On the Sunday prior to the Supreme Court finding technicality in the Biden “vaccine” requirement, both through OSHA and CMS, Christian Post decided to run an article about how Tony Evans of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas talked about the jab mandates. Naturally, because he is a high-profile megachurch pastor, Christian Post instinctively wrote a piece of substandard journalism on his sermon. Before tackling that which Evans said, it is important to address Christian Post’s coverage of the issue.
Writing for them was Nicole Alcindor, who typically writes on Christian figures rather than issues. In her coverage of Evans, Alcindor devotes roughly one third of her article to propagating CDC and Big Pharma taking points. Because Evans even brushed on the topic of the jabs, Alcindor, whether out of volition or dictate from above, places disclosures to tout the narrative. She proceeds to write the CDC mantra that the “CDC maintains on its website that COVID-19 vaccines are ‘safe and effective’” before proceeding to cite WebMD.
It is a broken record, but ever necessary to continue saying that the jabs are neither safe, nor effective. Furthermore, that Alcindor cites WebMD is another sign of media spin undergone by the Christian Post. On WebMD’s FAQ page regarding the safety and efficacy of the Covid jabs, the word “Myocarditis” is nowhere to be found. Needless to say, they are unreliable on this topic. Moreover, for any normal prescription drug or disease, they will list with bullet points the associated side effects. For example, Adderall.
In general, Christian Post is better than its peers of The Gospel Coalition or Christianity Today, but nonetheless, they are absent on salient issues like VAERS reporting and Ivermectin while pushing the vaccines and celebrity Christian culture. Perhaps given the comments on this article, they should be more substantive because their comment hawks are hateful towards the unvaccinated.
What Tony Evans Actually Said
What makes Alcindor’s article malicious and even more lazy is that Evans brushes on vaccine mandates for maybe three minutes (if that) in a ninety-minute church service. Evans basically totes the prevailing “pro-vaccine, anti-mandate” mantra that is all too common in our political discourse, which is a losing position that vaccinated people argue on behalf of the unjabbed. In short, it is gatekeeping to a larger conversation on their inefficacy and the deaths, really murder, associated with them. Nothing he said would be remotely remarkable and he is “mainstream” in his talking point. The real story is that Tony Evans declared that it should be a choice whether to jab or not to jab, but in his hypocrisy, does not apply the freedom of choice to masking at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, which is in Texas of all places.
Tony Evans was more passing than anything in his use of 2 Chronicles 16:12. The full context of 2 Chronicles 16:10-13 reads:
Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him for this. And Asa oppressed some of the people at the same time. Now, the acts of Asa from first to last, behold, they are written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel. In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa became diseased in his feet. His disease was severe, yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians. So Asa slept with his fathers, having died in the forty-first year of his reign.
Evans emphasizes that King Asa relied on medicine and not God, to which he proceeds to make the claim that we should have a choice whether to take the vaccine or not before referencing Romans 14. He also contends that God is in control and has the power to stop this “mama” whenever He wants to.
Personally, there is a lot of double-speak in Evans’s words. King Asa is not the example I would choose for a “pro-vaccine, anti-mandate” argument, rather the opposite. Evans contradicts the textual condemnation of King Asa’s reliance on physicians by proceeding to praise the vaccines and choice in therapeutics.
Furthermore while Evans is technically correct about the sovereignty of God, his words obfuscate the situation we are in, sort of like the word’s of Job’s friends. Professing to be wise, we became fools. Humans tried to play god with viruses, and suffered the consequences as God gave them over to their depraved minds (Romans 1:28).
King Asa’s trust in man’s solutions, which may have involved pagan remedies, is a stark warning to rely not on Man, but on God alone in circumstances small and large. In King Asa’s final years, he stole from God’s temple to pay a pagan king to deliver him, he imprisoned God’s messengers, and he relied on Man cure him of disease. To think, Asa was one of the better kings of Judah, who previously turned to God for deliverance from the Zerah the Ethiopian. When threatened from Israel, a weaker enemy, he turned from God. At best, he panicked. In face of reproach, he did not discontinue his sinful pattern. How much more can be said of America’s response to the pandemic, which it created?
This is not the message Tony Evans delivers, as Christian Post made click-bait from a passing comment. However, it is difficult to substantiate oneself as being against mandates when imposing them upon his congregants. Instead of being complicit in the dehumanizing evils and idolatries of mask mandates, he should follow his scriptural application of Romans 14.
2 Responses
I don’t agree with either you or your brother’s opinions on this sermon. You are try to shame people who are pro vaccine / masks in the exact same way the extreme vaccers/maskers do to the unmasks. It stops all dialogue and leaves no opportunity for grace.
It is disappointing Tony Evans used a prooftext from the Bible that should lead us to conclude the opposite of what he seemingly intended to teach. It takes only a little background knowledge from the scriptures to see that God is saying Asa should have sought God and inquired of God concerning his illness. Performing a search of the text of the Bible on seeking and inquiring of God will prove this. The text Evans chose indicates we are not to seek physicians, or at least not to seek only physicians, but to seek God when there is an illness. From other Biblical texts we know it is ok to seek a physician, like Luke, so the final conclusion must be we are not to seek physicians alone, but first seek God. Isn’t Jesus the Great Physician? And let’s not forget the influence of the Holy Spirit as we gather facts about the illness. The final verse implies Asa died at least as a partial result of not seeking God. Mankind has made science, medicine and doctors idols, when all of them are errant, and some doctors are malicious, contrary to the Hippocratic oath. The pride of many in those fields and inability to admit weakness or lack of knowledge adds to the problem. But in regard to science, It is only the rare “scientific principle”, proved by the scientific method, where there is only one variable in a controlled environment, and where the result consistently repeats, that might be called inerrant. Everything else is a “theory” not proven by the scientific method. And we must remember God has the power to, and often will, override a scientific principle. This may be called a “miracle”.