the creation of an imperial form of church.”
I find it fascinating that Andy Stanley, an Evangelical pastor, sounds more like a Jew arguing against Christianity than he does anything else. Reading through Stanley’s article, we can tell it took him like 10 minutes (15 minutes tops) to write this article. There is no serious argument in his writing and it looks like he just wrote it to cause a stir. In a short blurb of an article, Stanley makes his war against the Ten Commandments and even bashes entire historical epochs that takes a lifetime to research and study — the Crusades and the Inquisition. “Imagine trying to leverage the Sermon on the Mount to start an inquisition,” writes Stanley, “launch a crusade, or incite a pogrom against Jews.”
While Stanley wants to scream antisemitism, the epitome of hatred against Jews is a rejection of the Old Testament. Stanley’s theology is closer to that of the Nazis. Hence why Alfred Rosenberg, the main ideologue of the Nazi Party, wanted a Germany that “denies the arrogant Roman Centre just as it does the Jerusalem Old Testament.” The hatred for the Catholic Church and the Old Testament is paralleled to Andy’s own worldview of antagonism towards the Ten Commandments and his odious view of the Catholic Church, as is expressed through his disapproval of Constantine.
Andy has also gone full Cathar and said that “Wherever and whenever the old was blended with the new, unchristian behavior and attitudes ensued.” Essentially he is saying that we should throw out the Old Testament because it is violent. This is the heresy of the Cathars and the Albigensians who believed in removing the Old Testament and only read from the New Testament. The Albigensians of Southern France, even though they did what Andy wants us to do and only read the New Testament, ended up doing some pretty horrific things. In one Catholic monastery there was found a hundred and fifty people mutilated by the Cathars. Their hands and feet were cut off, their eyes torn out; women were found with their breasts lacerated and their thumbs amputated. (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, 219, 530, 582w)
A rejection of the Old Testament is a rejection of not only the Bible, but of the entire orchestra of harmony that is the Church; the Church who, through inspiration of the Spirit, compiled the New Testament and comprehended its texts by gazing upon its prose through the illuminating rays of the verses of those prophets who inscribed what they, with their human intellects, were stirred to write the voice of Heaven; prophets who wrote that whisper of the divine, or that roaring torrent of prophecy; prophets who warned of darkness; prophets who inspired zeal, prophets despised by mobs possessed with that same insidious spirit that posses the souls of those heretics today who tell us to reject the holy texts.
The modern day heretic never fails us in how predictable he is. We anticipate his strikes, and overall we foresee his most expected war on law. While Stanley says that the Ten Commandments were replaced by one new law: “you must love one another”, St. Paul declares that the Ten Commandments are summarized by the law of love:
“You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:8-9)
So when these heretics like Stanley try to deceive you into thinking that the Ten Commandments were replaced by “love,” understand that the Commandments were not replaced, but are summed up into one law, and that is the law of love. “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”” (Galatians 5:14)
But then the heretics will argue and say, ‘But Paul writes that “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” (Galatians 5:18)’ Yes, and that is because within the Spirit there is the law and one who is in the Spirit will follow it not by force, but by one’s own volition. The Apostle is here speaking within the beautiful inspiration of the Spirit that emanated words such as: “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). The Apostle, whose flesh suffered in the striving for ascending illumination, wrote in that same Spirit that inspired the prose of the Psalmist:
“The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom,
And his tongue talks of justice.
The law of his God is in his heart;
None of his steps shall slide.” (Psalm 37:30-31)
The law is in the heart, and is not followed under the duress of the sword, but in the zeal of love. “My son,” writes Solomon the Wise, “do not forget my law, But let your heart keep my commands” (Proverbs 3:1).
As God declared: “Listen to Me, you who know righteousness,You people in whose heart is My law” (Isaiah 51:7). The righteous are governed by the law of love in their hearts, which sums up the Ten Commandments. But the wicked do not have the law in their hearts, and so have to be governed by the law through force and fear. Hence why St. Paul writes:
But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust. (1 Timothy 1:8-11)
So the law through the fear of sword and coercion still applies, but on the lawless and not the lawful. The righteous are righteous not because they obey law for fear of force, but out of love and compassion. If one does not kill solely because he is afraid of prison and capital punishment, he is not righteous but merely controlled.
But if someone does not believe in killing because it is an evil and unjust act, then that is a righteous disposition. The latter here is following the law, but in the governance of love lodged within his heart — in which lies the commandments — knowing full well that if he were to commit such transgressions that he would never be able to sleep with peace of mind.
But as for those whose consciences are not governed by love, then the law of force stands, and its application is legitimate, hence why we still have prisons. The imposing of the law against murder or thievery is still present and necessary because we still have thieves and murderers, but for those who hate these sinister actions, they have the law within their hearts and there is no need for compulsion. Of course, one who lives in the Spirit will not need force or the fear of punishment to be kept in check; and of course, those with no respect for the law are the reason why the imposing of law is necessary. Lawful people do not need the imposing of the law because they have a love for the law. It is the lawless who need the sword to be kept in order.
The Law of God declares that sodomites are worthy of death, hence why St. Paul speaks of “men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due” (Romans 1:28) as “deserving of death” (Romans 1:32).
But the heretic will scream and holler about how ‘we are not under the law!’ To this I would say, the righteous are not under the force of the law because they have the law embroidered on their hearts, but the sodomites are in need of the law on account of their lawlessness. Hence why the Apostle writes: “we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless” (1 Timothy 1:8), and in this verse St. Paul specifies that the law is for sodomites. Thus what was written by the inspired Moses still is upheld in the New Covenant: “If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:13) St. Paul also speaks of kidnappers; this would include those who steal people for ransoms or sex trafficking. Does not the law apply to such wicked people? Or if someone were to say that kidnappers are worthy of death, would these heretics scream about not being under the law?
In the heart of all this heretical drivel is lawlessness. Lawlessness does not necessarily have to have an ugly and chaotic appearance; it can be cloaked with the trappings of religion; lawlessness can even masquerade itself with the face of law. And this is the most dangerous form of lawlessness because, knowing our human nature, we were not designed for anarchy, but order, and so the devil with all of his wiles deceives us with an appearance of religion, order and law, while entrenching and possessing us with a spirit of lawlessness.These have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof.
Andy Stanley claims to be for God and for liberty, but in reality is for Satan and for tyranny.
To present yourself as being for something as a cover for an agenda that is against that something, is indeed a strategy, a very old one. The 18th century French priest, Augustin Barruel, wrote the most exhaustive investigation on the history of the ideology behind the French Revolution. In his investigation Barruel described how the ideologues who were working to overthrow the Church would actually put up a show of piety as a way to cover their insidious objectives. And they would even use members of the clergy to do this.
For example, Barruel writes about how the elites in France who supported the anti-Christian conspiracy “pretended to strike” against the ideology, “while they secretly supported the sophistical tribe. They forbade Voltaire to enter Paris, while in amazement he receives a scroll of the king, confirming his pension”. The Enlightenment philosopher, Condorcet, wrote about how government officials would pay both the anti-Christian philosopher and the Christian apologist who opposed him as a way to play both sides:
“Often a government would reward the philosopher with one hand, whilst with the other it would pay his slanderer; would proscribe him, while it was proud of the soil that had given him birth; punished him for his opinions, but would have blushed not to have partaken of them.”
Enlightenment writers would express respect for religion but then they would write against it. There was the cover, and then behind the cover the true motivation. Hence Barruel writes: “They hypocritically utter some few religious truths, and print the contrary of what they believed on Christianity, but only the better to cover the Sophisms which they printed against us.”
To help carry out their conspiracy and to desensitize people to anti-Christian ideas, these 18th century sophisters produced their Encyclopedia.This was an efficient tool for them because it would allow them to cover and reveal, and by this we mean to deceive the reader with a feigned piety and then, in other places, to elusively express insidious ideas the purpose of which is to sow seeds of doubt in the heart of the reader or listener. In a word, sophistry.
While the main contriver of the Encyclopedia were Diderot and D’Alembert, there was a member of the clergy who was used to write for it so as to give an appearance of religious respect. Diderot collaborated with Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, a man who was expelled from the Order of the Jesuits on account of impiety. Another one of these was the Abbe Morellet who was very close to D’Alembert and Diderot who nicknamed him “Abbe mord-les” (Father Bite ’em) because he attacked the Church — under the pretense of attacking the Inquisition, like Andy Stanley — with ferocity.
The way these sophisters would conduct their strategy was done in a way in which the devil was in the details. On a topic of Catholic religion, the encyclopedia would give the reader the orthodox and theologically sound explanation. But in the end of the elucidation, they would add, See the art. PREJUDICE, or SUPERSTITION, or FANATICISM, and it was in these that they would sow the seeds of doubt in the reader. They would express orthodox opinions, and then in other articles mix the water with their poison. (See A. Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, part 1, chs. iv – v, trans. Jaki)
Today this strategy is still being used. We see it with people like Michael Voris who, while presenting himself as the most ardent supporter of Catholic doctrine in a media outlet, will collaborate with a sodomite and pedophile advocate, Milo Yiannopoulis. On the official website of Voris’ station, Church Militant, it reads that: “Although Church Militant does not endorse everything Yiannopoulis says and does, we are on the same page with regard to the unchanging teachings of the Church and opposing Catholics who would try to change Christ’s teachings to make them more comfortable.”
Notice the deception. At the beginning they say that they do “not endorse” everything Milo says, but then they say that they are in agreement with the Church’s teachings. They conceal and then reveal, covering their antichrist ways with disagreement, and then revealing it with affirmation, so that when someone exposes them they can simply argue that they ‘do not agree with everything.’ I confronted Voris about this and told him about Milo’s push for pedophilia, homosexuality and eugenics. Did Voris care? No. His studio’s support for Milo is still on the website for Church Militant.
Voris is of the same diabolical underworld, covering up for Sodom while playing a show of piety and militancy, being of the same spirit as the Jewish pharisees and scribes, expressing rage to the Roman occupation when it gave them power, and then crying “We have no king but Caesar!” when it meant murdering Christ. Ambiguity is the refuge of scoundrels. We see this with Andy Stanley when he once said regarding the evils of Sodom:
“There is not consensus in this room when it comes to same-sex attraction. There is not consensus in this room when it comes to gay marriage … We just can’t continue to look into the filter of our politics at our spirituality. Its got to be the other way around … and specifically when it comes to this issue.”
The statement is ambiguous; it takes no emphatic side. This is because Stanley is following the strategy of conceal and reveal, concealing any emphatic affirmation, but slightly revealing some opinion just enough not to appear deceptive, but not enough to pin point what he really believes. Its the trick of ambiguity.
The push to end the Old Testament is the continuation of the war waged by every heretic who has ever existed, the war against Law. From the Cathars who believed that the God of the Old Testament was evil and violent, to the Nazis who wanted to strip the Bible of the Old Testament because it was Jewish, all of these ideas are merely arms of the same tyrant, the devil, who leads his human soldiers to attack those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 12:17)
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