PAT ROBERTSON,
ILLUMINISM, AND
THE NEW WORLD ORDER

At first glance, it would seem that Hitler's Holocaust is a nightmare that could never be repeated. The Gotterdammerung in which Hitler's Valhalla went up in flames in a Wagnerian Twilight of the Gods should have consumed this horrible disease. But like a nightmare which won't go away, like a cancer which goes into remission - feigning a cure - only to reappear again in some other part of the body and in a more virulent form, the very myth (i.e., the "Illuminist Plot" or the "Jewish / Bolshevist World-Conspiracy") which produced Hitler's Holocaust is surfacing once again - this time without ever directly mentioning the Jews (although Jewish figures like Schiff, Kuhn, Loeb, Rothschild, Hess, etc. continue to play the most prominent roles in the myth - subtly continuing to implicate the Jews, without ever really saying so).

Today, when most Christians think of the "Illuminist Plot" they link it to material which seems to swirl around the John Birch Society; more specifically, they connect it to a book the Society published in 1972 called None Dare Call It Treason by John Stormer. Using a watered-down version of the Illuminist Myth, Stormer's book identified the Rockefeller family, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission as pro-communist and as part of a massive intrigue designed to subvert Western Civilization and Christianity from within. The significance of Stormer's book lay in the fact that it presented a "secularized" and somewhat "sanitized" version of the Illuminist Plot which could be accepted more readily by people who were not pre-disposed to accept as reality an intrigue which reached back into the shadowy obscurity of the Dark Ages and encompassed Freemasonry, the Templars, the Teutonic Knights, the Hospitalers, etc., and one which was so openly anti-Semitic and could so easily be linked to the insanity of Hitler and Nazi Germany - thus gaining for the myth a greater acceptability than it could otherwise command, especially in "moderate" circles. Nonetheless, Stormer's sanitized conspiracy contained all the elements dear to the heart of those who heretofore had subscribed to the Illuminist Plot: belief in a world-wide conspiracy (the "Communist Conspiracy") which aimed at the destruction of Western Civilization (particularly the United States), Christianity, and the "free enterprise system" (i.e., capitalism). But the fact remained that Stormer's thesis was really nothing more than a "cleaned-up" version of the older myth. Indeed, the ability of this myth to cloak itself in "acceptable garb" is mind-boggling; at one moment and in one set of circumstances it's the Jewish-Bolshevist Conspiracy; in another, it's the Illuminist Plot; then it's the Communist Conspiracy; and now that communism is gone, it's the Secular-Humanist Conspiracy - but in the end, it's all the same. It's like watching three or four old grade B "cowboy" or "detective" films in a row. By the time one sees the fourth movie, one has a sneaking suspicion he's seen it all before - the plot's the same, the villains are the same, the heros are the same - the only things that have been changed are the names.

The influence of Stormer's book on today's Secular and Religious Right is difficult to underestimate: it has become their Weltanschuung, the very basis of their "world-view" - and it has become so largely because of the efforts of the John Birch Society (JBS). Take, for instance, one example: the effort by the JBS to "take over" (or at least strongly influence) the "world-view" of the CNP [i.e., the Council on National Policy - the main coordinating agency today between the Religious Right on the one hand, and the Economic and Political Right, on the other]. Investigative reporter, Russ Bellant writes, "The Birch influence on the political goals of the CNP is significant. The JBS was with the CNP from the beginning. Nelson Bunker Hunt, a prime mover in CNP's founding, was on the Birch Society's national council. By 1984, John Birch Society Chairman A. Clifford Barker and Executive Council Member William Cies were CNP members. Other JBS leaders also joined the Council. Five board members of Western Goals, essentially a JBS intelligence-gathering operation ... joined the CNP as well."[1] All these people subscribed in one way or another to the conspiracy theories promulgated in Stormer's book - and impressed this thinking on other members of the CNP. The fact is, it's probably not too much to say that these links (i.e., the links between the CNP and the JBS) contributed mightily not only to a resurgence of conspiracism (i.e., the Illuminist Myth) in the New Right, but of the John Birch Society as well - so much so that author Alan Crawford has written, "The Birchers seem to have wormed their way back in along the frontier of the New Right. The New Right leaders seem to welcome them (and the Weltanschuung which undergirds them)." [ 2] Unfortunately, once people "buy into" Stormer's thesis, it is but a short step from Stormer's (and the John Birch Society's) sanitized None Dare Call it Treason to the "real McCoy"(i.e., the Jewish World Conspiracy) - and growing numbers of Christians, especially those who have accepted a "Dominionist Mind-Set" are taking that step.

It is incredible how this myth - the "Illuminist Plot" - can allure people, captivating and seducing new generations with an extraordinary magnetism. Its power rests not on any plea to the intellect, but rather on superstition and raw emotion. Nonetheless, men as diverse and as prominent as businessmen Henry Ford of Ford Motor Co., Alfred P. Sloan, Chairman of the Board at General Motors, Irenee DuPont of DuPont Chemicals; British statesman Winston Churchill; and religious leaders like Arno Gaebelein, R.A. Torrey, James Gray, Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII and Father Coughlin have - at one time or another - accepted the myth's authenticity. Even the Times Of London, as well as prominent newspapers in the United States and elsewhere, printed articles in the 1920s lending credence to the myth; and all this despite the fact that the Illuminati Myth has been proven over and over again to be nothing more than a fabrication based on lies and forgeries.* Indeed, it's because the structure of this myth rests on such a bizarre foundation, that its hold on the "popular" imagination seems to defy all logic - ultimately forcing even the most secular of people to throw up their hands and admit to its "Satanic" origin. There is really no other explanation of how, after the French Revolution, this myth developed out of a traditional medieval demonology; how it inspired a whole series of blatant forgeries culminating in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion; how it was used to justify the massacre of Jews by "White (Czarist) Armies" during the Russian Revolution; how it then took possession of Hitler's mind and became the ideology of a genocide greater in scope and intensity than anything else ever before witnessed by man - and finally, how - despite everything - it is once again surfacing in this country as an explanation for the supposed power and influence of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Christians had better be careful; for in getting mixed up in all this what they might in reality be doing is getting involved in the very nightmare they believe they are fighting against. In the end, they may find that what they've been doing is madly participating in the construction of the very system of things the Bible indicates will someday turn on them and destroy them. (Revelation 11:7) Now that would be a twist worth noting! - wouldn't it? (Matthew 24:24)

1. Bellant, The Coors Connection, pg. 45-46; see also Harry Hunt, Texas Rich (New York: Norton, 1981), pg. 369; CNP Board of Governors Meeting, Dallas, Texas, August 17-18; CNP Executive Committee Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, May 12, 1989.
2. Alan Crawford, Thunder on the Right (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pg. 96.

* See Endnote.

[The material presented here predates by more than a year the material which appeared on Robertson in the New York Times (Michael Lind, spring/summer, 1995); indeed Religion in Politics had been circulating in the spring of 1994 a 24 page manuscript addressed to the Jewish community in New York which was very similar to the one finally published by the Times. It had been circulated not so much for general publication, but as a warning to these groups about what was happening in conservative Christian political circles. Sadly, Lind is a secularist and is obviously not that familiar with the "ground" over which he has been treading; as a result, he has not been able to respond adequately to the attacks on his article by either the secular right or the religious right. The article which follows is a far more in-depth treatment of the subject than Lind was able to give, and reaches conclusions which would escape a secularist like Lind.]

"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes even perceptibly worse ... By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself (in us)."

-- Huxley

THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE RIGHT

The fear of a hidden conspiracy directed against Western Civilization, Christianity, and the "American free enterprise system" is a recurring theme which runs through and permeates the entire Right-Wing matrix. Its being peddled by leaders in the New Right to Americans desperate for an easily understood reason as to why their European, Christian-based culture has seemingly been stripped from them by "secular humanists" and replaced by what is perceived to be an "amoral" multiculturalism with which few of them can easily relate. It's most extreme expression has taken the form of the Illuminati Myth; its most moderate version is the "Secular-Humanist Conspiracy." The first version names the Jews and the Freemasons as the principle villains; the second names the liberal establishment. In both instances, Communism and Socialism are the tools through which the hidden cabal (i.e., the Jews and the Freemasons in the one instance, the secular-humanists in the other) hopes to achieve its goal of world domination. In reality, the second version is nothing more than a sanitized and less offensive version of the first - one which has been "cleaned up" to suit the sensibilities of moderate conservatives.

Mythologies like the Illuminati Myth and the Secular-Humanist Conspiracy are more easily described than defined; they can be said to occupy a border area somewhere between religion and history on the one hand, and folklore on the other. They are popular explanations of conundrums and enigmas (often of a semi-historic nature) which cannot be easily subjected to objective inquiry using Scripture or verifiable events as the standard against which the inquiry can be made and ultimately judged.

Nonetheless, it should not be assumed that adherence to these mythologies is merely the province of the uneducated; such is the pull and magnetism of many of these myths that a great number of them have continued to survive and even flourish among the educated and in the elite business establishment - though often there is a recognition that they are probably unjustified, coupled with a slight sense of unease and even shame in holding them. [Hence, the effort to sanitize the Illuminati Myth by removing the offensive references to Jews and Freemasons and substituting liberalism as the main target.]

And it is precisely this unease and shame that many people have who adhere to these myths which makes it so immensely difficult to judge how widespread they are in the popular imagination and to what extent they are "determinators" of political and/or religious activity. When asked by "outsiders," many will deny that they subscribe to these myths; yet the very activity that they carry on publicly belies their real feelings. And when alone and/or in the presence of "insiders," their true thoughts emerge, and references to "secular-humanism" are quickly dropped in favor of the old bugaboos - the real villains, the "Jews" and the "Freemasons!"

PROFESSOR JOHN SALOMA

In the spring of 1983, just a few short months before his death in July of that year, Professor John Saloma sat down at his desk to put into writing concerns which had been gnawing at him for several years; specifically, the spread of these myths into the American middle class using the strands of a new political web which was being spun (often unwittingly) by American conservatives. He noted with evident concern,

"Conservatives ... (are) building institutions (today) that (appear to) incorporate an (alarming) ... long-term strategic dimension into American politics ... (and which are contributing immeasurably to the spread of right-wing mythologies) ... "

Saloma elaborated,

"Political conservatives have quietly built a vast coalition of think tanks, political action groups, religious broadcasters, corporate political organizations, senators and representatives, Republican Party officials, and other groups with budgets totaling hundreds of millions of dollars annually ...

Saloma continued,

"I tried to communicate my concern (as to the growing power and influence of this right-wing mythology) to friends and associates, but few accepted ... what I had to say (or saw the danger of what I was trying to describe) ..." [1]

Saloma was desperate to warn others - especially those who were unwittingly being drawn into what he saw as a dangerous "labyrinth" - one in which people could easily get lost if they weren't very careful. It wasn't so much the social goals of the "new conservatism" which so alarmed him, as it was the mythology being employed by them to attain those goals, and the construction of an alliance system which linked radical right-wing groups, many with fascist and Nazi ties, with otherwise well meaning moderates and conservatives. Finally, just months before he died, he interested Hamilton Fish III and Henry Steele Commager, one of America's greatest living historians; the result was the publication of a manuscript he had been working on, Ominous Politics, the New Conservative Labyrinth. None of these men - Saloma, Fish or Commager - were raging left-wing ideologues (Saloma was in fact a Republican party activist). They were scholars with impeccable academic credentials - moderates who otherwise were predisposed to dismiss "alarmists" with a flick of their hands. Nonetheless, all of these men had become concerned by the development of a right-wing web in this country - one with surprisingly strong fascist or Nazi connections - and one into which millions of Middle Americans were being increasingly drawn.

And just how far this process had extended was made plain during the confirmation hearings of Warren Richardson as President Reagan's nominee for Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services in the first Reagan Administration. Richardson withdrew from consideration when it was revealed that he had been general counsel of the far right Liberty Lobby from 1969 to 1973. Liberty Lobby's head, Willis Carto, turned out to be an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler. Though Richardson's withdrawal from consideration calmed many, the question remained: how had someone connected to an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler risen so high in conservative Republican circles - high enough to be considered for such an office? And, as if to confirm the fact that Richardson's case was not an aberration, Frank J. Fahrenkopf's relations with the far-right surfaced shortly thereafter; Fahrenkopf, who was Chairman of the Republican National Committee, was a strong adherent to a belief in conspiracism - specifically to the Illuminati Myth. [2]

THE RIGHT-WING WEB

Saloma described the "Conservative Labyrinth" as a series of differing organizations all linked to one another in intricate keiretsu-like relationships. He wrote,

"The conservative think tanks, which emphasize research and publication that is essentially 'above politics', form a clearly identifiable group of organizations (in the right-wing labyrinth) ... They're funded in large part by conservative foundations ...

"Another important group of organizations is specifically devoted to political action and electoral politics. Since 1974, its core has been a cluster of New Right organizations, financed largely by direct mail ... "Perhaps even more important and less visible is the substantial investment of corporate America since the mid-1970s in political action committees, grass-roots political organization, and teaching about free enterprise, often in cooperation with the conservative think tanks and political action committees ...

"The major institutions of national politics, Congress and the political parties, are also foci for conservative influence. Individuals like Senator Jesse Helms have used their offices to build unprecedented extra-congressional organizations. Conservatives seem to move in and out of the Republican Party, using their positions in party organizations to strengthen this movement.

"Completing this picture of the conservative labyrinth are several more specialized groups. Conservative Democrats have been courted by the Right and recruited into bipartisan organizations in support of its domestic and foreign policies. The rise of the Libertarian Party complements the growth of the network."[3 ]

MODERATES AND THE RADICAL RIGHT

As Saloma steeped himself in his examination, he noted in his journal of that spring (1983),

"(conservative) groups closer to the center (like the Conservative Caucus are now) ... work(ing) (closely) with groups on the far right ..."[4] (groups like the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby, an anti-Zionist organization) and that these ties were becoming "important in the Religious Right."[5 6 ]

Today, more than ten years later - the web of Nazi sympathizers and collaborationists which has come to interlace the conservative movement [specifically, groups like the Republican Heritage Groups Council, the John Birch Society, the Liberty Lobby, the World Anti-Communist League (WACL {i.e., the Moonies}), the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), etc.] is astounding. Furthermore, the manner in which names appear, disappear, and reappear again in this web is mind-boggling. This is a phenomenon which Saloma also noted with alarm. He wrote,

"(I) ... quickly (began to) recognize ... that the same names appear(ed) again and again, reflecting ... (the innumerable) ties among these organizations (and individuals)."[7]

It is out of this web of relationships that the Illuminati Myth has surfaced, regaining a foothold in the American psyche that most observers had thought impossible.

THE EAGLE FORUM,
THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY &
THE LIBERTY LOBBY

Take one example out of many, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum. Schlafly and the Eagle Forum had first come to Saloma's attention during the Goldwater campaign of 1964 where her tract, A Choice, Not an Echo, became the movement's Bible. Saloma noted that -

"The New Right-Birch connections ... (were) ... (particularly) visible in the Schlafly organization."[8]

Frank Mintz, author of The Liberty Lobby and the American Right: Race, Conspiracy, and Culture, writes,

"The John Birch Society in the early 1960s aspired to the leadership of a radical right that strongly defended national sovereignty and opposed American membership in international organizations such as the United Nations. Closely related to this nationalist stance was a conspiratorial interpretation of U.S. history that made the Council on Foreign Relations (and the Trilateral Commission - editor) an ally of the Communist conspiracy."[9 ]

This interpretation has, at one time or another, named Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State Dene Acheson, the United States Army and the State Department as co-conspirators in the Communist effort to subvert the United States.[10 ]

Schlafly's links with the John Birch Society also brought her into contact with the Liberty Lobby; while these links may not be official ones, or even ones which were sought out, they are nonetheless very real. And the reason is simple - many of the same people who belong to the Birch Society also maintain strong ties with the Lobby. The membership between the two organizations overlap. Mintz calls it an "overlap in ideology and clientele." [11]

Russ Bellant, a well-known investigative reporter whose articles have appeared frequently in the New York Times, the National Catholic Reporter, etc., and whose work Allan A. Ryan, the former Director of the Office of Special Investigations for the U.S. Department of Justice calls very dependable, writes that the "... Lobby voices racist and anti-Semitic beliefs in addition to 'conspiracism'." Mintz explains:

"Structurally, the Lobby is a most unusual umbrella organization catering to constituencies spanning the fringes of Neo-Nazism to the John Birch Society and the radical right. It is not truly paramilitary, in the manner of the Ku Klux Klan and (the) Nazis, but is more accurately an intermediary between racist paramilitary factions (i.e., the "Citizen Militias") and the recent right."[12]

The Liberty Lobby bloomed in 1961 as a political lobby offering testimony before congressional committees. The Lobby's founder and moving force - though cloaking himself with the title of "Treasurer" - is Willis Carto, born July 19, 1926 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He served as a director of the far-right "Congress of Freedom;" Carto also served briefly as an early organizer for the John Birch Society.

Willis Carto is a virulent hate-monger and conspiracist who also helped launch the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). The IHR, which is located in Costa Mesa, California, denies the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews and other targeted groups ever took place; it is known to have sponsored conferences where notorious anti-Semitic and racists were the featured speakers.

Carto's Liberty Lobby maintains offices just a few blocks from the Capitol in Washington D.C. where it produces its weekly magazine, the Spotlight, a newspaper which celebrates neo-Nazis, skinheads, the Waffen SS, armed anti-Semites, and other anti-democratic forces.

Carto's links to Nazi sympathizers and collaborationists is inextricably bound up with Francis Parker Yockey. Yockey was an unabashed admirer of Adolf Hitler. In 1948, just three years after the end of the Second World War, Yockey published a ponderous 600 page book, Imperium, which was a rephrasing of Nazi dogma and which warned of a dire threat to Western Civilization by the Jews. In 1949, Yockey also wrote the "Proclamation of London" which openly called for the re-establishment of Nazism and the expulsion of the Jews from Europe. Despite his open record as a Nazi sympathizer, Yockey easily slipped in and out of the United States with little difficulty - revealing the official U.S. government ban on the entry of ex-Nazis and avowed Nazi sympathizers into the United States for what it really was - a sieve easily navigated.

In 1960 Yockey was arrested in San Francisco on fraud charges. He committed suicide in jail a few days later. Since then, Carto has sought to keep the Yockey flame alive. In 1963, Carto's Noontide Press published Yockey's Imperium with a dedication to Adolf Hitler. Carto also made the "Proclamation of London" available through his distribution network which included Noontide Press, American Mercury, the Spotlight, and Washington Observer Newsletter. Under oath during proceedings connected with a Liberty Lobby lawsuit in the late 1970s, Carto stated that he was an unabashed follower of Yockey and ipso facto a Nazi sympathizer.

Sadly, the thought that people today can get mixed up in organizations like Schlafly's Eagle Forum without, at the same time, establishing relationships (even if only unwittingly) with such people is simple-minded. This, of course, is not necessarily to say that many of the goals of the Eagle Forum are not commendable, or that Schlafly as a person or that the Eagle Forum as an institution endorse organizations like the Liberty Lobby, the John Birch Society or people like Francis Parker Yockey and Willis Carto. It's simply to say that people who join the Eagle Forum had better prepare themselves to run into such people - people who will mumble on endlessly about "conspiracies," the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, Illuminism, etc. - and that eventually, they will be affected by them. Historian Richard Hofstadter, in his 1967 work, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, has characterized the psychological make-up of these people as one which is distinguished by a conspiracy-oriented mindset involving fantasies of communist domination reaching from the local school board and PTA chapter to the corridors of power on Capital Hill and in the White House.

THE DANGERS OF PASSIVE ENDORSEMENT

Moreover, what Mintz discovered in the "overlap of ideologies and clientele" between the Liberty Lobby and the John Birch Society is - as Saloma described earlier - also true of all the other organizations of the "Secular Right" - the same names appear again and again from group to group and organization to organization; the "overlap in ideology and clientele" is stunning. It's like some huge yet intricate net of organizational and personal relationships in which the same names appear in one group, disappear, and reappear again in another; sometimes they appear simultaneously in several different groups; sometimes one name will appear in a position of power and influence in one gathering, and merely as a "foot soldier" in another; then just as suddenly the positions will reverse. It's like looking at smoke rising from a fire on a hot, windless day and trying to make sense of its direction and predict the patterns which will emerge.

Members of the right had it right during the McCarthy era, the protestations of leftists notwithstanding, when they used to describe those who associated themselves - sometimes wittingly, sometimes unwittingly - with Communists as "fellow travelers" - people who traveled in the same circles as Communists and Communist sympathizers. Their contention was a simple one - association, more often than most people care to admit, implies endorsement, or at the very least, passive acceptance. But if it was true for the Left then, it is also true for the Right now. Conservative Christians must begin to realize that for them to associate with institutions and personalities who have been tainted with the stain of fascism and Nazism is wrong, and something which must be avoided at all costs.

THE ATTEMPT TO CHANGE IMAGE
WITHOUT CHANGING SUBSTANCE

In response to their increasing links with moderate conservatives, far right activists have labored mightily to change their image and "gain public respectability." The effort has proceeded along two avenues; first, the far right has mounted an effort to surround itself with legitimate public figures, while at the same time hiding its unseemly past; and second, the far right has embarked on a calculated process of "desensitizing" the public to its radical agenda. Saloma reports that -

"the most dramatic example of this effort ... is the case of the American Security Council (ASC)."[13]

The person most responsible for establishing the ASC was General Robert Wood, then Chairman of Sears Roebuck (See our article, "The Business Right And The Christian Right An Alliance Made In Hell"). William Regnery, an incorporator and early leader of the America First Committee, helped Wood found the ASC. The ASC ostensibly focuses on foreign policy, military, and intelligence issues. There is, however, much more to the ASC than what first meets the eye. Russ Bellant calls the ASC "the clearinghouse" for foreign policy matters dear to the heart of right-wing ideologues. Bellant goes on to say,

"In spite of the veneer of respectability its board members' credentials might provide in some circles, the ASC ... serves as a connecting point between Nazi collaborationists and fascists on the one hand, and ... (establishment) policy makers on the other."[14]

And just how reliable are Bellant's findings? Again, Allan Ryan, the former Director of the Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice - the official U.S. government agency charged with tracking down ex-Nazis in the country - calls Bellant's work here, "well-documented and reliable." [15]

The key outreach arm of the ASC is the Coalition for Peace Through Strength. Composed of 171 organizations that are supposed to form a grassroots lobby for ASC political priorities, the Coalition is where many of the ASC extremists ties are established. The Republican Heritage Groups Council, an official organ of the Republican Party, and some of its component elements, such as Florian Galdau's[16] infamous, anti-Semitic Romanian-American Republican Clubs, are members of the Coalition. These ties to the authoritarian, collaborationist, and fascist Right are consistent with the history of the ASC.[17 ]

Bellant writes,

"The ASC began in Chicago in 1955, staffed primarily by former FBI agents. In its first year it was called the Mid-American Research Library. The organization's initial function was to compile files on suspected Communists who might apply for jobs in the private sector. Sponsoring corporations included such well-known firms as Sears Roebuck and Company, Motorola Incorporated, Marshall Field and Company, etc. At its peak, the council served more than 1,500 firms as the private equivalent of the FBI or Senate Internal Security Committee, with 6 million personnel file cards and a specialized subversive activities (defined as anti-business, pro-union activity) library. Files and documents were collected from the House Committee on Un-American Activities and several private file collections. Corporations joined to take advantage of what former FBI agent William Turner described in Power on the Right as"a dossier system modeled after the FBI's which was intended to weed out employees and prospective employees deemed disloyal to the free enterprise system (i.e., union activists)."[18]

In 1966, the Chicago library was closed and the American Security Council moved the collection to the Blue Ridge foothills in Virginia. President John Fisher, who came to the organization from Sears in 1956, announced that the council was shifting its focus to international security and nuclear strategy. [Fisher is another figure in the right-wing labyrinth; his involvement spans more than two decades.] The files - which continue to exist today - have been described by some observers as "America's largest private file system on the political beliefs of individuals anywhere in the world."

It is here, in the dim corridors and dusty catalogues of the old Mid-American Research Library, that we first come in contact with one of the most remarkable and enduring realities of the Right-Wing: the original (primordial) mythology which undergirded and motivated it: the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion! The entire ASC dossier system had been arranged around - and based upon - an original collection of one million names first compiled by a most extraordinary and unusual man named Harry Jung. Jung was the founder (1927) of the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation (AVIF), an anti-union spy operation.[19] Jung's research was motivated largely by a search for what he saw as a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, beginning first with Russia and ending with the United States.[20] Communism was merely a tool of the Jews' effort in this regard. With the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, Jung became the first major distributor in the United States of the anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

HARRY JUNG

Jung had first come in contact with the Protocols through acquaintances he had made in the East European communities of the Mid-West. Fascinated by what he heard, he had White Russian &eacutemigrés translate the Protocols from the Russian language to English.

Convinced that he had stumbled upon a giant conspiracy which aimed at the destruction of Christianity and the "American free enterprise system," he devoted the rest of his life to an effort to save America from the same fate which had befallen Russia.

Jung's attention soon focused on the nation's emerging trade union movement as the conduit through which the conspiracy was entering the country. And the ties of many of the labor union leaders of that era to the Soviet Union only served to confirm his belief.

The files, then, which Jung passed on to the ASC in 1951 contained much more than just the names of individuals; woven into the entire dossier system was Jung's demented paranoia and his anti-Semitic mindset. The files were used by Wood and the ASC in Chicago to aid McCarthyite demagogues of that era in their battle against the so-called "world-wide communist conspiracy"[21] - and one should not assume that with the passage of time the pull of this mindset has diminished to any great degree. We have already discussed its links to the Liberty Lobby and the John Birch Society, (both members of the Secular Right), but it also continues to permeate the mythology of conservative Christians and the Religious Right as well.

THE SECULAR HUMANIST CONSPIRACY

The conspiratorial mythology of the Religious Right parallels the conspiratorial mythology of the Secular Right; the two are inextricably intertwined - and so much so that it would not be an exaggeration to say that the one is the mirror image of the other, differing sides of the same coin. On the secular side it stimulates businessmen and anti-labor groups by portraying communism and labor unions as tools of Illuminism and it excites national and patriotic groups against the "one-worldism" (universalism) of Illuminism; and on the religious side it galvanizes Christians into action because it paints Illuminism as a dire threat to Christianity. But in the end, the two sides are feeding at the same trough - making the one (i.e., the Religious Right) the indespensible ally of the other (i.e., the Secular Right).

Pat Robertson, the man most responsible for urging Christians to enter the political process to "take the nation back for Christ and the church," proves the point by writing:

"It is clear to me, beyond any shadow of doubt, that ... there has been a continuity of policy and leadership in the United States that operates the same regardless of which nominee of the major political parties gains access to the White House ..."[1] Robertson sees this "continuity of purpose"[2] as "... a single thread (which) runs from the White House to the State Department to the Council on Foreign Relations to the Trilateral Commission ..."

Jung couldn't have said it better. Neither could members of the JBS. Robertson, like his secular counterparts, believes that - using this country as a springboard - the secular humanists aim at creating a - "... world government, a world police force, world courts, world banking and currency, and a world elite in charge of it all." [3] He further maintains that elements within the "movement" are also aiming at "... a complete redistribution of wealth, the ... elimination of Christianity ... (and) the deaths of two or three billion people in the Third World by the end of the decade."[4]

He continues,

"What is not easy to explain is why the concept of a new world order, taking as it does so many overtones from secret societies and the occult, could have been handed down and then carried forward in a purely natural progression for such an extended period of time.

"Wealth does not explain it, for the people behind the concept have gained wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Political power does not explain it, for all these players have reached the very pinnacles of power. Monopolistic capitalism does not explain it, because although one man or group of men, may be seized with megalomania, the heirs and successors to the business soon forget the dreams of empire held by their ancestors and predecessors in order to enjoy the possessions at hand ... No, there has to be something more. There has to be some other power at work which has succeeded in molding and shaping United States public policy toward one clear goal - world government - from generation to successive generation ... It is my firm belief that the events of public policy are not the accidents and coincidences we are generally led to believe. They are planed. Further, I do not believe that normal men and women, if left to themselves, would spend a lifetime to form the world into a unified whole in order to control it after it had been so unified. No, impulses of that sort do not spring from the human heart, or for that matter from God's heart. They spring, instead, from the depth of something that is evil, neither well intentioned nor benevolent."[ 5]

Jung would have been estatic.

PAT ROBERTSON AND THE
STRUGGLE AGAINST ILLUMINISM

And what specifically is the origin of this plan? Like Jung, Robertson traces the scheme back to Adam Weishaupt and the Illuminati. Jung's thoughts parallel Robertson's here. Robertson writes,

"On May 1, 1776 ... a Bavarian professor named Adam Weishaupt launched a small secret society called the Order of the Illuminati. Weishaupt's aims were to establish a new world order based on the overthrow of civil governments, the church, and private property and the elevation to world leadership of a group of hand-picked 'adepts' or 'illumined' ones.

"Weishaupt chose as his vehicle for infiltration and takeover the established Continental Order of Freemasons, of which Frederick the Great of Prussia had become sovereign grand commander and the wealthy Philippe of France, Duc d'Orleans, (who) had been elevated to grand master of the Grand Orient, as his lieutenant. In 1782 Weishaupt succeeded at the international convention of Freemasons held in Wilhelmsbad, Germany with his planned infiltration of the Continental Masonic Order and the creation of what he termed 'Illuminated Freemasonry'.

"His conspiracy was sufficiently successful from that point on to use French Freemasonry as a vehicle for placing members of the French Illuminati into key governmental positions. Once installed, these members set about to undermine the Bourbon dynasty of France and to prepare the way for the French Revolution. [6] It is believed that several of the key leaders of the French Revolution were members of the Illuminati.

"The slaughter that followed was not merely an assault on the king and the aristocracy - what was called the ancien regime - it was an assault against everyone, even the leaders of the Reign of Terror that followed on the heels of the revolution. The satanic carnage that the Illuminati brought to France was the clear predecessor of the bloodbaths and successive party purges visited on the Soviet Union by the communists under both Lenin and Stalin."

This is, of course, exactly what Jung had postulated. Robertson continues,

"When the French Revolution had run its course, more than a million Frenchmen were dead; the government, commerce, and agriculture were destroyed; the currency was debased; and the savings of the people were worthless. France was ready for dictatorship, not by the Illuminati, but by Napoleon. Thus ended the first modern new world order ..."[7 ]

THE ILLUMINATI, ROBERTSON &
THE FRENCH & RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS

Robertson then - in an astonishing display of "conspiracy-theory acumen" - weaves the French Revolution to the Communist Revolution using the thread of Illuminism; he writes:

"Although Illuminism had been banned in Germany and was discredited in France, it surfaced again in the 1800s through secret revolutionary societies holding to the basic tenets of Illuminism. Operating in France and Germany, these societies commissioned the writing of a militant (new) manifesto.

"In the preface to the 1872 German edition of the Communist Manifesto, the authors said. 'The Communist League (formerly called the 'League of Just Men' - comment by Robertson) ... which could only be a secret one ... commissioned the undersigned (Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels), at the Congress in London in November 1847, to draw up for publication a detailed theoretical and practical program of the party. Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the manuscript of which traveled to London to be printed a few weeks before the February revolution' ... So wrote Marx and Engels themselves!"

Robertson continues,

"In 1885, Cardinal Henry Manning* wrote that (in reality) the Communist International was not (really) the work of Karl Marx but that of secret political societies, which from 1789 to this day have been perfecting their formation, and ... have drawn closer together in mutual alliance and cooperation. In 1848 they were sufficiently powerful to threaten almost every capital in Europe by a simultaneous rising'.

"The precise connecting link between the German Illuminati and the beginning of world communism was furnished by a German radical named Moses Hess. According to Eugene H. Methvin, in his book, Rise of Radicalism: The Social Psychology of Messianic Extremism, 'In October of 1842 Frederick Engels stopped in Cologne and spent an afternoon with Moses Hess, then 30, who was known as the 'communist rabbi' for his missionary zeal in proselytizing for French utopian ideas. Hess later wrote a friend, 'Engels, an embryonic revolutionary, parted from me the most enthusiastic communist'. Engels himself credited his conversion to Dr. Hess, and a year later expressly declared that the latter was 'the first to make communism plausible to me and my circle'. He goes on to say, 'Marx and Engels planned to publish a German edition of Buonarroti's Conspiration pour l'egalite (Conspiracy for Equality), translated by Moses Hess ... Marx's extensive collection of books on the French Revolution contained a copy of Buonarroti's Conspiration'."[8]

Robertson goes on,

"The Illuminist streams clearly flowed in Marxist communism ... The atheism, destruction of property, hatred of civil government, ruthless reign of terror, lies and deception, and gross mismanagement of resources of world communism are all mirror images of the French Revolution. Communism draws its spiritual soul from the same impulses that were present in 1789.[ 9]

ROBERTSON, THE ILLUMINATI
AND THE FEDERAL RESERVE

Having linked the Illuminati with both the French and Russian Revolutions, Robertson then commences to link the United States with the "Grand Illuminist Conspiracy;" he writes,

"What the average man and woman find so difficult to understand, however, is how a Wall Street banker such as Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and Company could personally transport $20 million of gold to help salvage the near-bankrupt, fledgling communist government of the new Soviet Union - or how a man like Lord Milner of the British Roundtable could provide funds in 1917 to get them started again - or how the United States industrialists and bankers could repeatedly assist them in receiving massive private and governmental aid over the decades to follow."[ 10]

According to Robertson, the answer is as follows:

"... the centers of European finance (i.e., the Illuminati - editor) could not rest until they had brought the powerhouse of the New World (i.e., America - editor) into their orbit. In 1902, Paul Warburg, an associate of the Rothschilds and an expert on European central banking, came to this country as a partner in the powerful Kuhn, Loeb and Company. He married the daughter of Solomon Loeb, one of the founders of the firm. The head of Kuhn, Loeb was Jacob Schiff, whose gift of $20 million in gold to the struggling Russian communists in 1917 no doubt saved their revolution.

"Warburg was to become the catalyst, when joined with the Rockefeller and Morgan banking interests, to bring about the creation of a central bank for the United States. Here is how it happened. In 1907, the Morgan interests were believed to have provoked a national money panic to such a degree that Congress established in 1908 a National Monetary Authority under Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island (whose daughter married John D. Rockefeller II, and one of whose sons was named Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller). Aldrich was considered a close ally of the Rockefeller interests.[11]

"From all indications, the National Monetary Commission wasted two fruitless years, including some aimless travel in Europe. On November 22, 1910, another group was formed, consisting of Senator Nelson Aldrich; A. Platt Andrews, assistant secretary of the treasury; Frank Vanderlip, president of the Rockefeller National City Bank of New York; Henry P. Davison, senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company; Charles D. Norton, president of the Morgan-dominated First National Bank of New York; Benjamin Strong, another Morgan lieutenant; and Paul Warburg. The group left secretly by rail from Hoboken, New Jersey, and traveled anonymously to a private hunting lodge on Jekyll Island, Georgia.

"The meeting was so secret that none referred to the other by his last name. In 1935 Frank Vanderlip wrote in the Saturday Evening Post, 'There was an occasion near the close of 1910, when I was secretive, indeed as furtive as any conspirator ... since it would have been fatal to Senator Aldrich's plan to have it known that he was calling on anybody from Wall Street to help him in preparing his bill ... I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System'.

"At Jekyll Island, the true craftsman for the Federal Reserve was Warburg. The plan was simple. The new central bank could not be called a central bank because America did not want one, so it had to be given a deceptive name. Ostensibly, the bank was to be controlled by Congress, but a majority of its members were to be selected by the private banks that would own its stock.

"To keep the public from thinking that the Federal Reserve would be controlled from New York, there was a system of twelve regional banks. Given the enormous concentration of money and credit in New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York controlled the system, making the regional concept initially nothing but a ruse.

"The board and chairman were to be selected by the president, but in the words of Colonel Edward House, the board would serve such a term as to 'put them out of the power of the president'. The power over the creation of money was to be taken from the people and placed in the hands of private bankers who could expand or contract credit as they felt best suited their needs." Robertson concludes, "On December 21, 1913, American finance was captured by European finance (read, the Illuminati - editor) and their powerful American allies in the Money Trust [12] (i.e., the Schiffs, the Warburgs, the Kuhns, the Rockefellers, the Morgans, etc.[13] )."

From this date forward, according to Robertson, America has essentially been controlled by the "Illuminati."

Four years later, in 1917, according to Robertson, the Illuminati captured the Soviet Union, and since that time this sinister cabal has essentially played the one power off against the other with the aim of draining the strength out of both (i.e., the United States and Russia) by exhausting them in a hopelessly expensive arms race, and finally - when both nations lie prostrate - stepping in over their beaten bodies to assume power over the world. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the plan is already far advanced. Only the United States - now impossibly mired in debt and teetering on the verge of financial ruin - stands in the way; and only resurgent Christian political power can keep the U.S., the earth's last great hope, from collapse - or so Robertson believes. Robertson writes,

"Satan knows that a world government must soon be prepared for the man whom he is preparing to receive his particular empowerment and authority. Such a world government can come together only after the Christian United States is out of the way. After all, the rest of the world can federate any time it wants to, but a vital, economically strong, Christian United States would have at its disposal the spiritual and material force to prohibit a worldwide satanic dictator from winning his battle. With America still free and at large, Satan's schemes will at best be only partially successful. From these shores could come the television, radio, and printed matter to counter an otherwise all-out world news blackout. An independent America could point out Satan's lies. If America is free, people everywhere can hope for freedom. And if America goes down, all hope is lost to the rest of the world."[14]

ROBERTSON AND CHRISTIAN ACTION
AIMED AGAINST THE ILLUMINATI

The agenda that Robertson proposes to keep this from happening is simple: Christians must take America back from the secular humanists of the New-World Order. Robertson writes,

"The Christian Coalition is launching an effort ... to become acquainted with registered voters in every precinct. This is slow hard work. But it will build a significant database to use to communicate with those people who are registered voters. When they are mobilized ... elected officials listen ... We must rebuild the foundation of a free, sovereign America from the grassroots, precinct by precinct, city by city, state by state ... This decade will decide the outcome. Events are moving swiftly, but there is still time. My goal is to see a pro-freedom (read, pro-Christian - editor) majority in the United States Senate ... and a reversal of leadership in the House of Representatives by 1996 ... Since in most congressional or senatorial elections a 5 percent swing in the vote means victory or defeat, the power of the concept of a free, sovereign (read, Christian - editor) America is so strong that, if properly presented, it can sweep the one-worlders (read, the secular humanists) out of contention in the public policy arena in a short time.

"No group controlled by a narrow spectrum of internationalist money interests (read, the Illuminati - editor), however enlightened they may be, should be allowed to control in perpetuity the foreign policy, the treasury policy, and the defense policy of a great free nation."[15]

This, then - in a nutshell - is the thinking of Robertson - in his own words; and not only Robertson, but countless others in conservative Christian circles.

ROBERTSON, THE NEW WORLD
ORDER AND THE JEWS

To be sure, the effort by Robertson and others like him to separate the Jews out from direct attachment with the Illuminati Myth (at least as a community) seems at first - and in a perverse sort of way - commendable. The effort appears to be aimed at inoculating himself from the horrible side effects of the Illuminati Myth. It is doubtful, however, that the effort will, over the long run, succeed. The Jews are just too integral a part of the myth!

From its inception in the late 1700s until it finally burst forth upon the world in 1905, the Illuminati Myth has been inextricably bound up with the Jewish community. The main players in the myth have all been Jews. Robertson's Juden-frei (Jewish free) rendition of the Illuminati Myth can - at best - only eliminate mention of the Jewish community as a "corporate" player; it does not - indeed, it cannot - separate out the Jews as individual players. Moses Hess, the Rothschilds, the Schiffs, the Loebs, the Kuhns, etc. all continue to play the most prominent roles in Robertson's version.

For example, Robertson writes about the Rothschilds,

"That same year, 1782, the headquarters of Illuminated Freemasonry moved to Frankfurt, a center controlled by the Rothschild family. It is reported that in Frankfurt, Jews for the first time were admitted to the order of Freemasons. If indeed members of the Rothschild family or their close associates were polluted by the occultism of Weishaupt's Illuminated Freemasonry, we may have discovered the link between the occult and the world of high finance (i.e., the Jews!).[16 ]

Robertson continues,

"Remember, the Rothschilds financed Cecil Rhodes in Africa; Lord Rothschild was a member of the inner circle of Rhodes's English Roundtable; and Paul Warburg, architect of the Federal Reserve System, was a Rothschild agent. New money (presumably, Rothschild's - editor) suddenly poured into the Frankfurt lodge, and from there a well-funded plan for world revolution was carried forth. During a Masonic congress in 1786, the deaths of both Louis XVI of France and Gustavus III of Sweden were decreed."

Robertson sums up by implying that the connection between the world-conspiracy and the Rothschild family is the "Missing Link." [17 ] The missing link for what? - clearly, the Jews and the world-conspiracy of Illuminism!

In one short paragraph, Robertson - by inference - has linked the most powerful and well-known Jewish family of that era to the planned assassinations of two monarchs, the conquest of Africa, control of the English aristocracy (through the "Roundtable"), the French Revolution, the revolutions of 1848 and finally to the creation of the United States Federal Reserve System. One is left breathless!

It is but a short and logical jump from there (given what Robertson has presented and within the confines of the system he has created) to conclude that if the most powerful Jewish family in the world was linked to all this, then surely the Jews - as a community - must also have been involved. Robertson makes these kinds of linkages between the "world conspiracy" and the Jews throughout the book. And his occasional "warm words" for the Jews as a people do little to alleviate the consequences of his implied linkages.

THE JEWS: IN OR OUT?
WHICH IS IT?

One is left spinning. First the Jews are out of Robertson's lurid tale; then they are in; then out again - back and forth he goes, commending the Jews on one hand, condemning them on the other.

For example, on page seventy-four of The New World Order, Robertson calls the Jews "God's chosen people." Then Robertson turns to a well-known and even infamous anti-Semite, Nesta Webster, to substantiate parts of his thesis: Robertson writes on page seventy-one of The New World Order,

"British author Nesta Webster researched and wrote extensively on subversive movements. She described a group in Switzerland claiming direct descent from the founder of the Illuminati, Adam Weishaupt. She says, 'The same secret ring of Illuminati is believed to have been intimately connected with the organization of the Bolshevist revolution ... None of the leading Bolsheviks are said to have been members of the innermost circle, which is understood to consist of men belonging to the highest intellectual and financial classes, whose names remain absolutely unknown. Outside this absolutely secret ring there existed, however, a semi-secret circle of high initiates of subversive societies drawn from all over the world and belonging to various nationalities'[18] ."

The approving use here and elsewhere by Robertson of Webster's material is alarming. Why? - because she openly claims that - at its core - Illuminism is a Jewish conspiracy.

There can be no question about it. Webster - like Barruel - believes that the innermost circle of the Illuminati is made up exclusively of Jews. How is it possible for Robertson, on the one hand, to claim that the Jews are "God's chosen people," and on the other to agree - even if only by implication - that they constitute the Illuminati's innermost circle?

Robertson clearly knows what the writings of Webster are all about, yet he continues to cite her work over and over again to substantiate his own conspiracy fantasies. One is left to wonder that perhaps - just perhaps - Robertson's failure to mention the Jews in The New World Order has more to do with "politics" than with his real feelings regarding the matter.

Of course, no such "inner circle" - Jewish or otherwise - has ever been discovered. When asked for proof of its existence, Robertson writes on page seventy-two of the New World Order,

"Authors who expose subversive organizations are usually ridiculed because, when asked for proof of the identity of participants in secret societies, they have to answer, 'That is impossible, since the names are secret' ...

Robertson continues,

"But, invariably, there is a tiny secret core ring, a larger slightly less secret middle ring, then a much broader and more public group."[ 19]

With such casual deftness, Robertson relieves himself of the necessity of proof. God help the person who is ever hauled before a court over which he presides!

ROBERTSON:
NEW WORLD ORDER & NESTA WEBSTER;
INCONSISTENCIES AND EVASIONS

In interviews Robertson gave after it became public knowledge what New World Order was all about, Robertson claimed that he had not really written the book, but that a "ghost writer" had been responsible, particularly insofar as the use of Nesta Webster's material was concerned. But such a claim is farcical. To believe that a man as intelligent and as fastidious as Robertson is - and one who is so vain as to continuously make use of the "first person" throughout the book - would have permitted it (a best-seller in evangelical circles) to be published naming him as the author without being cognizant of its contents is nonsensical. Possibly Robertson's most loyal supporters could "buy off" on such a story, but certainly no one else! His belief in the Illuminist Conspiracy permeates all his writings, not just the New World Order - and no one who is as familiar with Illuminism as Robertson is, is not aware of who Nesta Webster is (was) or what her writings are all about. A man who can apparently lie as easily as Robertson can should be watched very closely - and people who would so blindly follow such a person deserve the fate that will most assuredly befall them someday.

Many Christians, of course, will find it difficult to come to any meaningful understanding of a man - Robertson - who can, on the one hand, have a black co-host for his flagship TV program, the "700 Club," and who also is an enthusiastic supporter of the nation of Israel, while on the other hand he embraces the anti-Semitic concepts inherent in the "Illuminist Myth" and maintains a close relationship with a man - Tom Ellis - who is (or has been) a director for the Pioneer Fund (an organization dedicated to proving the genetic superiority of the white race over and against blacks, Latinos and other minorities). How does one balance a Tom Ellis against a Ben Kinchlow? How is it possible for one to believe in the Illuminist Conspiracy while at the same time being an enthusiastic supporter of Israel? The inconsistency here is mind-boggling and appears to resemble the kind of inconsistency one would find in a naive buffoon. But Robertson is not naive, and neither is he a buffoon! - and people are making a great mistake in believing otherwise. It's more likely that he is trying to hide his real feelings - but which ones? That's the question! - and this kind of duplicity and obfuscation is apparent everywhere in certain elements of the Secular and Religious Right! "Rank-in-File" evangelicals should ask their leaders what they're trying to hide - which of their agendas are real, and which are "window dressing?" For example, which is real? - Kinchlow or Ellis? and which is "window dressing?" What really reflects Robertson's state of mind? - his support for Israel or his embrace of the Illuminist Myth?

PEEKING BEHIND THE FACADE

Which is real? Which isn't? It can't be both! Belief in the Illuminist Myth and love for the Jewish people are - by any rationale measure - mutually exclusive. Still, there's no getting around it - most of those who are involved with Robertson, while holding to an "Illuminist mindset," nonetheless strongly deny that there is anything anti-Semitic in what they are teaching; that they love the Jews and that they are deeply involved in Christian activism aimed at sustaining the beleaguered Jewish community, both in Israel and throughout the world.

But there's a catch! - to a large extent, that aid is ultimately aimed at (and predicated on) "CONVERSION" - and it's precisely here that the conundrum which revolves around Robertson and his "New Charismatic" allies begins to dissolve: the "New Charismatics" teach not only that the church must unite and subdue the earth before the Lord can return (please see box, previous page: "Dominionism"), but also that the Jews and Israel MUST be "saved" BEFORE He comes again - an event which can occur only after the Jews have been converted through the "preaching of the Gospel,"not the single event mentioned in Zechariah as premillennialists have previously maintained - a view of things which pictures the Jews recognizing Christ as their Messiah not before His return, but only when He finally appears in the clouds at His return. (Zech. 12:10 - 13:1)

Reuven Doron, a "Messianic" Jew, explains:

"The very nation (Israel) that once gave birth (to the church) now is in need to be birthed by another (so that Israel - acting together in consort with the church - can usher in the Return of Christ). Who will provide it? (i.e., Israel's rebirth) ... This premise of spiritual revival still hinges upon the rising and completion of the ministry of the prophetic "Son of Man" company ( i.e., the "New Breed," "Joel's Army," etc.) who is to prophecy the life-giving Word of God. Today the Lord is calling forth a Son of Man Company (i.e., the "New Breed") to corporately prophecy and speak to Israel's lifeless, hopeless white bones until the vision is completed ... the church is birthing Israel."[20 ]

Expanding on what Doron has said, Rick Joyner continues,

"The Jews have historically represented the greatest test for the gospel ... In a sense, Jews are the 'acid test' of our message. Until the church comes to the spiritual stature where she provokes the Jew to jealousy, we have not yet attained to what we have been called. The Jews were 'hardened' to make them the hardest to reach. In this way, they have become the barometer of humanity, reflecting the overall condition of the state of man. When the gospel is preached that grafts the 'natural branches' back into the tree, the church and Israel will then be able to reach the whole world. This is why Paul said that the gospel should be preached 'to the Jew first'. This was not just out of favoritism, but because the Jew represents the greatest challenge of the gospel, and one which we must have ... Even so, our relationship to the Jews is not meant to be a stumbling block, but a stepping stone ... The final joining together of both 'into one new man' ... resulting in the healing of all spiritual and cultural wounds. When the church and Israel have been grafted together ... the time of the restoration of all things may (i.e., will be permitted) begin ..."[21]

The implications which flow out of this kind of thinking for "unconverted" Jews are obvious and very menacing - and they go a long way in explaining how it's possible for the "New Charismatics" and those of their ilk to love and hate the Jews at the same time: Jews that convert they love; Jews that don't, they hate - these are the liberals, the secular-humanists - those that populate the boardrooms of Hollywood and Wall Street and who are responsible for pushing the anti-Christian agendas of the ACLU and the ADL, people to whom Robertson and his followers would have very little difficulty in consigning the appellation of "VILLAIN."

Indeed, the implications here for the Jewish community (especially the unconverted and liberal Jewish community) are so plain that Jewel van der Merwe writes in alarm and some astonishment at the naivetéof the Messianic Community (the converted Jewish community) in embracing this theology (which many of them have done) and not recognizing its implicit danger for their unconverted brethren:

"If history is anything to go by, it would be fair to say that should Israel (and Jews in general) fail to fulfill the ('New Charismatics') ... prophetic view of (things) ... (they) will again be blamed and accused of continued stubbornness and indifference. Again ... (they) become the 'scape-goat' for reckless and irresponsible theological views."[22]

Van der Merwe continues,

"It's ... hard to understand how ... Messianic Jews are being deceived by this teaching today."[23]

Indeed, Messianics who embrace this kind of thinking may someday find themselves forced to put guns to the heads of their Jewish brothers and sisters - and to a large extent, it may be pride which is propelling some Messianics in this direction - that is, of becoming the anti-Semitic toadies of the New Charismatics, and of being willing to pull the trigger of the gun aimed at their unconverted brethren. And the reason behind the pride? - the growing belief in some Messianic circles that they - not necessarily the present, physical Israel currently ensconced in the Middle East - are in fact the "real Israel of God;" that they, together with the church - maybe even more than the church - are the ones chosen to preach the "End Times Gospel," thereby ushering in the new era and the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. The irony in all this is enough to satisfy even the most twisted humor of the anti-Semites - indeed, it's enough to make Himmler role over in his grave with laughter! - Jews killing other Jews, all in the name of Christ.

And one shouldn't make the mistake that such a thing is as far-fetched as it might now seem - after all, many of the people the Messianic Jews are getting themselves mixed up with hold to an unshakable belief in a system of thought which directly or indirectly holds the Jews - at least unconverted Jews - responsible for the "Secular-Humanist Conspiracy" - and the last time such people came to power, they ended up trying to stomp out the "conspiracy" by exterminating the whole Jewish race. This is what Hitler and the Nazis were all about!

FASCISTS POSING AS CHRISTIANS

Fascists pretending to be Christians! - all this, of course, will come as a complete shock to most believers, especially to those who have been taught that Hitler had repudiated Christianity and was in fact a "New Age" theosophist; undoubtedly such people would be surprised to learn that Hitler actually conceived of himself NOT as a "New Ager," but as a "Christian Savior" commissioned by God to rescue mankind from the scourge of Illuminism.

But this is very much the case! - and it's very self-serving for Christians to think otherwise. For example, Hitler wrote,

"I AM CONVINCED THAT I AM ACTING AS THE AGENT OF OUR CREATOR - BY FIGHTING OFF THE JEWS (i.e., ILLUMINISM), I AM DOING THE LORD'S (i.e., CHRIST'S) WORK." [Mein Kampf (i.e., My Struggle), "Eher," 69].

Of course, there is a great difference in what Hitler thought of himself as opposed to what he actually was: Hitler was no real Christian (though he clearly thought of himself as one), and what he was actually doing was the devil's work - unless, that is, one is prepared to say that the Death Camps (i.e., Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, Dacau, etc.) were the creation of God. Nonetheless, it's a matter of pure fact that countless numbers of German Christians took Hitler at his word when he claimed to be "doing the Lord's work."

Christians in this country need to ask themselves if they're not blindly taking the word of their leaders in the same way - and not only their leaders in the Secular Right, but their leaders in the Religious Right as well. This is especially true of the "dominionists" (please see our article on Dominionism); it's precisely this kind of thinking - the kind which undergirds the dominionist mindset - which led Hitler and all of Germany down a path of infamy so terrible and vile that not even eternity will be able to erase their crimes. [Both the Lutherans and the Catholics of Germany were POST-MILLENNIAL in their eschatology, and therefore pre-disposed to accept the rather bizarre, Wagnerian post-millennial eschatology of Hitler's "Reich (National) Church" - we are presently in the process of translating portions of this eschatology from German to English; readers will be amazed at the similarities between the "dominionism" (so to speak) of the old Reich Church with the dominionism of today's New Charismatics. Perhaps the better word is "shocked!"]

Moreover, it's not just Antipas Ministries which has noticed Robertson's dominionist mindset. Many others have noticed it too. Clearly, Harvey Cox of Harvard University thinks Robertson is a dominionist. Moreover, according to Cox, it's not just Robertson, but almost everyone that is now associated with Robertson at CBN and Regent University. Given Robertson's charismatic mindset, Cox has little doubt as to Robertson's underlying dominionism - and it's not only Cox, but "outsiders" like Jeremy Rifkin who recognize Robertson's transition.

Finally, Robertson's writings (i.e., the Secret Kingdom, the New World Order, etc.) clearly reflect Robertson's dominionist mindset - and one cannot help but be impressed at the harshness of his dominionism. For example, what's one to think when Robertson speaks of the necessity of imposing by force the will of the "Christian majority" when Christians eventually take over the world? -

"... there must be a police force ... capable of bringing sure and swift punishment upon those who rebel against society" (Secret Kingdom)

- and when others of his ilk say that

"... there's going to be a CLEANSING ... there's going to be a PURGING ... coming forth ... and everyone that's living under the immorality cover ... will be brought down. And God's NEW BREED will come forth ..." (Bob Jones, Kansas City Prophets, Vineyard International)?

Pretty heavy stuff. It would have done Ernst Roehm and Heinrich Himmler proud!

OUR FEARS & HATREDS AS PRECIOUS THINGS

Sadly, it's too often characteristic of those who do battle for Christ - especially in the field of politics - that they are prone to see demons; in the pursuit of "Christian Justice," the godly frequently have a greater interest in the devil than they do in the Deity, as the bloody history of the Inquisition clearly attests.

In the pursuit of the "Just Cause," the virtuous often seem not merely to be tantalized by evil, but are actually in very great need of its presence. When there is no venal force afoot, it is difficult to galvanize people - particularly Christians - into political action, especially when that action is as fraught with discomfort and peril as "taking the nation back for Christ." This is no mere "spiritual exercise" in which one can participate at home in the comfort of a "prayer closet." This involves street demonstrations, strikes, passing out leaflets, possibly even jail - all very unpleasant and painful activities.

One does not enter into such activity lightly. There has to be a compelling reason - and that reason must be PERSONIFIED! It's not good enough to be simply against an idea, a system of thinking. How does one visualize an idea? How do you stick a knife into a thought? Secular humanism, what's that?

Ah, but the Illuminati, that's a horse of a different color! - that's something a person can sink his teeth into. Even if no one has ever seen the Illuminati, they're still people; we can deal with people. We only need to catch them. We can imprison them. If necessary, we can even kill them.

The "virtuous" need the demonic - and they need it to be personified - because their role identity cannot find meaning except in association with a complementary and opposing role. For this reason the magistrate in Jean Genet's The Balcony begs the criminal not to mend his ways so that he himself may continue to exist as a magistrate; [1] so the physician needs the sick, the policeman needs the robber, the teacher needs the student, the cowboys need the Indians, etc. The seemingly antithetical are often symbiotic. And in this sense, unfortunately - and to a greater extent than most Christians care to admit - Christians are intrigued by and vicariously addicted to evil, to the devil. Knowing who the devil is, they nonetheless find him stimulating and extremely titillating.

In the name of vigilance, sin - especially sin in others - all too often becomes a Christian's preoccupation. His own relationship with God takes a back seat to his obsession with the devil in others. And it's no accident that those who make the most vehement claim to the virtues of "traditional Americanism" - for example, the American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV), the Christian Coalition, etc. - are exactly those who dwell most obsessively on the sins of "secular humanism" - even to the extent of appropriating to themselves what are taken to be "New Age" methodologies in order to carry on the struggle (incessant networking, pyramiding, secrecy, infiltration, the formation of front organizations, the formation of political action committees, etc.).

If the impetus of one's life feeds on a phobia, then the phobia, instead of being easily discarded, will be maintained at all costs. This is why Robertson, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary and having, according to his own admission, never been able to offer proof of so much as one person's membership in the cabal, continues to believe in its existence.

Arguments and evidence which demonstrate the groundlessness or exaggerated quality of such fears are not welcomed as sources of relief, but are resented as denials of one's own deep psychological outlets - intrusions which, if taken seriously, would demand a drastic reorientation of one's life-work. It is in this way that - all too often - our fears and hatreds become precious things, and rather than seeking liberation from them, we often hold blindly to them, even in the face of persuasive arguments to the contrary. [2]

Robertson and men like him need the existence of the Illuminati. How else can they mount their crusade to take America back "for Christ and the church." Secular humanism cannot possibly serve as a viable target. Ah, but the Illuminati, they can!

Professor Richard Hofstadter sums it up: he writes, "... Populist thinking shows an unusually strong tendency to account for relatively impersonal events in highly personal terms. An overwhelming sense of grievance does not find satisfactory expression in impersonal explanations ... Populist thought often carries one into a world in which ... simple virtues and unmitigated villainies ... (are) projected on a national and even international scale ... A villain is needed, marked with the unmistakable stigmata of the villains of melodrama, and the more remote he ... (is) from the familiar scene, the more plausible his villainies ... (can) be exaggerated. It ... (is) not enough to (simply) say that a conspiracy ... (is) going on (without establishing who the villain is)."[3] And, moreover, this is why even the "Illuminati" will not long suffice as an adequate target. Who the heck are they anyway? The target will have to be narrowed more than that!

JEWS AS THE TARGET: THE PATHOLOGY

This is the reason the Jews will eventually resurface as the main villains. This is why soon, very soon - especially as economic conditions worsen for every-day working Americans, as multiculturalism, "affirmative action," militant feminism, etc. are forced upon middle-class, majority whites "at the point of a gun" (the government's gun) - people will stop talking about the "Secular-Humanist Conspiracy" and begin talking about the "Illuminist Plot," and finally the "Jewish / Masonic Conspiracy." Secularists would say it's impossible. Christians will insist that their love for the Jews this time is real, and that they will never again allow such thinking to reappear in their community; but - in the end - all this won't matter. The people need a villain - especially people who claim they "are fighting for God." And what better villain is there than the Jews? - ESPECIALLY LIBERAL JEWS! As hatred for the Jews increases, Christians - especially evangelicals - will try to differentiate between liberal / secular Jews, and conservative ones. But in the end, it won't matter much, especially as the alliance between the Secular Right and the Christian Right tightens and takes hold. The Secular Right makes no such distinctions!

THE CASE AGAINST THE JEWS

And what a case they have! - after all, isn't Hollywood - "out from where all the filth of the world flows" - controlled by the Jews? Certainly Nixon thought so. Isn't the ACLU - the organization most responsible for stripping the nation's public institutions of their Christian foundation - "a Jewish creation?" Aren't they the ones who "control Wall Street?" - Ford certainly thought so. After all, who exactly are Ivan Boesky and Michael Millikan, if not Jews? - and isn't Wall Street primarily responsible for shipping all our jobs overseas to Third World sweat shops. This is to say nothing about how "the Jews financed the Civil Rights Movement," (and in the process forced upon majority whites all the attendant evils which followed in the wake of integration (i.e., forced busing, white flight, etc.); provided the legal rationale for "affirmative action;" and were (are) the driving force behind multiculturalism - or so most evangelicals and blue collar Catholics think, at least behind closed doors and in the privacy of their own living rooms.

Yes, the Jews will resurface again as the villains as sure as the sun rises in the east. It may not be next month, or next year, or the year following, but in the end it will happen. The people need a villain - especially when they are under financial and cultural stress - against which their rage can be directed, and the Jews - ESPECIALLY LIBERAL JEWS - seem ready made for the part. No, they're not there yet; but soon, very soon, they may very will be. It's just a matter of time. And once again, the Secular-Humanist Conspiracy (aka, the Illuminati Plot. aka the Jewish / Masonic Conspiracy) will play (is playing) a pivotal role in all this. And what about Premillennialism - the bulwark of yesterday's Christianity against the scourge of anti-Semitism? IT'S DEAD! Political Christianity has killed it off. Premillennialism simply can't exist as a viable way of thinking in a political context. Postmillennialism and dominionism are moving in to fill the vacuum - and wherever these two are found, there - lurking in the background - will be found the Illuminist Myth.

BUT WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY? - THE ENEMY IS "US," NOT "THEM"

But what Christians do when they "buy into" such thinking - even the "sanitized" thinking which postulates only "secular-humanists" as the villain - is to ignore the plain teaching of the Scriptures. The Bible says that the evil which exists in the world today does not emanate from some peculiar, hidden cabal of Satanic schemers - as the Illuminist Myth so clearly postulates - but that it is resident in us! - in ALL of us! The Bible says,

"From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your (own) lusts that war in your (own) members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war ... Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your (own) lusts." (James 4:1-3)

And again,

"...from out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, blasphemy, pride, foolishness ... these evil things come from within ..."

And again,

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Rom. 3:23)

Pogo summed it all up when he said,

"We has met the enemy, and they is us!"**

When we ignore the plain teaching of the Scriptures with regard to this matter, when we blame the sin that infects the world on others or on some peculiar group rather than on ourselves, then - whether we realize it or not - we are helping to lay the foundation upon which the Illuminist Myth can be constructed - and in doing so, we may be helping to fabricate the gallows from which we too may someday hang.*** This is exactly what German Christians did when they "bought into" the Illuminist Myth sixty years ago - and this is what we are doing today when we "buy into" this kind of thinking.

THE "NEW BREED" DOMINIONISM OF THE "NEW CHARISMATICS"

Again, you protest; you say it could never happen. Oh, really? - a quick examination of the "New Breed" and "Joel's Army" teaching of the Vineyards and similar groups should swiftly dispel such "optimism:" the fact of the matter is, the "New Breed" and "Joel's Army" teachings of these groups parallels rather closely the kind of thinking which seized the imagination of our German counterparts sixty years ago - a kind of thinking which speaks of seizing control of the earth and then "cleansing" and "purging" it "Death Squad" style:****

"As we say the day approaching, there's going to be a CLEANSING ... there's going to be a PURGING ... coming forth ... and everyone that's living under the immorality cover ... will be brought down ... And God's NEW BREED will come forth."[4] *****

This is EXACTLY the kind of "artful" phrasing that was used in Hitler's Germany against the Reich's enemies!

Jewel van der Merwe, an outspoken critic of this type of thinking describes the magnatism of this kind of eschatology on a people desperate for a way to reclaim America for "Christ and the church:" van der Merwe writes,

"Blow the trumpet! Hear the noise of the chariots! The chariots are leaping across the mountains! The army of the Lord is approaching! 'The earth will quake before them; the heavens shall tremble ... a great people and a strange: there hath not been ever the like'. Utterly awesome! This army is mentioned in Joel.

"This is the army that (certain) teachers and prophets are declaring that God is raising up in these days. The end-time army.

"Do you want to be a part of it? Just think, you will be able to climb the wall like men of war. Even when you fall on the sword you will not be wounded. Crowds clap and cheer as they visualize the wondrous feats they will be able to perform in the Name of the Lord! No one wants to miss God and not be a part of what He is doing! It all has such a 'spiritual' ring. The tears well in the eyes of hungry seekers as they wait for a new experience. Perhaps, even tonight the heavens will open and that 'anointing' will be poured out. There is always that expectancy that perhaps this is the time 'it' will happen ... The 'prophetic' message is that God is raising an army in these last days to execute judgment and dominion throughout the earth ... They (i.e., the prophets and teachers) declare that the time is at hand for God to pour out His Spirit (the Latter Rain) on an unprecedented scale on the Church in fulfillment of Joel 2:28, marking the beginning of the great 'new thing' God is doing on the earth."[5 ]

John Wimber, head of Vineyard International, explains,

"With the judgment of all mankind will come this incredible 'incarnational enduement' of God's Spirit and we will see the Elijahs ... This end time army will be made of the Elijahs of the Lord God ... There will be a filling of the Temple. That is why we are prophesying and saying to you that it is coming soon ... These things ... will come. Suddenly, immediately, right-away a change - in a moment - without notice ..."[6]

Jack Deere continues - ******

"... this army is totally unique. This army, there's never been one like it and there never will be one like it in ages to come ... It's so mighty that there's never been anything like it before ... This is the ultimate in Apostolic government."[7]

Bob Jones, another "seer," says,

"They (Joel's Army) will move into things of the supernatural that no one has ever moved in before. Every miracle, sign and wonder that has ever been in the Bible - they'll move in it constantly ... so that the glorious church might be revealed in the last days ..."[8]

This is Hitlerism, plain and simple - a CHARISMATIZED form of it, no doubt, but Hitlerism, nonetheless.

NON-CHARISMATIC EVANGELICAS

And "old-line" evangelicals can't be let off the hook either; they too will also bear a great deal of responsibility if a new Holocaust breaks out in the service of this perverted theology! Why? - because in their over-arching concern to "take the country back for Christ and the church" they have allowed themselves to be blinded to the true message of the Lord Jesus Christ and have become the "bedfellows" with people who hold views inimical to sound Christian doctrine. This is precisely what JOE ALDRICH of Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon is doing when he unites himself with "Latter Rain" teachers like Dick Iverson.

On That Day - when it finally comes, and it will - we'll see who was right: those who stood against the "Political Christianity" which is being pushed today throughout the country and who were not afraid to name names in speaking out against it, or those who today refuse to speak out against what is happening in the name of "Christian Unity."

"MAINSTREAMING" DOMINIONISM INTO EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY: THE PROMISE KEEPERS!

No doubt, many Christians will be tempted to believe that we are merely being alarmist here when we talk about all this. But the fact of the matter is, the extent to which this kind of thinking has been "mainstreamed" into the evangelical church can be measured by the enormous success of an incredible phenomenon which has appeared recently - a phenomenon which would have been unthinkable not too many years ago: the Promise Keepers phenomenon.

Why? - BECAUSE THE PROMISE KEEPERS ARE BASICALLY THE CREATION OF THE VINEYARD FELLOWSHIPS - the main purveyors of the "New Breed" and "Joel's Army" teachings touched on above. No matter how one cuts it, the fact is, the Promise Keepers have emerged largely out of the bizarre eschatological mileu that surrounds the Vineyards (Latter Rain, the Kansas City Prophets, Paul Cain, etc.).[9]

Promise Keepers is a men's movement (a white male affair) that has been sweeping the country. It started in 1991 with 4,200 men at the Coors' Event Center in Boulder Colorado. This year, nearly a million men will attend Promise Keepers conventions across the country. Ostensibly, Promise Keepers is a call for men to keep their promises to God, their families and their communities. It calls for integrity in every area of life and for the reinstatement of traditional Christian-based values into American culture - a process which, they believe, must begin with men re-establishing themselves as the head of their families, their churches and their local communities.

So widespread and popular has this movement become, that it has been prominently featured in the mainline press and on the major news networks as a "comer" - a movement with powerful political ramifications and one which, as a result, deserves to be closely watched by the national media. Thousands and thousands of pastors and churches have been (or are in the process of being) networked into the movement, and there is no indication that its rate of growth is slackening or abating - and it's precisely the kind of people who have been attending Promise Keepers conventions which make up the core element of today's Religious Right.

PROMISE KEEPERS: A VINEYARD CREATION

And to what extent is Promise Keepers a creation of the Vineyards? Well, for one thing, ALL of its leaders are (and have been) members of the Vineyard Churches (despite the rather vacuous and somewhat superficial presence of many well-known Christian leaders throughout the country on its Board of Advisors). Randy Phillips, Promise Keepers first president, is pastor of the Boulder Vineyard. Bill McCartney and Randy Phillips were the founders of Promise Keepers; McCartney too is a member of the Vineyards.[10]

Promise Keepers current president is James Ryle. Ryle also is a Vineyard pastor and - together with Paul Cain [the same Paul Cain who gained fame (infamy) several years ago as one of the bizarre and wacky "Kansas City Prophets")] - is a prominent speaker at Vineyard conferences.[11] Ryle is presently a member of the Board of Directors of Promise Keepers.[12] All these men (Phillips, Ryle, Wimber, Cain, etc,) concur in the belief that Promise Keepers is the fulfillment of a vision by various members of the Kansas City Prophets (Paul Cain, Rick Joyner, Bob Jones, Mike Bickle, etc.) in the mid-1980s which spoke of stadiums being filled with men whom God was preparing as His "New Breed" to "take the nation (and eventually the world) back for Christ and the church."[13] And one doesn't have to look too hard for the connection here.

For example, Jewel van der Merwe's newsletter, Discernment, reports on an interview that Ryle recently gave on this matter. Van der Merwe reports,

"In a recent interview in response to a question as to whether the Promise Keepers could be fulfilling the prophecy in Joel of raising an army, James Ryle answered, 'Yes ... 300,000 men have come together so far this year under Promise Keepers ... Never in history have 300,000 men come together except to go to war. These men are gathered for war."[14]

Wimber, Cain, Bickle, Joyner, Phillips, etc. have all made similar statements.

Wes Campbell, another Vineyard pastor and an ardent supporter of Promise Keepers says he too had a vision (1984) which he now believes concerns the Promise Keepers - this time as "Joel's Army." He claims that what he saw relates to the condition of things which will surround the rise of this great force (i.e., "Joel's Army," aka the "New Breed," aka, "the Promise Keepers") in the "Latter Days." He says,

"And the church was gathered in a large civil war-type big stately mansion, a big ballroom, and they were dancing. And they were dressed in colorful clothes and happy, and they were moving and they were laughing and they were dancing and they were just having the wonderful party of their life ... And he looked at that and Bob (apparently Bob Jones) began to laugh and he said 'Look at them dance, look at them have fun'. And an angel came and said 'Wait. Not yet'. And then what happened is that strangely in the ballroom, the crowd began to change, and they began to take sides, and they began to have blue coats and gray coats, and in a moment civil war broke out."

Ryle has had a similar vision. Essentially, it's a follow-up on Campbell's vision. He says

"And they went into a terrible fight, and it was father against son, brother against brother, and a man's enemies were in his own house. And the angel said this: 'There won't be a house that escapes weeping'. We do not know how long this time of visitation will continue in this capacity. But when the time is up you run with all your might, because as this begins to be known throughout the entire Christian community of the world, there will come a polarization. There always has come a polarization ... And there eventually will become wars. There will be wars in your household. Your own family may not understand what's going on."[15]

Paul Cain, one of today's principle teachers of such doctrine, claims the angel of the Lord told him about all this when he was nineteen.

And who exactly is the enemy here? - those who are under the "immorality cover" (i.e., the liberals) and Christians opposed to the rule of the "New Breed!"

This is Illuminism! - an extreme form of it, no doubt, but Illuminism nonetheless. This is exactly what Hitler was preaching!! And if these people (i.e., those who buy into these myths) form the core constituency of the Religious Right - then God help us all! - because the Religious Right is now the core constituency of the GOP.

THE VINEYARDS, DOMINIONISM, THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND THE GOP

And that's not just what we at Antipas Ministries think, that's what mainstream conservative columnists like Robert Novak think. Novak writes,

"The religious right, led by Robertson's Christian Coalition, is (now) the most dynamic growth element in the Grand Old Party ..."[16]

- and Novak recommends that those in the GOP learn to live with that fact because anything less for Republican candidates and office holders is "suicidal."[17]

Novak says,

"Trying to keep the conservative newcomers (i.e., the Religious Right) out of the party is an exercise in futility ..."[18]

And people make a big mistake in believing that Robertson's thinking differs that much from Wimber's, Joyner's, Cain's, Bickle's, Phillip's, Ryles', etc. After all, what should one think when Robertson says,

"Now what do you do? What do I do? What do all of us do? We get ready to take dominion! It's all going to be ours - I'm talking about all of it. Everything that you would say is a good part of the secular. Every means of communication, the news, the television, the radio, the cinema, the arts, the government, the finance - it's gong to be ours! God's going to give it to His people. We should prepare to reign and rule ..."[19]

GET OUT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

God help us all if American Christians repeat the same mistake Christians in Germany made when they allowed themselves to be attached to Nazism in the 1930s - thinking that Hitler's radicalism and conspiracy fantasies would fade after he gained power. In doing so, they thought they were fighting atheistic communism (just as Christians today think they are fighting against "Secular-Humanism"); but in the end they endorsed a "solution" to communism which was far worse than the "problem" they had originally set out to expunge. It was a mistake they all lived to regret - but a mistake they were unable to rectify after the fact. A very wise friend of ours once told us, Satan first creates a problem, then offers the solution - and it's the solution (in this case, taking back America for "Christ and the Church") which ultimately is the trap, not the original problem. The problem was merely the bait. Dear God - open the eyes of your people!!

• *It's interesting to note in this connection the close links Catholics have historically had with the Illuminist Myth. From it's beginning with the Abbe Baurrel through E.E. Eckert, des Mousseaux, Cardinal Manning, etc. the main instigators have all been Catholics. While the Orthodox Russians no doubt helped spread the myth, those who "wrote" it were clearly all Catholic. Perhaps one should ask himself what it is about Catholicism which could create an atmosphere condusive to the genesis of such ideas? - and more, what was it about Catholicism which allowed itself to be so easily used in the 1920s, '30s, and'40s by the fascists (the Concordat, the Ustashi, etc.) and which after the war allowed itself to be used as a "ratline" for O.D.E.S.S.A. and similar organizations?
• **Indeed, if the Bible targets any group, it's the self-righteous - those who point to the sin in others as the source of their problems rather than to the sin that is within them; and here, it leaves little to the imagination with regard to its contempt towards those who fail to see that they too are sinners, just like everyone else: "For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. (Matt 23:4) "Woe unto you ... (you self-righteous) hypocrites, for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. (Matt. 23:14) Woe unto you, ... (you self-righteous hypocrites) for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. (Matt. 23:15)
• ***Why? - because these things have a way of boomeranging, a way of coming back on those who originate them.
• ****For example, take a bulletin advertising two "New Charismatic" conferences in which various "prophets" were scheduled to appear in the fall of 1984; the first conference was entitled "Mobilization: To put into action or use. To organize people and resources to bring into readiness for immediate active service. To become organized and ready for war;" the second was entitled "Strategy: The planning and directing of large-scale military operations. Maneuvering forces into the most advantageous position prior to actual engagements with the enemy." The site of both conferences was the Grand Assembly Hall at the New Heritage USA in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Jim Bakker's old headquarters which had been cleaned up and taken over by several new evangelical organizations.
• *****The links between the Illuminist Myth and the eschatology of "Latter Rain" (out from which many of the concepts which undergird the bizarre teachings of the "New Breed" and "Joel's Army" emanate) reach back to the turn of the century and involve most of the early "Latter Rain" teachers - more about this in upcoming issues. Suffice it to be said for now that the term "New Breed" was not chosen by accident.
• ******Deere is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary; Deere has openly broken with many of the teachings of Dallas - and jokes about it; as a result, there has been a tendency among many pre-millennialists to dismiss Deere's "New Breed" teachings (see our article, "Bob