In the last two or three weeks I’ve read several online articles from Evangelicals (whatever that is) basically condemning the idea of thinking about historical and current events through the prism of conspiracy. The accusation is brought in some of these condemning articles that people embrace conspiracy because they want to feel superior because they think they know the inside truth and others do not. Other accusations against conspiracy minded people include that such people are just paranoid, that they are distrustful, and that they are a little bit loony (tin foil hats).
Of course the only other option to a conspiracy view of events is what we might call the coincidence view of events. This view, quite without saying it explicitly, follows Henry Ford’s view that “history is just one damn thing after another.” The coincidence view of history sees historical events as spontaneous and ungoverned by any human mind.
Here we find a chief difference between the coincidental view of historical events and the conspiracy view of historical events. In the coincidental view of historical events God is sovereign and directs history but that quite apart from any human agency planning also via man’s secondary freedom. On the other hand in the conspiracy view of history God is still held as sovereign directing the affairs of mankind but He often does so via the agency of fallen men using their secondary freedom to try and thwart God’s intent for mankind. We see this clearly in Scripture in the account of Joseph where his wicked brothers conspired to be done with Joseph, all the while filling out God’s purposes,
Genesis 50:20 As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good, in order to accomplish a day like this— to preserve the lives of many people.
We see this clearly in Scripture in the account of the Lord Jesus Christ where his wicked brothers conspired to be done with Jesus, all the while filling out God’s purposes,
Acts 2:23 He (Jesus) was handed over by God’s set plan and foreknowledge, and you, by the hands of the lawless, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross.
In both cases we see that conspiracy was God’s means to accomplish God’s ends. God, being sovereign, used the agency of conspiring wicked men to achieve His ends despite the stated goals of the wicked in their conspiring. Neither the case of Joseph, nor the case of Jesus happened apart from conspiracy.
We find in Acts 23 an explicit reference to men conspiring,
12 The next morning some Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul.
Conspiracies exist and the more wicked an age one lives in the more one is going to routinely see wicked men conspiring together to make something happen to an end that is illegal, unjust, and immoral. It is the way wicked men roll. Wicked men do not act out in the open in order to advance their skulduggery. Men love darkness because their deeds are evil and so they conspire. This is what the Psalmist declared in Psalm 2,
1 Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
When we get outside of Scripture we find good history books confirming this reality. For example whether you consider the work of Nesta Webster on the French Revolution or Anthony Sutton on the Russian Revolution, or M. Stanton Evans on the Maoist Revolution one thing that becomes instantly clear is that mega historical events do not happen apart from Conspiracy. This is not a matter of tin foil hat stuff. It is a matter of historical record. Read Webster. Read Sutton. Read Evans. If you want to read more of a macro approach to the Conspiratorial reality of Revolution read Billington’s “Fire in the Minds of Men.” It’s all there. Major Historical events do not happen apart from successful conspiracy happening.
Contra Rushdoony (who was resolute in dismissing conspiracy) to recognize the hands of Conspiracy behind Revolution is not to deny the Sovereignty of God. The conspirators are conspiring under God’s Sovereignty. God is not absent in ruling over their wickedness for His own ends. To recognize conspiracy does not necessarily move one into the camp of, “Man makes history while God just watches.” To recognize conspiracy is to be a student of God’s history and that by rejecting the court historians who craft history so as to leave God completely out of consideration.
Allow me to submit that if we are to be “the Sons of Issachar who know the times and what should be done,” we have to be conspiracy theorists about events around us. This is especially true when living in the age, such as we are, of the falling and rising of Imperial standards.
So, I’m a proud member of the “Conspiracy club.” I mean as we have seen Jesus would not have gone to the Cross except for God’s sovereignty over the conspiratorial plotting that manipulated Jesus to be put on the Cross. Everything about the Cross of Christ, according to the Gospel record, was moved by conspiracy — the shadowy working of unseen forces moving behind the scenes to bring about an end that is other than the reasons that are publicly being given for that end.
45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”
49 Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
51 He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. 53 So from that day on they plotted to take his life.
They “plotted to take his life.” Plotted is a synonym for “conspired.” They gathered as an illegal force to make something happen that was contrary to God’s law.
Now, lets consider the dangers of conspiracy thinking when it comes to historical events.
First, let us admit that conspiracy thinking can slip into “tin foil hat” theories. This is why we must seek to be skeptics in our examination of history. We must not give to quick of a credence to every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike. It only makes both us and the very real reality of conspiracy easily dismissed.
Second, if we are too preoccupied with conspiracy theory we are apt to forget that God is ruling through it all. If we forget that we become idolaters believing that the conspiracies of men are stronger than God’s laughter.
The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
5 He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
We must, at the same time, both seek to be God’s agents against wickedness while at the same time not forgetting that whatever ongoing wickedness we are considering God remains so sovereign that he laughs at those who conspire against Him. People may well be intending their actions for our hurt but God will use it for our good and so we should laugh with God. If we don’t realize God is sovereign we are likely to be consumed with our studies and so crash into despair.
The third danger here is that we may well forget to spend our energy doing the things God has called us to. Like Gollum we can so much time looking into secrets that we forget to look up at the sun. We can spend so much time seeking to uncover what is unjust that we forget to be busy about doing what is just.
A fourth danger is that we as Christ’s body can become divided over our differing conclusions on these conspiratorial matters. As such when we discuss these matters we must be generous with one another when our conclusions differ and we must be ready to learn from one another.
But what of the dangers of not thinking conspiratorially?
1.) If we don’t think conspiratorially we place ourselves firmly in the hands of the enemy camp. If we believe every narrative that we are told by the conspirators, often via their media outlets, we are in essence denying God’s providence, which repeatedly unfolds in the context of conspiracy, and we do so in favor of the lying conspirators.
For example, the Gospels are the red pill exposing the conspiracy of those who killed Christ. If we are not ready to believe the red pilling gospels then all we have left is to follow the narrative of Christ’s conspiring enemies.
It is the same in other historical events. It is either search out God’s providence or it is to believe the conspiring enemy.
2.) If we don’t think conspiratorially then our embrace of the doctrine of total depravity can easily become an abstraction.
Christians who refuse to even consider to look at historical events as conspiracy driven make me wonder if they really believe in Total Depravity.
Of course, you remember that the Biblical doctrine of Total depravity teaches that Fallen man can only sin all the time. All he can do is sin. Because he has a sin nature all that proceeds forth from him are sinful actions. Scripture repeatedly teaches this,
Isaiah 53:6 – All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way
Job 5:7 Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.
And as Reformed people we memorize this and we put it into our catechisms but when we deny conspiracy we seem to contradict ourselves. When we deny conspiracy it seems as if we are saying to ourselves, “men could never be that wicked.” And yet that is exactly what total depravity teaches in terms of its implication. Man is that wicked. If man was wicked enough to conspire so as to hoist the innocent and perfect lamb of God on a Cross man is wicked enough to conspire to any end you can imagine.
Conspire to run world-wide pedophilia rings? Absolutely
Conspire to run a global psy-ops pandemic program so as to condition people around the world? Absolutely
Conspire to kill off billions of people in order to save the planet? Absolutely
|Conspire to seek via tran-humanism to meld humans and machines? Absolutely
Conspire to poison our food supply? Absolutely
Conspiring to needle us up with genetic material from aborted fetuses? Absolutely
Conspire to mainstream sodomy and Trans-genderism as consistent with God’s Word? Absolutely
To deny all this and other conspiring as a possibility strikes me as being a working out denial of total depravity. Man is born wicked and without checks on that wickedness man will conspire to do wickedness beyond what many of us refuse to consider as possible.
We live in a wicked wicked world and we have to put off our blinders of what magnificently rich and wicked men can conspire in order to follow their God…Lucifer.
If we are to be a people who take seriously the idea of the man’s total depravity then it strikes me that we need to consider the very real possibility that men conspire to these very wicked ends.
Conclusion
Having examined all this in my way of thinking there is no ability to be a wise Christian apart from engaging in and looking for the conspiracies around us. We are told in Eph. 5:11 that we are tasked with exposing unfruitful works of darkness.
11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
One of the chief unfruitful works of darkness that needs exposed in wicked conspiracy.
It is as simple as this… if you don’t believe in conspiracies, then historically speaking at least, you are going against the grain of what we see in Scripture and history.
