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167. 1/1/22 AI and Man’s Tech-Based Quest to Become God
168. 2/1/22 A Study in Tyrants – Hitler & his Minions, Part 1
169. 4/1/22 A Study in Tyrants – Hitler & his Minions, Part 2
170. 5/1/22 How are American churches doing?

 

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167. AI and Man’s Tech-Based Quest to Become God
January 1, 2022

Considerable efforts are underway in the quest to upgrade humans, aimed at superintelligence – first – but ultimately immortality and godhood.  Those on this high tech quest imagine that billions of years of random evolutionary development have produced the human brain, which will now take over and complete the journey by design.  With AGI – Artificial General Intelligence – man hopes to create computer gods in our own image and then, hopefully, to meld with them to refashion the universe as we see fit.

This is the opposite of the Biblical narrative, of course, the narrative that corresponds to the reality in which we live, that God created man in His own image, to serve Him within a world under His dominion.  The superintelligence that is intrinsically God’s already existed.  “He is not an End Product.  He is the Producer.”

So writes John Lennox in his 2020 book, 2084:  Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.  I highly recommend the book.  I would read anything by John Lennox, a professor (emeritus) of mathematics at Oxford and a philosopher of science, among other talents.

AGI is to be contrasted with narrow AI, which includes systems that autonomously drive cars, or diagnose illnesses, that enhance data analysis or translate languages on the fly, or accelerate innovation in many other conventional technologies.  Most famously, or intrusively, is the development of AI for digital assistants like Alexa and Siri, plus the AI to control the smart devices in our homes, and to annoy us with ads for things we must be thinking of buying.  One of my sons recently muttered aloud something favorable about a particular product and his smart TV quickly began displaying ads for that product.  Lennox:  “Such tracking algorithms are pursuing us all the time.”

Lennox cites Kalev Leetaru:  “At the end of the day the deep learning systems are less ‘AI’ than they are fancy pattern extractors . . . they are able to blindly identify the underlying patterns in their training data and apply those patterns as-is to future data.  They cannot reason . . . or generalize to higher order abstractions.”

But the dream of AGI is to build a machine that surpasses human intelligence, not just in number crunching, which computers have done for a very long time, but in reasoning, decision making, and even creativity – like composing music or writing novels.

All the AI that exists today is of the narrow variety, a deliberately programmed competence only in a specific area, like Deep Blue, IBM’s world chess champion computer.  But Deep Blue does not know how to play checkers or drive a car.

Lennox cites Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky who comment that a bee is competent to build hives and a beaver builds dams, but a bee cannot build dams, nor a beaver a hive.  Yet humans can watch and learn to do both, manifesting talents that are unique among biological lifeforms.  What humans do includes learning, planning, and reasoning.

I would add that image-of-God human beings also care, possess a moral conscience, can love by choice, hope for an imagined future (both temporal and eternal), and enjoy beauty and other intangibles.  Human life goes infinitely far beyond the drudging vacuousness of a materialistic worldview, in which humans, rocks, asteroids, and stars are merely clumps of particles interacting via the laws of physics, “laws” that have no sensible origin or purpose.  Purpose – that’s another quality that humans embrace that cannot be programmed into a computer.

Computer Engineering Professor Danny Crookes of Queens U. comments that “so-called ‘deep learning’ is now all the rage in AI research, but there’s nothing particularly new in it:  it’s just that the computing power now exists to run the multi-layer (deep) neural networks which have existed on paper for decades.”  In short, we have bigger computers now.

Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles (discoverer of the synapse) wishes  that AI researchers  would simply “admit that there are fundamental differences between machine intelligence and human intelligence – differences that cannot be overcome by any amount of research.”  Most researchers will at least admit that they are a long way from creating human-like intelligence.

Nevertheless, many dream of a day when AGI will be here and will produce a utopian socialist paradise.  Lennox playfully cites one of my favorite philosophers, Yogi Berra:  “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Ray Kurzweil, well known for his book The Singularity is Near, believes that within just a few decades, AI robots will exceed humans in intelligence and capabilities.  I like to imagine the challenge this way . . . when will a robot win the Grand Slam of tennis, the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open?  Winning a chess match, or even a Go match, is a very different challenge.  Or when will an AI create a scintillating stand-up comedy routine, or write poetry that brings tears, or devises a laboratory experiment to detect dark matter . . . without plagiarizing?

Some extrapolate from narrow AI, observing that we use tech to augment our senses and abilities now – VR glasses, smart phones, smart headphones, computer chips to overcome deafness.  How big is the extrapolation?  After all, evolutionists extrapolate from discovering some amino acids in a carefully designed chem lab experiment to declarations that all of the nanotechnology of life must therefore have arisen by chance.  (See my free ebook on Creation / Evolution in the bookstore on this site.)

In a 2018 TED talk, physicist Max Tegmark, president of the Future of Life Institute at MIT said, “In creating AI, we’re birthing a new form of life with unlimited potential for good or ill.”  On the pessimistic side, Rosalind Picard opined that all AI and machine learning algorithms are “no more alive than Microsoft Word.”

Vladimir Putin has thought a lot about AI.  Here’s one of his thoughts:  “Artificial Intelligence is the future not only for Russia but for all humankind.  It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict.  Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

The spirit of antichrist lusts after world rule.  The US and China strive to dominate the AI field.  China expects to win by 2030.  Lennox:  “President Emmanuel Macron wants to make France the AI capital of the world.”

What worldview drives the dream of AGI?  Physicist Sir John Polkinghorne writes, “If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points:  either the brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world.”  The first is atheism, as expressed by physicist Sean Carroll:  “We humans are blobs of organized mud, which through the impersonal workings of nature’s patterns have developed the capacity to contemplate and cherish and engage with the intimidating complexity of the world around us . . . The meaning we find in life is not transcendent.”

The second choice is, ultimately, Biblical Christianity.  There is no rational competitor – nothing in the same class.  (But you should read my essays on apologetics in the Evangelism section of this site.)  The two worldviews have very different perspectives on the nature of man, mind, and free will or, you could say, between man and machine, as Francis Schaeffer unpacked  extensively in his works.

This contrast comes out in Roger Epstein’s rejection of the idea that the human brain works like a computer:  “Computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world.  They really have physical memories.  They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms.  Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will.  Given this reality, why do so many scientists talk about our mental life as if we were computers?”

Lennox observes that an AI algorithm can find a cat on a YouTube video, yet the AI hardware / software has no concept of what a cat is.  Computers have no goals.  When Garry Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue, he was devastated.  But Deep Blue did not exult.

AIs are not persons.  The Biblical perspective is that our personhood derives from an immaterial soul / spirit that connects to our brain in ways beyond anything scientists have hoped to measure.  But after all, what scientists measure are quantities like length, mass, weight, charge, voltage, and wavelength.  It’s a limited set.

If we are not persons, then what?  Charles Darwin’s commitment to evolution gave him a “horrid doubt” that if man’s mind derived from the lower animals, then the convictions of man’s mind are not trustworthy.  A modern atheist philosopher, Thomas Nagel, admits, “Evolutionary naturalism implies that we should not take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism depends.”

If our thoughts are reduced to brain chemistry, then they are neither right nor wrong, says John Polkinghorne.  “They simply happen . . . rational discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses.  Quite frankly that cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so.”  In a materialistic worldview, reason – and man – are abolished.  Reason, independent of deterministic brain chemistry, is an axiomatically essential part of being human.

A Christian friend of ours was challenged recently by her atheist daughter that the choice is between science and Christianity.  That’s a false dichotomy, of course.  Lennox:  “Science and God mix very well.  It is science and atheism that do not mix.”  The scientific method involves reason, judgment, logic, decision-making, and a whole host of non-material qualities . . . that do not even exist in an atheistic worldview.

Lennox waxes eloquently that “this universe bears the signature of its superintelligent divine origins in its law-like behavior, in its rational intelligibility, in the information-rich macromolecules in our DNA, and in the informational structure of intricate physiological mechanisms responsible for, for example, the migration of birds and fish, and in our human capacities for thought and language, feelings and relationships.”  Information comes only from a mind.  In the list above, only God’s mind fits the pattern.

Thus, matter is derivative.  “Spirit is primary.  Matter does not generate spirit.”

AI attempts to mimic what the human mind does.  It is a different category to try to create a machine that feels like a man.  Consciousness in an insoluble barrier, because consciousness derives from our immaterial spirit.  The brightest scientists and engineers of the last century have made no progress – really, NONE – in trying to imagine a material basis for consciousness, for spirit.  They want to be God, but they’re not going to make it.

Dystopian visions of a future dominated by AI (even narrow AI to some extent) and robots include fears of a vast number of unemployed and unemployable people.  Since meaningful “work is part of our God-given significance as human beings,” any trend along these lines may collapse society, once the multitudes of of the un- or underemployed get fed up with the elite few they serve.  The slave-based economy of the Roman Empire was a major factor in its dissolution.

In the shorter term, there is hope that AI will provide companionship, lifelike robots.  This is already taking hold in Japan.   On the other hand, Joseph Weizenbaum  was unpopular with his MIT colleagues back in 1976 when he insisted, “To substitute a computer system for a human function that involves interpersonal respect, understanding, and love is simply obscene.”

Margaret Boden warns that “the fundamental difference between human and artificial intelligence (is that) one cares, the other does not.”

The simulated morality of AI systems invariably reflects the morality of the programmers.  One of my sons, a computer science professional, tells me that atheism is the dominant worldview of computer science majors.  Rosalind Picard at MIT warns, “The greater the freedom of a machine, the more it will need moral standards.”  In our current ultra-woke Marxist culture, what are the moral standards that would be embedded in AI systems?

Perhaps the most disturbing goals are those of the transhumanists, whose dream is not merely to improve, but to change human nature, thus the prefix trans.  What will define morality then?  But we’re already into moral issues.  With autonomous vehicles, how do you program the priorities for avoiding or minimizing damage to obstacles, property, animals, and people?  Do you avoid the child crossing the road at the expense of a dozen adults queued up at a bus stop?  What defines the principles upon which you base programming decisions?

In the bigger picture, AI advocates like Yuval Harari like to think of death as a merely technical problem that can be overcome with medical and robotic technologies.  In the Christian worldview, of course, death is a consequence of the Fall, a result of man’s willful (and ongoing) rebellion against his Creator.  Since God is there, tech won’t solve the problem.

The Chief Technologist, the Lord Jesus Christ, demonstrated victory over death with His resurrection.  It is Jesus who has the “tech” that we need.  We have to come to Him on His terms.

Lennox:  “The promises of AGI are firmly rooted in this world, and in that sense they are parochial and small compared with the mind-boggling implications of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.”  Indeed.

Lennox sees the hype of AI as one of the myriad distractions that blind the world and even Christians to the assured promise of the return of Jesus Christ, the 2^nd Coming.  Modern false Christendom denies the 2nd Coming along with its pre-events, the Rapture of the believers and the seven years of Tribulation judgments.  Rather, they imagine that through some combination of watered-down missionary work and social justice and charitable projects they will bring in a utopian Millennial Age through their own efforts.  The Marxist Utopia, on the other hand, “is to arise out of the workings of the inexorable laws of history.”  But “history has taught the hard lesson:  there is no pathway to paradise that bypasses the problem of human sin.”

Ironically, the word utopia means “no place.”

The ultimate upgrade for humanity will happen at the Lord’s return, specifically at the Rapture, when each of His blood-bought believers is granted a resurrection body that will live forever and without the maladies of our present frail existence.  Our bodies will be strong and perpetually healthy and our brains / minds will have perfect recall, wonderful creativity, and opportunities to explore . . . an entire universe, perhaps.  Lennox asks, “What might we then be allowed to create in the way of heavenly technology?”

Lennox interprets humanity’s efforts to achieve divinity as “overweening arrogance and a sense of superiority . . . that has produced something terrifyingly subhuman and bestial.”  The history of the last two centuries, in sync with the industrial and technological revolutions, has produced “a morass of violence and tyranny.”  Lennox cites Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951 – who was convinced that totalitarianism is rooted in a utopianism based on rejecting God and deifying man.  Examples include Nazism’s Auschwitz, the Soviet’s Treblinka and gulags, and Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.  More currently, we can point to the slave labor camps in China and North Korea, and the woke takeover of every institution in America.

Atheist / evolutionist Yuval Harari (Sapiens – 2015) wrote about the irresponsibility of us all, more powerful than ever with all of our technological advancements, “self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company . . . Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”  The woke crowd comes to mind here.  Even after taking all the reigns of power everywhere, are they satisfied?  They seem angrier than ever.  But of course the game isn’t over, is it?

The endpoint of totalitarianism, in which power is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, is to invest all authority into one ultimate man, “a Homo deus whose powers of rule and deception are derived from the most sinister of all superhuman intelligences – the Devil himself.”  It is the Antichrist’s rule that precipitates the Tribulation judgments.  Don’t be here then!

Our time on this Earth is short, whether by a natural death or by the coming Rapture.  Let’s make our days count.  Reach out this week with Gospel tracts.  Pray that God would jumpstart more believers into obeying the Great Commission.  Pray for boldness and then act on it.  Don’t quit.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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168. A Study in Tyrants – Hitler & his Minions, Part 1
February 1, 2022

Decisions made in the 1930s – mostly bad decisions – shaped the political structure of the world for the rest of the century, and right up to the present.  FDR’s socialist policies – doubling down on Hoover, his predecessor – brought on the Great Depression of the 1930s, and FDR’s political corruption established the pattern for today’s degenerate governance.  Communist tyrannies spawned by Lenin and Stalin, including that of Mao in China and the Kim family in North Korea, continue to crush liberty and endanger the world to this day.  Arguably the most famous tyrant, though – Adolf Hitler – rose to power in the 1930s and, for the twelve years he enjoyed that power, wreaked more havoc more quickly than anyone in history.

Stalin’s form of tyranny envisioned a global communist government, embracing the lie that the working class would rule – in fact, there is always a privileged elite.  Hitler’s form of tyranny envisioned national supremacy and racial hatred, with a privileged elite in charge.  For all the rhetoric that supposedly distinguishes communism from fascism, for the people there is scant difference.  Oppression is oppression.  The only practical differences are the excuses the elite ruling class uses to justify their tyranny.

I recently read a book that’s been gathering dust on my shelves for decades, unfortunately, The Nightmare Years:  1930 – 1940, by William L. Shirer, an American journalist who was on the ground in Europe, and especially in Germany when Hitler grabbed power and inflicted war on the world.

Shirer was there at the Nuremberg rallies when Hitler celebrated his freshly won political domination of Germany.  Shirer was there in Munich when the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, betrayed the Czechs.  Shirer was there for the Anschluss in Austria and he was there when Hitler sent his armies into Poland.  Shirer desperately tried to warn the West of the magnitude of the coming catastrophes through his articles and broadcasts.  It is interesting that in the jacket description of the book, the editor calls the rise of the Nazis “this demonic scourge.”  I believe he was quite literally correct.

The Nightmare Years is not a conventional history, so to speak, of the run-up to WW2, but rather a thoughtful journalist’s personal perceptions and agonies in the midst of events he witnessed.  One of the threads that I found most interesting was Shirer’s descriptions of Hitler and his inner circle.  In this essay I hope to pull some nuggets out for you on that thread.

I’ll give you one summary conclusion of mine up front.  Worldview matters.  Character matters.  When individuals with the worst possible character acquire awesome political power (and / or economic or media power), and when they are infused with the worst possible worldview – inspired and sustained by demonic influence, if not possession – then people will suffer on a massive scale.  The Nazis, the Communists, the modern Marxists who hold the reigns of power and influence in the world today . . . these are the nastiest people imaginable.  I’ve written essays previously for this site based on biographies of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.  This one is just a glimpse into Hitler and those close to him.

It is striking how these mega-tyrants share so many characteristics.  It is also instructive to recognize such characteristics in less notable tyrants or wannabe-tyrants in our world today, whether we find them at the national or local levels . . . or on a corporate board, or teaching a 3^rd grade class, for example.

Shirer published his book in 1984 and, looking back, he calls the 1930s the nightmare years.  His work in Asia and Europe shocked his sensibilities as he observed more and more revolutions, uprisings, a spreading intolerance, and explicit “violence, repression, aggression, and barbarism in supposedly civilized countries.  One watched it all leading inexorably toward war.”

Shirer was both fascinated and horrified as he watched Hitler crush both freedom and the human spirit in Germany, and persecute the Jews in preparation for the Holocaust.  What particularly shocked him was how most Germans of the time “joined joyously in this Nazi barbarism.”  Shirer sees all this as quite strange in that Germany is the country of Luther, Kant, Beethoven, Goethe, and other luminaries.  I would observe that genuine Christianity in Germany was rare in the 1930s.  It is not so difficult to crush the human spirit if that spirit is not bulwarked by the Holy Spirit in a born again individual.  Furthermore, it is vital for real Christians to sow Gospel seed along with salt and light into the culture by speaking out boldly.

Shirer and his wife arrived on assignment to Berlin in late August 1934, but he was quickly off to the annual Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, a week-long conclave for hundreds of thousands of uniformed party members, plus Hitler’s S.A. (brown-shirted street brawlers) and S.S. (the paramilitary group that came to dominate the police and the secret police).

This was Shirer’s initial first-hand view “of this strange man whom so many Germans hailed as a genius and a savior.”  Watching Hitler’s hold over these masses, Shirer began to understand “the reputed hold of this vulgar, uneducated, fanatically bigoted Austrian, who had risen from the gutters of Vienna, on a great people who over the centuries had contributed their considerable share to the civilization of the West.”

It had already been a bloody summer for Hitler, who consolidated power by murdering the leaders of the S.A., including its head who had been a close personal friend, and murdering several old political enemies, including the previous chancellor and his wife.  Then, with the death of the President, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler had control over both the government and was head of state, and so had become dictator-in-fact, with the legislature reduced to a rubber stamp.

Shirer observed that some of his old acquaintances, including ‘liberals,’ socialists, even Communists, and some pacifists, along with people who had a passion for freedom and the arts, “were full of the Nazi bug,” extolling “Germany’s destiny under the new Fuhrer,” liberated from the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles, a return to “the solid traditions of the old Germany, which respected authority.”  Shirer was depressed, yet did find those who saw the dangers . . . but these “were careful of what they said.  They did not trust you.”

Platoons of the brown-shirted S.A. and the black-coated S.S. were often seen marching through the streets.  Anyone on the sidewalk who did not pause to salute their flags might be beaten up on the spot.  This happened to a prominent American physician who was in Berlin to consult on lung diseases.  Additionally, Jews were favorite targets and Jewish shopkeepers began to suffer smashed windows and beatings, too.

Shirer first glimpsed Hitler as his motorcade passed by, the ‘great man’ standing in his car, accepting hysterical acclaim from the mob, “men, women, and children were so wild in their joy at seeing him, their faces contorted in a way I had never seen before, ever.”  Shirer had seen crowds worshiping Gandhi in India and Mussolini in Italy, but the German response was different:  “They were swaying back and forth, like the Holy Rollers I had once seen in the back country in Arkansas and Louisiana, with the same crazed expression on their faces . . . Several women swooned . . . some were trampled as the crowd surged toward the hotel to get a closer look at their Messiah.”

Shirer is precisely on track.  Hitler was certainly a foreshadowing of the Antichrist.  I believe that Satan works to have a budding Antichrist always available, not knowing when God will ‘pull the trigger’ for the last days with the Rapture.  Also, it is clear what the explanation has to be for the adulation afforded this man of “modest bearing, in his rather common look.”  It wasn’t Hitler himself.  It was supernatural, certainly a powerful demonic influence about him and working within the people around him.

This man of ordinary appearance, Shirer noted, had eyes that seemed “hypnotic.  Piercing.  Penetrating . . . What hit you at once was their power . . . They stared through you.”  Apparently, Hitler was especially fascinating to women.

Hitler’s speech to 30,000 in the huge Luitpold Hall promised a thousand-year reign for the Third Reich.  A Millennium!  I wonder where he got that idea.  Hitler’s speech was astonishingly moving and compelling to the German crowd.  Shirer found the words and the arguments ridiculous, but somehow his delivery was “uncanny . . . holding them completely in his spell . . . they easily believed anything he said.”

Shirer came to realize that “Hitler needed enemies to blame for all that had gone wrong before and for all that threatened the new, awakened, authoritarian Reich.”  Obvious enemies included Jews and Bolsheviks, but this was expanded in the years to follow to embrace Christians, gypsies, and anyone that did not conform.  Can Americans not see the same game plan unfolding today?  But the problems – and the solutions – are not political; they are spiritual.  And today’s Christians are far more interested in politics than they are in the Great Commission.  Shall God bless the political efforts of Christians who despise the Great Commission?

Shirer was amazed to see the Nazis dictate to society in every area, including what forms of art were acceptable.  Unacceptable art, whether sculpture or painting or music or literature or theater, was cancelled and the artists persecuted or prosecuted.  Stalin and Mao did the same.  America’s cancel culture is the beginning of the same game today.  In Shirer’s first year in Germany he saw thousands of works of art disappear from state-controlled museums.

One of the inner circle, Hermann Goering, acquired much of the forbidden art and admitted to Shirer that he sold some of it for foreign currency.  Later, during the war, “an entire freight train was commandeered to transport to Berlin his loot from the museums and private collections in Paris.”

Shirer confesses his surprise “that most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away,” that their culture was being destroyed, and their lives were suffering an ever-increasing regimentation.  What we would say today is that the German people under Hitler became woke.  In the beginning the majority of the populace didn’t see their own lives change much and were not concerned about what Hitler was doing to a few Communists, pacifists, defiant pastors, and to the Jews.  The vast majority of Germans were compliant, docile.  Sound familiar?

What mattered the most to his followers was that Hitler was destroying the past, with all of its disappointments.  In America’s case today, it’s a phony version of the past that is attacked, so that even statues of Lincoln, Washington, and Columbus are toppled, the Declaration and the Constitution are rejected, and above all Christian values, speech, and freedom are despised.  Where will it end?  In the rule of the Antichrist, of course.  I believe that Satan felt that his time was at hand in the 1930s.  That didn’t work out for him then, but the Adversary is relentless and the current trends look promising from his point of view.

Hitler bought a measure of support from German Catholics, one-third of the population, by his concordat with the Vatican, assuring the right of the RC Church to regulate its own affairs within Germany.  This move secured some cover abroad just as accounts of Jewish persecution were surfacing.  Nevertheless, he initiated a double-cross by forcing Catholic Youth League members into the Hitler Youth.  In the Hitler Youth, by age 10 a boy took the following oath:  “In the presence of this blood banner, which represents our Fuhrer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler.  I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.”  (Throw in the ‘God’ word just to make it seem OK.)  Ten million took that oath.

In the years to follow thousands of Catholic priests, nuns, and lay leaders were arrested on trumped-up charges, along with many non-compliant Protestants, as Hitler worked to force all Protestants into a State-controlled system.  Some of these Reich-friendly congregations and meetings seemed more pagan than Christian to Shirer.

Alternatively, the “Confessional Church” resisted Nazification, rejected the Nazi racial nonsense (which is now called Critical Race Theory), and lamented the attitudes of multitudes of ‘professing’ Christians who sat on the fence, waiting to see what would happen, hoping that it would happen to someone else and not to them.

Shirer attended Martin Niemoller’s church occasionally to observe this symbol of defiance to the regime.  Niemoller was a former U-boat captain, a patriotic nationalist, who drew a crowd of 20,000 worshipers at a rally in November 1934 to denounce Nazism.  Hitler had nothing but contempt for German Protestants.  He confided once, “You can do anything you want with them.  They will submit . . . They are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.”  Martin Bormann, an inner circle thug,  once told a Party meeting, “For us, National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.”  I appreciate his honesty.  Would that our current political leaders would admit as much about their Marxist / Wokist ideology.

In the next year the Gestapo arrested over 700 Confessional Church pastors.

Where are America’s Bible-believing prophets today?  As far as I can tell, the only issue that America’s churches fussed over during the pandemic was their ability to meet together weekly to put on their scripted services and take collections.  Why not be about the Great Commission?  Why not send your people out to share the Gospel and bring salvation and comfort to multitudes locked down and isolated from others?  Why not organize a plethora of small prayer meetings?  Why not train and trust your own people to grow and disciple one another, rather than beg them to watch your online streaming show?

Niemoller spoke boldly in public until he was arrested and, ultimately, sent to a concentration camp for seven years until he was liberated by American troops.  Shirer:  “As for the majority of Protestant pastors, they, like almost everyone in Germany, submitted in the face of Nazi pressure and terror.”

It was gut-wrenching, personally, for Shirer at times.  He had met a couple of young German women at embassy receptions; they were from aristocratic families, well-educated, and had been vocal in their loathing of the Nazis.  They were arrested, falsely accused of spying for Poland, and beheaded.

Hitler’s key positions were filled with the loyalists who had been with him from the beginning, most from his failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, and had suffered with him the wild ups and downs that culminated in the Party’s power grab in 1933.  Shirer got to know them because that was his job as a foreign correspondent.

Hermann Goering, Shirer assessed as a “fat, high-living, swashbuckling number-two man, Rudolf Hess as a “dim-witted deputy to the Fuhrer,” Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister as “a vain, pompous, incredibly stupid man,” and Heinrich Himmler, “who with his pince-nez looked like a harmless provincial schoolmaster but who in reality was the brutal dreaded chief of the S.S. and Gestapo, and, in the end, the exterminator of the Jews.”

Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi ‘philosopher,’ “was the most muddled of men:  tedious, dull, verbose and just plain stupid.”  Joseph Goebbels, the number-three man, was “the wily, glib, clubfooted minister of propaganda.”  Shirer found him as insufferable as Ribbentrop, sharing a tremendous arrogance, although Goebbels was not unintelligent.  Goebbels controlled the press and state-run radio, plus the Chamber of Culture, which ruled cultural activities across the nation, deciding what music was played (no Jewish composers), what books were published, what paintings and sculptures were displayed, and what plays and movies were produced.  (Stalin admired much of what Hitler accomplished here and Mao followed suit.  Today’s cancel culture is racing to catch up.)

Regarding himself and the other foreign correspondents, Shirer confessed, “We learned to stomach more than I would have believed possible.”  But he had to mix with them to do his job.

Assuming that Shirer’s assessments were reasonable, what explains the pervasive stupidity?  I believe there is a spiritual explanation.  When one denies God, rejects the Bible, and descends further and further into depraved behavior, one separates from reality.  This can be rationally interpreted as stupidity.

Rosenberg, for example, avowed racial theories that insisted on the superiority of the “Aryan” Germans and the inferiority of the Jews, Slavs, Asians, Americans, etc.  “His ignorance of history was almost total,” yet he was considered the chief intellectual of the Nazi Party.  Today’s ‘Critical Race Theorists’ simply re-shuffle which races are good and which are evil.  It’s the same game, though.  Why should Satan change tactics?  They always seem to work.

Shirer marveled that Hitler would choose Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister:  “I sized him up as incompetent and lazy, vain as a peacock, arrogant and without humor.”  He spoke French and English quite well, but apparently had not “the slightest comprehension of France and the French, and of the British and Americans and their countries.”  He was perhaps the worst possible man to be picked as foreign minister, but . . . “Ribbentrop was doggedly loyal to the Leader and never crossed him or even questioned him.”  That seems to be a principal chacteristic of the woke Marxists / Fascists of our era – loyalty above all, never question, never criticize.

Hitler eventually double-crossed every group he had made promises to.  In May 1934 he dissolved the unions and confiscated their funds, arrested their leaders, had them beaten and shipped off to concentration camps.  All this was right after speeches and assurances that the workers were sacred to the National Socialists (Nazis) and that the Party will preserve and protect the workers and their institutions.  A Nazi-controlled “Labor Front”  replaced the unions to keep workers in line, to control wages and to crush any hint of a strike.  In tyranny all institutions must be under Party control.

Hitler could not have brought devastating war to the world except for the rot and cowardice that infused the western powers.  In 1936 he moved an army into the Rhineland, western Germany, an area that was officially demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles.  If the French had responded militarily they would have crushed the Nazis and almost certainly caused the overthrow of Hitler and his regime.  France had an overwhelmingly strong army compared to the Germans. The truth was that the German army had orders to retreat if the French moved against them.  The German army was bluffing.  They did not have the arms or the training to win at that time.

But France and Britain submitted to the provocation, buying into Hitler’s phony promises of peace, with Germany now satisfied that they had complete control of the Rhineland once more.  Hitler’s hypocrisy was spectacular in that he offered to sign a 25-year nonaggression pact – after violating the standing treaty!

In Hitler’s address to the Reichstag he recited a long list of the injustices of Versailles and proclaimed the peacefulness of the Germans.  His biggest applause line:  “We have no territorial demands to make in Europe! . . . Germany will never break the peace!”

In Satan’s cause there are no lies too outrageous.  In fact, when tyrants are in control you are almost certainly right if you conclude that every public statement is a lie, at least in part, and the opposite is what you should plan for.

Regarding the decadence of the ‘free’ nations, it is notable that Hitler chose early Saturday morning to march into the Rhineland, knowing that British political leaders would have retired to their country estates for the weekend and would not be bothered to work on a response until Monday.  Hitler would repeat this pattern in later adventures.

Hitler’s successful bluff awarded him with enormous support in Germany, including among his generals, who were heretofore resistant.  But it now seemed clear that Hitler’s judgment was preeminent.

Hitler admired the Italian fascist, Benito Mussolini, and supported the Italian conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia).  The Italian move separated Italy from Britain and France, which were allies of Italy in WW1.  But while Italy was drawn into partnership with Germany, Hitler misjudged his ally’s strength, a mistake that would cost them dearly in WW2.  Reality matters.  A strong will is not enough.

Hitler’s dream had always been to unify his native Austria with Germany.  In 1938 he made his move, threatening the Austrian leaders with invasion if they did not capitulate.  They caved.  For years Hitler had promised that he would leave Austria alone.  Hitler had no problem making any promise that would tickle the ears of the gullible and the cowardly, and then breaking the promise when convenient.  Austria was now a province of Germany.

Hitler arrested the reluctant Austrian president and announced a plebiscite to show the world that the Austrian people favored the union.  At polling booths Nazi Party overseers were positioned to see how people voted and the ballot had clear instructions on how to mark it with a bold Ja to signify agreement.  The result was 99.75 percent  Ja.  The Soviet communists enjoyed similar success in their regular elections.

We’ll take a break here.  In Part 2 next month we’ll pick up with the Czech “crisis” which provided yet another opportunity to cut Hitler off at the knees, if courage had only been in modest supply in the West.

The takeaway, in my view, is for Christians to recognize and to speak out truthfully when we see Satan working in this world, whether on grand or small scales.  Speak truth and then transition to the Gospel.  Victory is not in political reformation, but rather in the salvation of souls.  A saved soul can easily find the wisdom to vote wisely and live as a productive neighbor and citizen in whatever land he resides.  What your neighbors, co-workers, relatives, and others around you need, above all, is a clear Gospel witness.  Give it to them.  At least offer them a tract.  If you need some tracts, check out ours at ThinkTracts.com and order some, or just email me and ask for some free samples.  Make your days count.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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169. A Study in Tyrants: Hitler & his Minions, Part 2
April 1, 2022

During the Nuremberg trials after WW2 the head of the Hitler youth, Baldur von Schirach, testified:  “The destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement.”

Christians today should recognize such historical parallels whenever government gets too powerful and whenever the ruling elite – including those in education and media – propagate anti-Christian values.  A Biblical worldview – the only perspective in touch with reality – is that of the age-old war between God and the fallen angel, Satan, a war over the souls of men.  Satan’s first choice is always tyranny so that he can directly suppress the Gospel and damn multitudes to share the Lake of Fire after the Great White Throne judgment.  Short of tyranny, the Adversary will work hard at corruption, as we have seen in America especially since the 1960s, but the goal of that corruption is inevitably tyranny . . . and that’s where we find America and the rest of the West today.

“If men will not be governed by God, then they must be governed by tyrants.” – William Penn

Any student of the Bible already knows that when a nation has great light and favor from God, specifically Old Testament Israel, such a nation is responsible to fulfill its duties.  Israel did not, and so suffered repeated invasions and exile before they repented and were restored.  Now, America is not Israel, but has enjoyed God’s blessings, including freedom for individuals to serve Him, raise their children to know Him, and to launch missionary movements around the world.  But especially in the last 60 years, Christians have despised their heritage and devoted themselves to politics and prosperity.  Even in this present madness there is no detectable move among Christians to repent on behalf of our nation, as Daniel did, and as Ezra and Nehemiah did, who sought God’s deliverance rather than trying to manipulate earthly power through politics.

One of the big lies of this present age is to define the political spectrum as if it is a 1-dimensional left vs. right axis.  Accordingly, conservative Christians are identified with the right along with Hitler and the Nazis.  What willful stupidity this is!  If a 1-dimensional model is to make any sense, it must be with tyranny at one end and freedom at the other.  Accordingly Nazis and Communists share one extreme and born again, Bible-believing Christians are entirely at the other, embracing free speech and free markets.

The differences between Hitler’s National Socialism (Nazism) and Stalin’s or Mao’s Communist Party are insignificant, especially with respect to the lives led by freedom-loving Christians.  Under Communism the State is controlled by the Party and owns everything.  Under Nazism you could “own” a factory, but you had better do whatever the Party tells you to do.  Thus it is a lie that the Nazis were capitalists – in the proper free market sense.  Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises wrote that Nazism was “socialism under the outward guise of the terminology of capitalism . . . (it) seemingly preserves private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary markets, prices, wages, and interest rates.  There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers.”  The Nazi office of production management dictated what to produce at what prices and mandated who would buy from you.  The Party fixed wages, too.

The Communists do the same, whether Lenin, or Stalin, or Mao and his successors, or Castro, or Pol Pot, or the Kim family.  America’s socialists are working hard via the same script.  And they are getting closer.

In a 1931 interview, two years before seizing power, Hitler explained:  “The good of the community takes priority over that of the individual.  But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen.  That is the overriding point.  The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners.”  **

Such sentiments are completely in sync with today’s “leftists.”  Communist Party, Nazi Party, Democrat Party . . . not a nickel’s worth of difference.

Now, let’s continue with my discussion of William L. Shirer’s book, The Nightmare Years:  1930 – 1940, particularly Shirer’s personal account, on the ground, while Hitler worked to intimidate Europe in the run-up to WW2.

Hitler’s secret desire in the Spring of 1938 was to “wipe Czechoslovakia off the map.”  He used the three million ethnic Germans who lived in the Sudetenland as a pretext to acquire their territory and undermine the Czech government.  Ceding this land would deprive the Czechs of its mining and industrial base, plus the line of fortresses which were its principal defense against a German invasion.

President Benes was sure that the crisis could be resolved with “reason, goodwill, and mutual trust on both sides,” as Shirer reports.  Running into Benes, Shirer wanted to rush up to him and say, “But Mr. President, you are dealing with gangsters, with Hitler and Goering!  You think they are capable of reason, goodwill, and trust?”  But Shirer “did not have the nerve and merely nodded a greeting.”

One of Hitler’s tactics was, of course, to promote race hatred.  A Goering speech put it like this:  “A petty segment of Europe is harassing human beings . . . This miserable pygmy race [the Czechs] without culture – no one knows where it came from – is oppressing a cultured people [the Sudeten Germans] and behind it is Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew devil.”

The Nazis proceeded to foment riots in Czechoslovakia and a war fever at home by continual lies about oppressions and atrocities supposedly perpetrated against the Sudeten Germans.  Benes thought he could get help from the French and the British.  The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, caved to Hitler’s demands – quite infamously – giving a rich and poignant example of the word appeasement henceforth in world history.  The British parliament backed up Chamberlain resoundingly, to assure “peace with honor,” as Chamberlain put it.

Benes was willing to cede the Sudetenland, in the end, but that’s not what Hitler wanted.  He wanted it all.  And he got it.

When WW2 broke out, Churchill replaced Chamberlain as PM.  At the time of the British betrayal of Czechoslovakia, Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You were given  the choice between war and dishonor.  You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Shirer was convinced at the time that if Britain and France had stood strong in 1938, Hitler would have been overthrown, or if the Nazis had invaded Czechoslovakia, Russia would have joined the West and together would have crushed the Nazis.  The German generals were doubtful that they could break through the Czech fortifications, and the French army outnumbered the Germans ten to one on their borders.  The Czechs had 35 well-armed divisions which would have at least partially crippled the German army even without help . . . but these divisions were never used.  At Nuremberg, Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Manstein affirmed this assessment.

The time to stand against evil and tyranny is as soon as you recognize it.  Don’t just hope for the best as evil simply takes more and more.  As I draft this essay it is August 31, 2021.  The Taliban have just overrun their country and atrocities are multiplying.  Meanwhile the U.S. government is expressing hope that the Taliban will govern with equity and consideration for human rights and international norms.

After occupying Czechoslovakia Hitler held a party rally called, “The Party Convention of Peace,” assuring the world that he had no designs on any other nation.  At the same time he was directing secret plans for the invasion of Poland, scheduled for September 1, 1939, a schedule he kept.

Hitler celebrated his 50^th birthday (April 20, 1939) with a huge display of military hardware, with swarms of bombers, fighters, and Stuka dive bombers, plus heavy tanks and artillery.  Shirer was flummoxed that the German spectators cheered in frenzy as the weapons paraded by.  Hitler saluted unit after unit and gave the appearance of being at his peak of physical and psychological strength.  In 1937 Hitler told his military chiefs that it was important to use the army’s strength before obsolescence set in.  In 1939 Hitler was personally ready and the army was, too.  Hitler admitted privately that he much preferred war while he was an energetic 50 years of age, much more than when he might be 55 or 60.  And so world history turns on such personal drives.

Hitler proclaimed publicly that the time for a showdown was now, that Hitler had the complete confidence of the German people and enjoyed more authority than any man in history.  No self-esteem problem there!

The President of the United States, FDR, sent telegrams to Hitler asking for assurance that Germany would not invade its neighbors.  To satisfy FDR, Hitler’s Foreign Office demanded of several countries to profess whether they felt threatened.  Under some degree or other of intimidation, they provided testimony that they were content.  In a broadcasted speech Hitler declared that he had not called up a single new man to active duty and had not mobilized any troops.  But he had secretly been mobilizing for weeks and would be ready by September 1^st.

The Soviet foreign affairs minister, Maxim Litvinov, called for a pact joining the Soviets with France, Britain, Poland, Romania, and Turkey.  In a Commons speech, Churchill urged the Chamberlain government to accept the pact.  Chamberlain declined.  Litvinov was fired and replaced by Molotov.

Stalin was worried that France and Britain were content with the idea of Hitler expanding his empire eastward, threatening Russia.  This led quickly to the infamous pact between Stalin and Hitler that resulted in the destruction of Poland.

So, decisiveness matters.  Reality matters.  It appears that the Brits and the French had no idea that declining the pact with Stalin would result in freeing Hitler to attack west.

Hitler used the German  press and radio to stir up war fever against Poland, claiming that Poland threatened to bomb Danzig, a German-held city close to the border.  Last ditch appeals from France and Britain to avoid war were refused.  On the morning of September 1, 1939, war erupted as the German army and air force  crossed the Polish border, all the while Hitler explained to the world that Poland was the aggressor.  And the German people ate it up.

Although France and Britain declared war on Germany at this point, nothing happened on the western front.  The German general staff knew that the French army could cross the border with little opposition and threatened the Ruhr, the huge industrial centers of Germany.  Shirer:  “The failure of the French to act, when action might have quickly won the war, made, I believe a lasting impression on Hitler.  He knew that when he turned his weapons against France after consolidating Poland, he would face weak opposition, despite the numerical strength of the French army.”

In a press conference with Goering, Shirer marveled that Goering professed no concern that America would supply the West with weapons or even possibly join in the fight . . . despite what happened in WW1.  He didn’t take American military power seriously.  Once again, Goering violated the reality principle.

At Christmas Hitler and Stalin exchanged greetings and professions of friendship, a friendship between their peoples that would be “lasting and firm.”  At New Years Hitler proclaimed to the German people that the war was started by “Jewish reactionary warmongers in the capitalist democracies.”  Thus he explicitly distinguishes his rule from both capitalism and democracy.

In his diary Shirer once again expressed how depressing it was to see a people so easily deceived.

In April Hitler invaded and occupied the neutral countries Denmark and Norway.

In the first few days of May, and even right up through May 9^th, Hitler’s team generated headlines like, “CHAMBERLAIN, THE AGGRESSOR.  ALLIED PLANS FOR NEW AGGRESSION.”  And “BRITAIN PLOTS TO SPREAD THE WAR!”  On Friday, May 10, 1940, German troops poured across the Dutch, Belgian, and Luxembourg borders.  The Nazi Foreign Office called those three ambassadors in to explain that the Germans were protecting their countries from attacks from France and Britain and if they offered any resistance they would be crushed.  Shirer:  “That afternoon the Berlin newspapers carried large headlines dubbing as “shameful” the protests of Belgium and Holland against being invaded.

How do tyrants and tyrant-wannabes get away with so many big lies?  Why do ‘ordinary’ people believe them so much?  Most ‘ordinary’ people still have a functioning conscience and find it hard to imagine that leaders would lie so brazenly, so publicly.  If they buy into the lies long enough, liberty is crushed and it doesn’t matter whether anyone believes the lies anymore.

On June 19^th after the low countries and France had fallen, Hitler arranged to have the French humiliated by conducting the surrender ceremony in the same railcar that Marshall Foch used on November 11, 1918, to force the armistice concluding WW1, which was effectively a surrender of the Germans, considering the terms they were forced to accept.  To obtain the car German engineers had to rip it out of a museum and transport it to a field in Compiegne Forest, the exact spot of the WW1 armistice.  Hitler had his sweet revenge.

When Hitler arrived he was furious to discover a granite memorial celebrating where “. . . THE CRIMINAL PRIDE OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE [was] VANQUISHED BY THE FREE PEOPLE WHICH IT TRIED TO ENSLAVE.”  The memorial was blown up three days later.

Perhaps the most odious (to Shirer) of the surrender demands was that France return all refugees who had fled Nazi tyranny, including Jews and socialists.  Two notable German Socialist leaders who had opposed Hitler years before were captured in the days to follow, brought to Berlin and axed to death.

Shirer has much to say about the Battle of Britain, Hitler and Goering’s attempt to bomb Britain into submission so the Germans could avoid outright invasion – although for the next year Churchill and his nation were convinced that invasion was imminent.  Hitler’s grand strategic goal was to crush Stalin and the Soviets.  It would have been enough to merely subjugate Britain.  Of course, with Churchill at the helm, Britain would not quit.  I hope to publish an essay on aspects of Churchill’s character and determination based on a book about this critical year.  Hopefully, I’ll post this in a few months . . . if the rapture does not intervene.

Of course the Germans wanted  the Brits to believe that invasion was imminent. And they would have invaded if they had won the Battle of Britain.  Crushing the British air force would have allowed the Wehrmacht to cross the Channel virtually unopposed, if Britain still proved stubborn.  But God spared western civilization – for a time – by the outcome of that battle.

Shirer was an American journalist and America was still a year and a half from entering the war, ostensibly a neutral nation, and Shirer has many accounts about German censorship and manipulation to constrain what the reporter would broadcast to America.  At one point they provided Shirer and other journalists briefings and tours to convince them that invasion was imminent, then arranged a phone line from Brussels to Berlin so he could report on what he had learned.

“We’ve got an excellent line for you to Berlin,” the radio man said.  “When do you want to broadcast?”

“And no censorship this time,” the army captain said.  “You are free to tell what you’ve seen the past few days.”

“I’m not broadcasting,” I said.

They seemed stunned.  Before they could regain their voices, I added:  “Gentleman, I appreciate your setting up the line to Berlin.  But I cannot use it.  I won’t be broadcasting . . . “

“And why not?” the radio official broke in to ask.

“Because I do not believe, from what I’ve seen, you’re going to invade, at least for now.”

The two Germans made some noises, but found no words.

“I do not expect you to allow me to say that,” I said.  “That would be a military secret.  But you must not expect me to broadcast what I don’t believe.”

Other networks dutifully complied with the opportunity, while Shirer’s bosses at CBS wondered what had happened to their reporter.  Shirer thought his job was at risk, but his integrity was proven by his prescience.  One of the fascinating aspects of Shirer’s wonderful book is his accounts of fencing with the Nazi propaganda ministries.

Throughout my life I have marveled at tyrants and corrupt political leaders, in the lies they use to cover up or to justify horrific actions . . . actions that they believe are righteous.  Yet this is a widespread human failing, a sin that springs from all of our deliberately wicked hearts.  It is simply more striking when perpetrated at the highest levels of our nations or cultures.  For example:

Shirer discovered that the Gestapo was systematically detaining and then executing “mentally deficient people.”  “The Nazis call them mercy deaths.”  A pastor who ran a large hospital for “feeble-minded” children was arrested because he refused to deliver up his more serious cases to the secret police.  Shortly after, his hospital was bombed – by the Gestapo, who claimed it was a British bombing raid.  That wasn’t the only time the Nazis bombed one of their own facilities, for convenience, and then blamed British bombers.

The ‘marvelous’ thing, then, is why don’t they simply proclaim boldly that they are ridding the world, justifiably, of the mentally disabled?  They certainly believe it’s the right thing to do, so why not boast of the righteousness of their policies?  On a grander scale, the Nazis hid both the fact and the scale of the Holocaust, despite their convictions that their murderous deeds were righteous.

Yet even the most wicked do understand the conscience that God has given all of us, even though their own conscience is perverted.  They know how everyone will see their actions and so they cover up or lie about what they do.  The same phenomenon occurs every day in America as Satan’s minions in government, media, education, and culture promote evil policies and make some phony justification, or simply deny that evil is occurring.

This is all related to the reality principle – Reality matters! – illustrated during a visit by the Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, to Ribbentrop.  The meeting was necessarily held in an underground shelter because of an ongoing British air raid.  Ribbentrop was going on, as he and Hitler had for two days, to Molotov how the British were beaten and how the Germans and Soviets could now plan how to divide up the British empire.

Molotov finally blurted out, “If that is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are the bombs which fall?”

It was only a month later, on December 18, 1940, that Hitler “issued the most fateful war directive of his life:  The German armed forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England.”  Thus began operation Barbarossa, which eventually destroyed the German armies.

In the summer of 1941, the apparent success of Barbarossa was so glorious, and the judgment of Hitler so out of touch with reality, that in September Hitler told the High Command to disband 40 infantry divisions, which he believed would no longer be needed.  On October 3 Hitler proclaimed from Berlin “that the enemy in the East has been struck down and will never rise again.”

He was wrong about the Brits and he was wrong about the Russians.  Arrogance can be a lethal flaw.

Shirer writes that his years in Berlin “deepened my comprehension of life on this earth:  its brutality, violence, chicanery, repression, hypocrisy, deceit, intolerance, senselessness . . . But I had also seen some beauty and meaning and fulfillment in men’s lives, some courage and fortitude in people, even some decency and honesty, and goodwill and tolerance in their relations to one another.”  He had attained “a tragic sense of life.”

It is sad that Shirer chose not to view world events through a Biblical lens, which truly makes sense of sin on both the small and the vast scales, that he had no sense of hope, both personally and prophetically, that there will be a day when the Lord Jesus reigns over a kingdom that displays peace, love, and righteousness, and that every man and woman will be judged – or will be delivered, forgiven, and granted mercy – for everything done under the sun.

At 3:30 p.m., Monday, April 30, 1945, just ten days after his 56^th birthday and just over twelve years since he became chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth as Soviet troops closed in on the Chancellory.  Eva Braun, his longtime mistress but now a bride just 24 hours before, took poison.

His last testament showed that he had learned nothing:  “I shall not fall into the hands of the enemy, who require a new spectacle presented by the Jews, to divert their hysterical masses.”  The Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, poisoned his six children, ages three to twelve, and then had an S.S. orderly shoot him and his wife, Magda.  Goebbels had just written about his children, “If they were old enough they would unreservedly agree with this decision.”

At the Nuremberg trials, observing Goering and twenty other Nazi leaders, Shirer was shocked at his first sight of them.  “How the mighty had fallen! . . . How common and mediocre they looked . . . these nondescript, little men, fidgeting nervously in their shabby garb . . . [these] were the ones who when last you saw them wielded such monstrous power . . . Gone was the arrogance, the insolence, the truculence.”  They had lost weight, Goering at least 80 pounds, had aged considerably, and looked bent and broken.

Shirer:  “Broken, miserable little men!”

But such temporal judgments are mere foreshadows of the final judgments of Revelation chapter 20 at God’s Great White Throne.  Truly, every knee shall bow and declare the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ and lament how they despised God’s offers of mercy and grace.

Adolf Hitler has often been used as an icon for someone who actually deserves Hell.  Multitudes of lost people don’t see themselves as headed for judgment, including good American citizens, churchgoers, faithful husbands and wives who are devoted to their families.  They see themselves as righteous in comparison with someone as vile as Hitler.  Perhaps this is true in some microscopic sense.  If you stand on top of a skyscraper you may be a little closer to the Andromeda galaxy than someone at street level.  But Heaven, too, is infinitely far away, unreachable but by God’s grace.

Our part, a genuine life-changing repentance, faith, and trust in the One who shed His blood for our sins and defeated death in the Resurrection, is open to all.  If you’re one of God’s redeemed, share the truth with someone else this week, whether they are obviously wicked or not, whether powerful in this world or not, whether polite and pleasant or not.  If need be, warn them that they don’t want to share the Final Destination of the infamously wicked of this world, including Adolf Hitler, but they will do just that, if they don’t get in touch with reality.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

 

** Much of the quoted material in the introduction up to this point I gleaned from Lawrence Reed’s article, “What the Nazis Had in Common With Every Other Collectivist Regime in the 20^th Century,” in The Epoch Times, Aug 4-10, 2021.  I heartily recommend that you subscribe to this weekly newspaper.

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170. How are American churches doing?
May 1, 2022

He was visiting an underground church in China, marveling at how the young people prayed so passionately, praying for God to send them to the most dangerous places, expecting to die as martyrs.  He kept asking for more stories of their witness under persecution.  Finally, they asked him why he was so intrigued.  Well, the church in America is nothing like this!  He was embarrassed to explain how people attend 90-minute services once per week in a comfortable, air-conditioned building, how people switch churches for better music or more exciting programs for their kids.

They began to laugh, and laugh hysterically.  They found it ridiculous that we could start with the same Bible and then create a “church” so completely different.

Another time, he talked to a pastor from the Philippines who used to send missionary candidates to the U.S. for Bible training.  But they didn’t come back!  America was too comfortable and it was too easy to find a comfortable salaried position on a church staff.  That pastor stopped sending his people to America.

These and other experiences led Francis Chan to a drastically different perspective on what church is all about, as he describes in his 2018 book, Letters to the Church.  In this essay I will pull out a few nuggets, as I usually do, and offer some comments.  This is NOT a careful assessment of Francis Chan’s theology or practice, whether he’s the ‘real deal’ or not, and it’s certainly not an assessment of how his new work in San Francisco is going.  I simply don’t know.  But I resonate with many of his ideas and that’s what I believe is important, especially whether those ideas are in sync with the New Testament, wherein we find God’s prescription for the church.

Chan offers a thought experiment.  Imagine you’re stranded on an island with nothing but a Bible.  You know nothing of Christianity, but begin to read, carefully.  In the end, “how would you imagine a church to function?”  Now, open your eyes and “think about your current church experience.  Is it even close?”  Furthermore, “Can you live with that?”

Around 2010, Francis left his megachurch pastorate at Cornerstone Church, Simi Valley, California.  He and his wife had started that church in their living room in 1994 at age 26.  Later he started a college, wrote bestselling books, and developed a huge podcast following.  But then he walked away and moved his family to Asia for several years.

When he launched Cornerstone, his goal was to build the kind of church he wanted to be part of.  First, he wanted everyone to sing directly to God, with reverence, with emotion, not going through the motions.  Second, he wanted everyone to “really hear the Word of God . . . to dig deeply into Scripture – even the passages that contradicted our logic and desires . . . and I wanted us to take it seriously.”  His preaching and teaching were verse by verse through the Bible.

Finally, he “wanted all of us to live holy lives.”  James 1:22 – “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”  He wanted everyone to help and challenge each other toward action, “expecting change.”

Over the years good things happened and the church grew, enormously.  But, “I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still missing.”  There was too much dependence on one person . . . Francis.  He was distressed that too many people came to hear Francis Chan, and not experience the moving of the Holy Spirit.

“I saw a few other people and me using our gifts, while thousands came and sat in the sanctuary for an hour and a half and then went home.  The way we had structured the church was stunting people’s growth, and the whole body was weaker for it.”

In the book Francis describes a variety of things they tried in order to shift the culture.  Finally, he left and moved his family to Asia and was able “to see a glimpse of what the church could be and the power it could have.”  He felt God leading him to start over in America and plant a church on New Testament principles.

Francis laments our social media culture, where young people speak quickly and loudly to be heard, where offense is taken quickly and sharply; whereas the Bible commands us to be “swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (James 1:19) and, “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin:  but he that refraineth his lips is wise.”  (Prov 10:19)

The speed and tempo of the culture has penetrated the church and its people, in its “worship services” and in its lively, ‘exciting’ programs.  Yet . . . “Be still, and know that I am God:  I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”  (Ps 46:10)  There must be time for the sacred, time for the thoughtful, time to insure that our words to each other and to the world are grounded in Scriptural truth, and clothed in compassion and grace.

Francis envisions the privilege the redeemed will have in Revelation 5:13 (look it up), suggesting that those who are accustomed to being god over their own blogs and Twitter accounts, who have built their own shrines on Facebook and Instagram, may despise the reality of God’s glory and the joy we will have in sharing it . . . according to God’s plan.  I would go further and claim that the self-glorification of the social media culture works viciously against the need for humility, repentance, and saving faith that will mean the difference between Heaven and Hell for multitudes of young people.

Francis Chan:  “Heavenly beings are shocked by God’s church, while many on earth yawn.”  The early church didn’t have the sound systems, pop music, and winsomely educated and carefully coiffed leaders that we see today, but somehow they reached the world with the Gospel and lived lives of holiness foreign to our pampered sensibilities.  Francis confesses to having been part of the problem, training “people to become addicted to lesser things.  We have cheapened something sacred, and we must repent.”

He suggests you imagine that you walk into a restaurant and order a steak.  Later, the waiter delivers you a plate full of what he assures you is the best spaghetti you’ll ever eat.  Are you content?  How big a tip do you leave?

Analogously, God gave us an ‘order’ for how to do church.  We think we have better ideas.  After all, what design would please us more?  What will attract more people?  Francis does an exercise when he meets with church leaders, asking them what people expect from their church.  The list typically includes a great music service, exciting age-group programs, compelling sermons, a clean building, childcare, etc.

In turn, he offers them Scriptural commands like, “love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12), “visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27), “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them . . .” (Matthew 28:19), and “Bear ye one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).

I have noticed over the years that many churches, including megachurches, have a wealth of resources and programs, some listing over one hundred ‘ministries’ on their web site, but having no evangelistic outreach to their community at all.  (Local charitable programs don’t count if the volunteers never share the Gospel, which is usually the case.)

Francis notes that Scripture says nothing about a senior pastor delivering a 40-minute sermon on Sunday.  He particularly laments that the most vocal members of churches, those with the most complaints or suggestions about music, youth ministry, etc., “have not shared their faith in months (or years) and couldn’t care less about making disciples of the billions of people who have no idea who Jesus is!”

Those billions include the vast majority of Americans who do not know the most basic truths about the Gospel.  Ask most Americans – the ones who believe that God exists – what they must do to quality for Heaven and avoid Hell and they will tell you that they live a good enough life.  I experience this every time I knock doors to share the Gospel, even in “Bible-belt” country.

Church attendance in America, Francis observes, is in decline with respect to the growth of the population.  The temptation of salaried pastoral staff, who depend on that cha-ching every Sunday, is to make church more popular and more comfortable.  Despite appearances, it’s a losing game, because it is God’s enterprise.  He judges the ‘game’ by New Testament rules.

Alan Hirsch talked about his experience in building an Australian megachurch:  “If you have to use marketing and the lures of entertainment to attract people, then you will have to keep them there on the same principle . . . it gets harder year after year.”

As with young children, if you continually respond to their wants and their whining, you will only magnify the behavior you reward.  Francis sees multitudes of churchgoers “who genuinely believe their unhappiness is the church’s fault!” The bigger problem, as I see it, is that these multitudes are still unsaved and are being coddled along the road to Hell.

When does a megachurch deliver the news that sin condemns, that the sinner must humble himself, repent, trust Christ, and get a new heart, a new attitude, new behavior, sacrificial love for others, and a zeal and a practice of reaching out to others with the same news?  Francis concludes, “I fear we have created human-centered churches.”

In the book of Acts we see the early Christians devoted to prayer, evangelism, teaching (discipleship), fellowship, and taking care of their own who needed help.  What we do not see are strategy sessions and marketing campaigns to get people ‘interested.’

But if we just do what the early Christians did, especially in these modern times, our churches might be small!  Yep, but they might consist of genuine and fervent born again believers.  But how are we going to take our city or our country for Christ?!?  We’re not.  The last days of this age are days of apostasy and wickedness.  Just look around.  This is ‘lifeboat’ time.  Individuals can still be saved, but only if genuine Christians proclaim a Biblical Gospel – no sugarcoating.

As Francis observes, “Not everyone is interested in God.  We just need to make sure that it’s really God we are putting on display.”  We are not trying to win them over to us or to simply attract them to a great ‘show.’  We are looking to make genuine, blood-bought converts who will, in their turn, live right and reach out to the lost around them.

A friend from India drove Francis to a speaking engagement in Dallas.  When ‘the show’ started he said, “You Americans are funny.  You won’t show up unless there’s a good speaker or band.  In India, people get excited just to pray.”  His fellow believers in India loved sharing the Lord’s supper and they flocked to simple prayer gatherings.  Francis writes, “It’s embarrassing.”

Francis sees more commitment in criminal gangs.  A gang member knows “his homies have his back.”  In most churches, though, you have as much connection with your “spiritual family” as those who might attend the same movie theater as you.

This is intentional, though.  It’s safe for the salaried clergy.  If you have a dozen people meeting in a house church, you can’t hide from each other.  You will get to know your Christian brothers and sisters and they will get to know you.  It is far more comfortable for almost every American Christian to sit anonymously and passively in a crowd, and then return to the important things in life – sports, social media, work, entertainment, whatever stimulates the carnal senses.

Francis asks when are we going to take the Scriptural commands of unity and love for the brethren seriously, “where we meet one another’s needs and care for one another regardless of the time or effort required.”  I believe it will never happen ‘top-down.’  The clergy class cannot handle the concept.  For the people in the church to enjoy true interactive and caring fellowship means loss of scripted control for the salaried clergy.  Indeed, who needs salaried clergy when the brothers and sisters take responsibility for building up one another?  So it was in the early churches, but no more.

I share his perspective that most churchgoers come as consumers, not servants.  It seems natural to put money in the basket to pay for the facility and the staff salaries, so the staff can put on the program.  I summarize this as “show up, shut up, and pay up.”  Francis:  “It’s not what God wanted, but it works.”  Well, it ‘works’ only in superficial appearance.  If God is not in it, there is no eternal value.

Regarding the consumer attitude:  “Takers are the most miserable people on earth.”  In startling contrast he supposes, “Have you ever been in a room filled with humble people who count others more significant than themselves? . . . Everyone is built up.”

God’s purpose for the leaders in a church is to use their gifts to develop the gifts and service and leadership abilities of everyone else in the church.  Build and replicate.  A leader in God’s church, no matter how talented, is in rebellion if he is the performer, the one on stage, the one people come to see, the one everyone marvels at.  Ugghh!!  “Then we wonder why we, the people, aren’t developing.”

At the time he wrote the book, Francis Chan reports that in his house church network in San Francisco there are about forty pastors – all work other jobs, none are paid by the church.  All their training has been on-the-job from the elders.  “Every church should be equipping people and sending them out.  Unfortunately, the trend is the opposite.  We send out want ads, asking for pastors to come serve at our churches.  Some churches even hire professional headhunters to find pastors for them.  Rather than sending, we are recruiting.  This has become normal.”

Those who are ‘recruited’ are hirelings, are they not?  Jesus had something to say about hirelings in John chapter 10.

Francis:  “I can’t tell you how much freedom I feel now that I’m ministering in a church with no salaries and no potential for any of us to be pastoring a large church.”  Once one of their house churches exceeds twenty people, they divide and multiply.

When Francis was in China he was deeply affected by what a local pastor said:  “In America, pastors think they have to become famous to have a big impact.  In China, the most influential Christian leaders had to be the most hidden.”  By the way, if you haven’t read Randy Alcorn’s novel, Safely Home, which describes the underground church in China, get yourself a copy quickly, and then several more for people you know.

A pastor in India told Francis that the biggest mistakes he had made were when he allowed people into leadership who were not humble.  So now he consistently looks for people who are humble and who desire to know Jesus deeply.

I might also mention the epidemic in the western churches of pastors who acquire the title of “Dr.”  Many of these are honorary, and so not even earned.  Yet many of the earned doctorates entail academic efforts that are pitiful in comparison to earning a typical secular Ph.D.  But why the lust for the world’s title?  Isn’t ‘brother’ enough?

I resonate deeply with Francis’ prescription for solving annoying people problems in a church, for resolving self-centered fussing . . . “The answer is not just telling them to stop being so selfish.  Pastors need to engage them in helping the lost and desperate around the world.”  I’ve seen that everywhere I’ve gone in America, churches with an internal, satisfy-the-customer mindset while their neighbors go to Hell.  Frankly, most of the membership is one heartbeat from Hell, and they are never warned.

Suffering is woven into the history of early Christians, and into the experiences of Christians throughout the world today.  It hasn’t hit America, but suffering is on its way.  Francis reports that a house church in Iran has new believers sign a written statement that they understand they are likely to lose their property, be jailed, and even martyred for their faith.  Fellowship in such a church has a different quality than what we experience here.

In China, Francis marveled at the stories he heard in an underground church . . . people would hide in the walls when the police raided them, some had narrowly avoided gunshots.  There was much laughter at how God had preserved them.  They expected persecution.  They embraced suffering.  Acts 5:40-42.

I regularly hear accounts of wondrous events displaying God’s power . . . overseas, not in America.  Francis writes of an evangelistic ministry in Africa, in which children travel to villages too dangerous for adult missionaries, who have been killed for sharing the Gospel.  In one village a great spiritual darkness reigned, with village children dying mysteriously every week.  The missionary kids stayed and prayed for hours, then shared the Gospel.  The deaths ended.  Many became Christians.

Francis:  “Don’t you find it even a bit discouraging that these kids are transforming villages while our kids are watching puppet shows on Jonah and learning songs with hand motions?”

Isn’t the Holy Spirit capable of doing more in America?  But the vast majority of Christians are content to watch the weekly Sunday show, put on by the talented few, the salaried elite.

In the New Testament we find that the followers of Jesus began immediately to reach out to people around them, to lead them to the Savior.  Within months the Lord sent out 70, two by two, on an evangelistic trip throughout the land.  Going out was part of their initial training.  Yet today ‘saints’ who have attended church for decades are still too timid to reach out to their neighbors or co-workers or people they cross paths with on their errands . . . most won’t even include a Gospel tract with the candy they give to trick-or-treaters who walk right up to their door, asking them for a gift.

I do heartily recommend the book Letters to the Church.  I expect that it will encourage and challenge you.  Have you noticed the world is spiraling toward a certain prophetic climax?  Our days are short and precious on this Earth.  I hope you are working to make your days count for eternity.  Please check out my ‘church’ essays in the Discipleship section of this site – those are the ones with the word “church” somewhere in the title.  And, especially, check out my essays in the Evangelism section.  Then get busy.  And let me know how it’s going.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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