seventh-day adventists and conspiracy theories video

Today i uploaded a new video on YouTube asking my fellow Seventh-day Adventists who are into conspiracy theories to stop, repent, and get out of that business altogether.
http://youtu.be/IdPzLgPyqW8

On the day the President of the United States takes the oath of office facing the pagan phallic symbol in Washington, “they” will start spraying chemtrails from it to fluoridate the water so the black helicopters can be directed to the hidden concentration camps on the “moon” set where the black pope will appear as an alien lizard shape-shifter, declare martial law, and prepare the way for the Bilderbergers to take all our money and then manipulate HAARP to erase all these dastardly things from our collective memory. BWAHAHA! I’ve got it all figured out, and you sheeple who believe whatever the mass media tells you are doomed, doomed!!! And by the way, send me a check or credit card number so i can get this vital information out to as many of God’s remnant people as possible!
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This video is to call fellow Seventh-day Adventists who believe in conspiracy theories to repent and turn back to spreading the Three Angels’ Messages.
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One common thread running thru all conspiracy theories is the idea that a hidden, super-powerful force that we can do nothing about is working to destroy us all. In that respect it is in accord with the SDA worldview of a Great Controversy Between Christ and His Angels and Satan and His Angels, the title of a book God had his messenger Ellen White write in 1858. Yes! there IS a big battle going on mostly unseen. This is what we Adventists should be focusing on – how to press forward the battle by spreading the truth as it is in Jesus. By focusing on these other things we are in fact helping the dark side in its battle with Christ.

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I’ve always read voraciously, and realized from an early age that you can’t believe everything you see or hear. But the idea of “wordly” conspiracy theories being a focus of fellow Seventh-day Adventist believers didn’t appear on my radar until i started receiving material from Bob Trefz in the 1980s. He used lots of Ellen White quotes which gave his message a certain legitimacy. Many things he wrote about – especially how the Catholic church developed Natural Law and how that will probably be used to justify persecution of the saints at the end time were very insightful. So i became a believer in conspiracy theories, and no doubt there WAS some truth to the stories of chips and helicopters and new currency plans etc.
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What was the end result? First, let me introduce a little of the scale of the problem in God’s remnant church today. For some reason, this phenomenon is much more pronounced among us “conservative” SDAs than among the liberals, but it crosses all lines.
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There are quite a few pastors/leaders among us SDAs who are actively promoting conspiracy theories. Retired pastor Bill Hughes thinks the Jesuits are behind every bad thing in history. Pr. Hal Mayer of Keep the Faith along with David Gates and others like to focus on economic and government-related subjects. Walter Veith promotes anti-government conspiracies.
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Some specific examples?
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Bill Hughes says the Civil War was caused by the Jesuits, but Ellen White attributes it to slavery. He also says the Titanic was sunk by Jesuits and other very strange things. Supposedly the Jesuits control the whole world, yet do it all in “secret”. But they aren’t secret enough, as this retired pastor has uncovered their dastardly deeds.
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Pr. Hal Mayer of Keep the Faith Ministry told his flock breathlessly in 2008 that a closed meeting of Congress was held to vote on a Sunday Law which would be signed into law in the presence of the pope when he came to America in April. This conspiracy theory got so much traction that Bill Knott wrote an article in the Adventist Review to refute it: http://archives.adventistreview.org/article/1770/archives/issue-2008-1510/those-conspiracy-theories
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David Gates says in his “Converging Crises” video that gas prices can only go up, that America went bankrupt in 1971, and that basically he could (sarcastically) “give Cheney a contract to help him and Bush and other things”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIsBrDzyOz0
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Walter Veith has many conspiracy theories too, including a video promoting the idea that the real Saddam Hussein died in 1999 and his double was set up by the CIA, to allow the US military to overrun his country! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8StKKPWejM
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I agree that many of our SDA pastors today are as the Holy Spirit described in 1871 “Sleeping preachers preaching to people who are asleep!” (Testimony for the Church, no.18)
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While my heart is with those who are trying to sound the alarm, when a false alarm is sounded, the result is worse than no alarm at all.
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SG Vol.2 regarding fanaticism: “It seemed so cruel that the cause of Christ should be injured by injudicious men. They were not only ruining their own souls, but placing a stigma upon the cause not easily removed. And Satan loved to have it so. It suited him well to see the truth handled by unskillful workmen; to have it mixed with error, and then altogether trampled in the dust. He looked with triumph upon the confused, scattered state of God’s children.”
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It is true that there are conspiracies. There are secret societies. There are evil groups of people in this world. SOP Vol.4 tells us who the chief conspiracist is – Satan: “For thousands of years this chief of conspiracy has palmed off falsehood for truth.”
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But the conspiracy theories that i’m addressing are of a different order.
1. They are not verifiable
2. They make God’s people look ridiculous
3. Many of them are against the govt. which is going contrary to the Bible
4. Thinking people rightly reject the conspiracy theories, so they reject the Three Angels’ Messages too
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1. Conspiracy theory believers invariably refer to “they”. “They” is the cause of all the bad stuff, and never get any credit for the good stuff. Pictures are shown, like recently in a campmeeting, of nozzles and airplanes and then containers, and that is the proof given for the govt. spraying chemtrails on its people! When pressed for verifiable evidence, there invariably isn’t any.
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2. When i first found out about Bill Hughes’ “Secret Terrorists” book several years ago, i started searching for it on the net, and the first hit was a site that that not only supported his theories, it supported a huge hole in the center of the earth where aliens come out once every thousand years or so, etc. etc!! How ridiculous that makes us SDAs look!
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3. The Bible says to “honor the king”, and “pray for those in authority”. Teachers of these theories are directly fulfilling Bible prophecy of “But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous [are they], selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.” (2Pet. 2:10) and “But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.” (Jude 10)
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4. People who are honestly thinking and searching for truth are rightly repulsed by strange theories, anti-govt. talk that can’t be proven, and also by the attitude of most of the proponents of conspiracy theories, so they then lump the truth we have with this, and throw it all out together.
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On Sep. 23rd, 2010, the US delegation to the United Nations walked out of a “conspiracy theory” speech by Iranian president Ahmadinejad. He said: “That a “powerful and complex terrorist group” penetrated U.S. intelligence and defenses.” and “That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.”
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This is what normal, intelligent, God-fearing people should do, not listen to conspiracy nonsense that twists the facts and pours contempt on the govt. which God has set up. But instead, we have high-profile SDA preachers saying similar things to what Ahmadinejad said! We shouldn’t be surprised if in the future we will be made to give account for these hard speeches against the govt.
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Some people misunderstand what i’m saying, and tell me “So you just believe what you’re told.” No, i use my God-given brain to reason, and because i refuse to believe hearsay and stories unless there is good evidence (preferably firsthand), why am i being looked down on? Even if the stories are true – what have they got to do with the Three Angels’ Messages?
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Don’t we have truths to tell people that lead to salvation? How does telling people that the govt. is spraying, baking, fooling, radiating, devaluating, inflating, whatever, lead anyone to eternal life? Can’t the 3 Angels’ Messages stand on their own? or are they too tame for us who have heard them all our lives, so we train our ears to itch for every new story? I’ve even seen pastors showing a 9/11 troofer movie for prayer meeting in the jungles of Borneo, and you know what made the young men in the back excited – all the supposed Satanic symbols on the US dollar bill!!
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Many point to the back of the US dollar bill as proof of a conspiracy. I thot so too, as the pyramid with the eye over it looks spooky, but decided to research into its origins. The facts surprised me, as i saw that the original drawing was of the children of Israel leaving Egypt with the all-seeing eye of God watching over them!! It had to be simplified because of space constraints, but instead of it being something promoting evil, it is promoting a very good thing! http://greatseal.com/
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Fortunately God led me totally out of this stuff after reading a Bob Trefz article where he advocated buying guns and running for the hills. I thank God so much for the timing, because soon after that was the Waco incident, where the government did make some terrible mistakes, but still, it was not some conspiracy plot.
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So what was the end result of my believing conspiracy theories for around 5 years around 1990?
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1. distrust of authority figures
2. secrecy
3. apathy (disempowerment) because everything is controlled by the “elite” so i can’t do anything about it anyway
4. a desire for forbidden knowledge
5. a tendency to blindly believe those who “tickled” my ears, and reject all others
6. the worst of all? pride, because i know something most other people don’t, so they are stupid sheeple.
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Are these the fruits of the Spirit? Where’s the love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, and faith? Are we becoming more like the Jesus seen in the Bible, or further away from him for believing these theories?
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A Br. Shaw sent me an unsolicited personal story about his experience with conspiracy theories: “The whole bulk of our ministry has been using the New World Order and the Jesuits, etc… to try to wake people up, to try to show them their need of Christ, etc…and friends we have watched the fruits of this kind of ministry over the past 4-5 years. Literally there have been no fruits.”
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He continues: “I have spent tons and tons of hours over the past 4-5 years reading and pouring over anti-catholic material and Jesuit Conspiracy books, etc… all in attempt to show people from History all these terrible things that Rome has done. However, not only have I wasted a lot of the Lords money, I have wasted a lot of personal preparation time for allowing the Lord to teach me from His Word and allow Him to Perfect my Character and prepare to meet Jesus.”
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and “enough information is in the Great Controversy Book to deal with all of that….that is all the information the people need to know about this. They need to know Jesus Christ, not about the Jesuits, NWO, Black Pope, etc…Jesus Christ and His love for them! The gift of God’s Son. That is what changed my life and that is the only thing that can change another’s!”
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Please notice that i understand that we, as Seventh-day Adventists, spread the message that there will be a Sunday law enacted at the end times. Some people in the world may call this a “conspiracy theory”.
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But the difference is, is that this is fully supported from the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy, whereas the conspiracy theories i’m talking about here are of the speculative, secretive, variety that usually have to do with rebelling against leaders and governments, something we are definitely NOT supposed to do, as inspired word tells us how we will actually close doors to witness to the people for believing these speculative theories.
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1888 Messages: Let none feel it his duty to make speeches in the presence of our own people, or of our enemies, that will arouse their combativeness and they take your words and construe them in such a way that you are charged with being rebellious to the government, for this will close the door of access to the people.
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The Southern Missionary 1904-03-01: They (God’s people) are to purify themselves even as Christ is pure. When they understand fully the meaning of the prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John, they will be so closely united with Christ that there will be no place in their minds for the speculative theories that spring out of nothingness and end in nothingness.
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May we each read John 17 contemplatively today, and reflect deeply on what it means to be one with Christ, and one with each other, and leave all conspiracy theories behind.