Conspiracy: A Biblical View, by Gary North - EntreWave

REPLACING EVIL WITH GOODPeople."12. The State must protect inefficient producers from freemarket competition.13. The State must supervise education.14. We need to construct a one-State world in order toachieve peace, freedom, and prosperity.When a majority of voters accept a majority of these premises, thetriumph of one or another conspiratorial group is assured. It is bymeans of these man-worshipping, State-worshipping ideas thatconspirators enlarge the power of civil government, and it is by thepower of civil government that they rule. To attempt to remove theruling conspiracies without first removing most people's confidence inthese false ideas is about as useful an effort as a condemned man'sswitching from hanging to the firing squad. Jesus described the resultsof such a self-defeating "housecleaning":When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walkeththrough dry places, seeking rest, and finding none. Thenhe saith, I will return into my house from whence I cameout; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, andgarnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself sevenother spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter inand dwell there .... (Matthew 12:43-45a).The owner of the house is worse off than he was when he started. Thisis the legacy of all political revolutions that are not grounded inbiblical principles of social order. Men "throw the rascals out," only tofind that a worse gang of rascals has replaced the first one.The Gnostic HeresyThe ancient gnostics believed that man is saved by secret knowledge.They believed that man needs to be liberated from this world of matterand elevated, through secret initiation and certain ascetic techniques,into the realm of spirit. Certain groups of contemporary "New Age"humanists hold a very similar viewpoint. Unfortunately, there are a lotof Christians and far too many "we must reveal the conspiracy"fanatics who have adopted a variation of this ancient heresy. Theirhttp://freebooks.commentary.net/freebooks/docs/html/gnco/html/8.htm (2 of 15) [5/26/2000 1:48:23 PM]