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ed-stetzer-backtracks-on-chinese-propaganda-he-was-pushing

Ed Stetzer backtracks on Chinese propaganda he was pushing

It seems as though Big Eva is not letting the coronavirus panic go to waste to push a certain agenda. One item of this agenda would be a further push for open borders illegal immigration policies. Another response is to run interference for the Chinese. In a high profile article in the notoriously downhill Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer from a standpoint of contempt for you spouted Chinese propaganda to shame Christians into thinking what he thinks. If you are unaware, Ed Stetzer is a Big Eva figure who’s pinballed around the industry failing upwards. Read about the fall of Lifeway here. He is also JD Greear’s choice to head the SBC Resolutions Committee in a probable effort to stifle the campaign to rescind Resolution 9.

The original post on Christianity Today has been cached online and that is what will be used in reference. The article begins with an appeal to legacy media claiming that Christians disproportionately fall for fake news, to the detriment of witness.

Second, God has not called us to be easily fooled. Gullibility is not a Christian virtue, and we ought not to act like that. Believing and sharing Covid-19 conspiracies does not honor the Lord.

First of all, this is not theologically correct. For instance, the JFK Assassination was a conspiracy, in that multiple people were involved to commit an act for a purpose. However unknown the people and purposes behind the assassination does not dismiss the overall conspiratorial nature of the event. This ultimately believes that ANY conspiracy theory is false. While there are a number of ridiculous conspiracies, some of which would undermine someone’s witness like flat earth, others such as the murder of Jeffrey Epstein and the murder of Philip Haney are more credible than alternative than official narratives. Ed Stetzer believes in the same “trusted news sources” that brought you Russian collusion and Ukrainian collusion conspiracy theories. He also trusts the government at their word, which might as well plaster “gullibility” on one’s forehead in these times. The government flip flopped on whether masks are helpful or not as well as promoted bogus models used to enact draconian measures.

So who is the fool in coronavirus? The person that believes the government and the media or the person who doesn’t? Stetzer continues:

Now the data is saying, “Here we go again.”

In a study just published by Pew, almost 30 percent of Americans believe the theory that is “almost certainly not true” about the novel coronavirus being concocted in a lab. The largest group in the study to affirm this was conservative Republicans at about four in ten (39 percent). That group would also be the most religious group.

https://twitter.com/Pastor_Gabe/status/1250831033601327107?s=20

This excerpt was scrubbed after publish as reports pour in about the source of the virus being from the labs in Wuhan. So, according to Ed Stetzer on the 15th, we are being gullible that believing that a virus could have escaped from a level four laboratory in ground zero that was testing coronaviruses? He published this after Tucker Carlson had an extremely viral segment about a study that showed that the intermediate horseshoe bat, the host animal, is not indigenous to the Wuhan province, nor were these bats sold at the wet markets. While it could be considered a stretch that this was a staged biological attack on the rest of the world, it is not a stretch to suggest that the virus escaped Wuhan’s notorious virus labs. After further reporting supported this claim over bat soup, Stetzer or Christianity Today deleted the paragraph that suggested this theory was nothing more than a baseless conspiracy theory and that you are gullible and worse (see below) for believing it.

I understand the mistrust many Christians have toward the media and government. But this mistrust too often leads believers not to be more discerning but instead to become more gullible to any alternative narrative. God’s Word calls us to be “wise, not unwise” (Eph. 5:16).

If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, I can’t stop you. But if you do, what will you do when you start believing that the vaccine is also part of this conspiracy?

Now I’ve seen some far out there theories about Bill Gates and the vaccine, and it mostly stems from Fauci and Gates suggesting that we need a vaccine to return to normal, that this vaccine that may or may not come is mankind’s salvation. Talks of immunity papers feed these theories.

Similarly, we see some Christian leaders hype up the idea that you are being persecuted if you ignore the current guidelines and try to gather a thousand people together for worship in a global pandemic. We saw a few pastors making a spectacle of themselves at Easter when we should be making much of Jesus.

Are there some issues— yes, some mayors and a governor or two have done and said foolish things. Those are already being pushed back in the courts. This is not a deep state conspiracy. It’s what happens in a global crisis, and we will make it through just fine.

Ed Stetzer now targets pastors who faithfully preached the Word in person on Easter as though they are villains who want attention. The tyranny underway is to grand for Stetzer to bypass, so he justifies it by saying the courts will prevail, which they do not have a track record of doing.

In a recent press briefing, White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx acknowledged conspiracy theories on both sides related to death numbers, some saying the numbers are inflated while others believe the numbers have been underreported.

Stetzer tosses out a olive branch of nonpartisanship before going after only right-wing theories by name, and never mentioning Russian collusion. Note: the task force admitted that the death counts are over over-inflated; how is this a conspiracy theory? And since we don’t know when coronavirus got here, we can never truly have an accurate count. So there is both underreporting, in that previous deaths were not counted and overreporting in which deaths are being documented as COVID-19 outside of normal coronary practices.

He concludes by calling the spreading of conspiracy theories a sin:

Most importantly, you damage your witness and that of your church when you focus on unproven theories and speculation more than the good news we’ve been commanded by our Lord to proclaim.

This amateur level of analysis and lack of independent thinking demonstrates that Stetzer is throwing a lot of phrases and talking points around without considering their meaning or coherency, thus demonstrating an amateur level of analysis and lack of independent thinking.

But let’s do a self awareness check. This article was updated removing the segment above about the Pew survey in favor of this new segment:

Yet now we are dealing with a new flood of conspiracy theories. Look at the list on Wikipedia, or just search for yourself using a few keywords. They are as diverse as they are strange.

After posting discredited Chinese propaganda to hide the true source of the SARS 2 COVID-19, Christianity Today makes a change to the article with no explanation. Ed Stetzer was spreading the discredited Chinese conspiracy theory that the virus did not come from a lab, but removed this after new evidence. The man who charged false witness against you for believing in the most plausible source of the virus just slandered the brethren.

This is what contempt looks like from religious elites. Thankfully, there are faithful Christians who caught Ed Stetzer, so that we may judge him by the measure in which he judges others and call him to repent.

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One Response

  1. Conspiracy and government have gone hand in hand since the beginning of time. Et ut brute? Zero Hedge was permanently kicked off twitter for an article suggesting it came from the Wuhan lab! It seems to me some ‘mainstream’ voices in Christianity are just angling to keep their twitter accounts. Sad!

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