Christian Leaders Complicit in Covid Propaganda Machine - Part 1

Christian Leaders Complicit in COVID Propaganda Machine. That is a topic we'll discuss today right here on The Christian Worldview, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host.

The Christian Worldview.org, and our toll-free number is 1-888-646-2233. Over the last year, reports have been coming out of Australia that the country formerly known for its happy-go-lucky G'day Mate disposition has slid into authoritarian beast mode in its response to COVID. The government's heavy-handed mask in vaccine mandates, quarantine centers, travel strictures, and protest suppression, cheered on by the media, left many to question what's up down under. So when the number one tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic from Serbia, arrived in Australia last month to compete in the Australian Open, an inevitable showdown occurred, but not on a tennis court. The issue was that Djokovic was unvaccinated, but had received an exemption from the Victoria State government, one of the states in Australia, to enter the country, at least in part because Djokovic had recently overcome the virus. But Djokovic was detained upon arrival and quarantined for days while a legal battle ensued.

The media spotlight from around the world was white-hot. Would one man who posed little to no health threat to anyone be allowed to stay? Sure to form, the federal government in Australia said no, deporting him on, quote, health and good order grounds, unquote. The draconian repression of individual liberties taking place in Australia, Canada to our north, Europe, and yes, America, should be concerning to Christians. While the faith will never be extinguished through government oppression, in fact, it often grows through it, every believer has the God-given desire to speak and live God's truth in freedom. James McPherson, a columnist for The Spectator Australia, joins us today from Sydney, Australia, to discuss what has been taking place there. Then Megan Basham, reporter for The Daily Wire, will join us to discuss how the most notable Christian leaders in America are willingly using their platforms to advance highly debatable or debunked COVID propaganda from government officials like Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, and also who is a professing evangelical. You are highly encouraged to read Megan's recent expose on this entitled How the Federal Government Used Evangelical Leaders to Spread COVID Propaganda to Churches.

We have it linked on our website, thechristianworldview.org. But first, let's speak with James McPherson, columnist for The Spectator in Australia. You know, I read your a couple of your recent columns about what had been taking place in Australia with regard to COVID and then more specifically, the recent incident with Novak Djokovic. And this was international news because of his high profile nature of being number one in the world. He's won nine Australian Open titles and he's also won 20 Grand Slam titles. That's tied with Nadal and Federer. These three players in the same generation have each won 20 major titles, which is a record for each of them.

And they're both vying to see who can get the most before they have to retire. So this is a really big story from a sporting standpoint that the number one player has been deported from Australia to play in the Australian Open, but also the whole element of COVID. And we've heard here in America, really the authoritarian manner in which Australian government has dealt with this virus.

So what was the situation like in Australia? Well, you know, we've had some of the most restrictive lockdowns in the world here in Australia and particularly in Melbourne, which hosts the Australian Open. So a lot of us were looking forward to the tennis as some relief from the overbearing restrictions that we've endured for the better part now of two years. But David, one of the things that's happened with the Australian Open and indeed with a lot of sporting events in Australia is they're becoming increasingly political and they're being used to promote different political causes. In Australia, you might be aware Margaret Court is our most famous tennis player. She's won more Grand Slams than any other woman in the world. And every year, because of her strong stance against same sex marriage, there's a campaign to remove her name from one of the main courts that the tournament is played upon. So the LGBTQI lobby use the Australian Open every year to push their cause.

And then this year, of course, Novak arrives. He has not disclosed his vaccination status, and the government decided to use him as an example of what happens if you go against the narrative being that you must be vaccinated or somehow you're a terrible person. And so Novak's crime was to arrive as a perfectly healthy, fit young man, but without having had the vaccine. And that goes against everything we're being told. We're being told if you don't have the vaccine, you're a danger to yourself, you're a danger to others. And if he had come unvaccinated and won the Australian Open as an unvaccinated man, that would have cut against everything that the government is trying to inculcate people with.

So they could not allow that. And so they found a reason to deport him and make an example of him. For many of us here in Australia, we shudder to think if that's what they'll do to the number one tennis player with the eyes of the world on Australia, what would they do to a private citizen who's anonymous, who stands against the government narrative? So it was quite incredible what they did. And I think it sends a message and not a good one about where Australia is at right now.

Wow, that is really incredible. James McPherson with us today on the Christian worldview, a columnist for The Spectator in Australia. You can read his columns.

We have them linked at our website, thechristianworldview.org. So why did they let him in Australia in the first place? If they merely were going to say, well, as you wrote in your columns, this is going to create a problem because people who are anti vaccination, covid vaccination are going to be encouraged or inspired by him being able to come in the country.

That's what the government said. They said we can't allow him to stay because so-called anti-vaxxers. And of course, I've never met an anti-vaxxer. I've met lots of people who have questions. I've met lots of people who have concerns, but they've all been labelled anti-vaxxers, which is the most intellectually lazy form of argument these days, where instead of engaging with people's genuine concerns, you simply label them as anti this or anti that.

And therefore, you can dismiss them completely. But the government argued that somehow if Novak was in the country, his very presence would inspire people to resist the vaccine. And it's as if they imagined that every time Novak hit the cross-court forehand winner, you know, 50 Australians would suddenly become unvaccinated as if he had these magical powers. It was quite insulting to the intelligence of Australians. If you're hesitant to take the vaccine, I don't think the presence of a Serbian tennis player is somehow going to affect you one way or the other. And so it was quite insulting to suggest that Australians are so infantile that they would take their medical cues from a foreign tennis player. But anyway, back to your original question, how did they end up with Novak in the country?

There's a lot of conjecture about this, and this is my suspicion, though at this point it's only suspicion. I think tennis Australia were very keen to have Novak here. As you said in your introduction, he and the Darla tied on 20 Grand Slam wins each. So the Australian Open this year would have been incredible with the two of them battling each other to become the most winningest player in history. Tennis Australia clearly wanted Novak in the tournament. He's worth a lot of money to them. And I think tennis Australia encouraged Novak that it would be OK if he just got here and if he had certain documents, he would be fine.

I think that's what Novak was told. I think tennis Australia privately hoped that though it wasn't completely in order, that once he got here, the Australian government would wave him through, because after all, he's the number one tennis player and and they wouldn't want the international embarrassment. What tennis Australia, I suspect, underestimated was just how determined the Australian government are to push their COVID narrative. And of course, we've got a federal election coming up later this year. And in this country, if you've been strong on COVID and restrictions, you go up in the opinion polls. It's not like how I understand Florida is in America, where if you give people freedom, you become more popular.

In Australia, we've got this perverse situation where the more you restrict people's freedoms, the more they love you. And so the federal government, who are trailing in the polls with an election looming, decided this was a good opportunity to show how tough they are on security and how committed they are to keeping people safe, even keeping people safe from a guy who does nothing more than hit tennis balls across the court. So Novak arrived, the Australian government called his bluff and sent him home. What was interesting is that a court overturned the original visa cancellation because of the way that Novak was treated.

He was denied fairness. He arrived in Australia. He was kept in an interview room for about eight hours after an international flight. He was told that he could contact his lawyers that morning. But before his lawyers were even out of bed, the Australian Border Force said, you know what, we're not going to allow you that opportunity.

We're just going to cancel your visa and deport you immediately. Well, that was appealed in court and the court found he was treated unfairly and that he should be allowed to stay. Well, then the federal government immediately appealed that and it went to the federal court. And the federal court found not that Novak was breaking any laws. They simply found that the government under our legislation has the right to kick anybody out of the country for any reason they want. So the visa was eventually canceled. But as I said, not because Novak did the wrong thing, simply because the legislation here gives the immigration minister the power to expel a foreigner for pretty much any reason.

So Novak never had much of a chance. And the reason really was, and they said it out loud, was that they didn't want to inspire more anti-vaccination sentiment. Meanwhile, something like you wrote in your column that 90 percent of the country is, quote unquote, vaccinated. And yet the caseload all over the place is thousands and thousands of cases per day. And the idea that I think Australia has this COVID zero purpose, that they think they're going to eliminate COVID or something. How does the public go along with more restrictions causes them to support those who put more of these really authoritarian restrictions on them?

How does that work? I think Australia is in an abusive relationship with our government. And I think when you're in an abusive relationship, you don't want to admit that you're in an abusive relationship.

You don't want to face that truth because that's that's a terrible thing to have to face. And so instead, you rationalise and you make excuses for your abuser, believing that ultimately, you know, it's going to be all right. And I'm sure their intentions are good.

And if I just do this latest thing that they've asked me to do, then it's all going to work out. And I think Australia is in this strange relationship with our government where the nastier they are to us, the more we justify and excuse them because we would rather believe that than face the truth that we've been taken for a ride. The government originally told us, just just give us two weeks to prepare our health system and then you'll be released from lockdown. Well, a two week lockdown turned into months and months and months of lockdowns. Then they said, just get vaccinated and we'll give you back your freedoms.

Now they're saying we'll get vaccinated, but we're going to continually change the definition of vaccinated to mean a third booster shot and and probably a fourth booster shot. And even then, we're not sure if we'll be able to give you back your freedoms. And Australians have gone along with this, continually believing that if we just do the next thing they've asked us to do, well, after that, everything will be OK. Much of the country is so invested in this now that it would be very difficult to turn around because we'd have to admit we've been fools and taken for a ride. And who wants to admit that? So for the moment, at least most of the country is prepared to just keep going along with this thing and hope that it all resolves itself.

It's quite incredible the situation we've found ourselves in. And when it comes to the tennis, you know, the Australian Open, you would know this having played there, became known around the world as the happy slam. And if you're familiar with Australians, we've got this happy go lucky demeanour.

She'll be right. Everything's good. That Australia has disappeared in the last two years and we've become a nation of bedwetters who are literally so anxious and so stressful that we wet the bed almost every other night, fearing for our lives from a virus that, you know, I'm not saying Covid is not serious for some people, but let's face it, 99 percent of people who contract Covid recover without any problem. And yet it's become the dominant feature of our nation, directing everything from school policy to economic policy to to how far you're even allowed to travel from the front door of your own home. You are listening to the Christian worldview.

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Order resources for adults and children and support the ministry. We're speaking with James McPherson today, columnist for the Spectator Australia. I really thought your columns were good. There's a lot of satire that is really well placed, I think, on this this covid delusion that has taken over the world. We're hearing in America about quarantine camps in Australia and just really severe lockdowns and arrests and everything else. Describe the more really troubling aspects of the authoritarian nature of how Australia is dealing with this.

Look, we've had some bizarre incidents. We had a pregnant woman who posted on Facebook advertising a freedom march, and she had the police turn up at her home, confiscate her device and arrest her simply for posting on social media advertising a freedom march. This was the first that we as Australians knew that you can get in trouble for simply advertising a protest march on social media.

The fact that she was a pregnant woman in her own home did not dissuade police who were quite forceful with her. We've had freedom marches every weekend for months now in most of our capital cities. Well, in Melbourne, we had police shoot protesters with rubber bullets. These were peaceful protesters. I don't mean peaceful protesters in the sense that CNN over in your country talking about peaceful protesters. But these were really peaceful protesters. They weren't setting fire to anything. They weren't looting anything. They were simply marching in support of civil rights and police turned on them and tried to disperse them by shooting rubber bullets at them.

I've never in my lifetime seen anything like that in Australia. And what was crazy was that the Australian governments allowed people to march in support of Black Lives Matter, but you couldn't march for your own civil rights to be restored due to COVID restrictions. Somehow COVID, the virus recognises valid protests and invalid protests. If you march for Black Lives Matter, you won't get infected. But if you march for civil rights, well, the virus recognises that's not valid and it will infect you. And cause you to get sick.

So there were all these inconsistencies there. In Victoria, they created rules that meant you weren't allowed to travel more than five kilometres from your own home. You're only allowed out for a couple of hours a day to exercise. You weren't allowed to go to work. In the Northern Territory right now, if you're unvaccinated, you're not allowed to leave your home at all.

Not for exercise, not to work. So these are perfectly healthy people who are effectively under house imprisonment for the crime of refusing a medical procedure. To me, it's just astonishing that we are in a situation like that in Australia, one of the great democracies of the world up until a couple of years ago. And I could go on.

There's been a lot of crazy laws and ridiculous legislation that was unimaginable until a couple of years ago. Yeah, I want to ask you about that next. James McPherson with us today here on the Christian Real View radio program coming to us from Sydney, Australia. He's a columnist for The Spectator in Australia. You can find the link to him at our website, thechristianrealview.org. I want to read just a paragraph from one of your columns.

And they were just, again, very good. The one entitled, Welcome to Australia, mate. Jab or jail? You said Novak Djokovic would not have had a problem entering Australia if he had just gotten jabbed, according to a senior sports journalist at the Australian newspaper. Well, of course, you're right.

Why didn't Novak think of that? It is easy to solve problems, you're right. If we all just vote Labor Party, which is kind of the left in your country, there will be no arguments. If we all become atheists, there will be no religious differences.

If we all go vegan, there will be no climate wars. Novak should have just rolled up his sleeve and the problem would have been solved. And then you say most of us have been coerced to be vaccinated. And so Novak should be coerced, too. It's now the Australian way. And of course, when everyone has been coerced, it's much easier to imagine that no one has been coerced. Jumping off that last answer you gave, how do you explain how a Western democracy, which I'm assuming has individual liberties, a bill of rights to some extent enshrined in your constitution, has turned so authoritarian so quickly? And then part two of that, what is the point of all this command and control? Because it's clearly not stopping the spread of Covid.

I mean, it's not doing what they're saying it's supposed to do. We don't have a bill of rights in Australia. Australia has always exercised common sense. Our constitution is set up so that freedoms are assumed and we've never really needed a bill of rights. Of course, many of us are talking now about the fact that maybe we ought to get one. In terms of your question, how did we get here and what's the overall agenda? I think there's a couple of things that have coalesced because I actually don't think Australia has suddenly changed.

I think Covid perhaps has revealed what has been lying beneath the surface of things and had been unrecognised until now. I think there's been a growing desire for more government and a belief that government can solve all problems. When you discard Christianity and when you when you put God to the side, then all of a sudden, if there's no God to help us, then you start to turn to government because you will look to someone for salvation. If you're not looking to God for salvation, you'll start to look to the government.

And of course, that's a flawed way to think because the government is flawed people. And so for a number of years now, there's been a growing desire for government to solve every problem and to intervene in every situation. And of course, Covid has been the perfect opportunity for those in government and in bureaucracy seeking more power to do just that because of our emergency laws. And what we did in Australia was our politicians triggered emergency laws, which were designed for a situation where perhaps Australia was involved in a war or there was some cataclysmic event that required the government to act immediately without parliamentary authority. In other words, the government don't have to go back to the people to ask permission. They can just act unilaterally and they don't need to legislate.

They can simply dictate what happens. Now, this was designed really for just maybe a period of a couple of weeks so the government could get stability before they returned to parliament and had due process. Well, we've had a two year emergency now where the government just dictate edicts about what can and can't be done.

And they keep extending these emergency powers for another three months, another three months. And as I said to you, we've been in this Covid emergency now for two years. I think that certain parts of our political elite see Covid as a wonderful opportunity to expand the reach of government, to shut down ideological enemies who they might disagree with, not just about Covid vaccines, but about a range of other social issues.

It's a chance to shut down and smear all those people and to exercise greater control than they would ever have had the opportunity to exercise. And I think that's why some politicians are invested in keeping the Covid emergency going for as long as they can. Personally, I do think and there's enough that's been said to to give me grounds for believing that the Covid emergency will sort of evolve into the climate emergency. And many of the same restrictions we've seen used as a weapon against Covid will be employed and we'll be told it's to fight cataclysmic climate change. But I believe they'll find a reason to continue with this, because there are certain portions of society who want big government. They want control and they want to suppress. And if they can smash ideological enemies, as the old expression goes, never waste a good crisis. And certain people are determined not to waste Covid.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. James McPherson with us today on the Christian Real View Radio program from Sydney, Australia. He writes for The Spectator in Australia.

You can find out more, read his columns, find out his Twitter handle and so forth by going to our website, thechristianworldview.org. You write about how language has been co-opted during this time. You know, people don't die of Covid, they die with Covid. Then you also talk about that there's a cognitive dissonance with regard to Covid. Like you write in one of your columns that there's 37,000 new Covid cases yesterday from the day you wrote the column, 90 percent vaccination rate. And then you say that there's universally vaccinated cricket teams that are having Covid outbreaks. We're told that getting this so-called vaccine reduces your symptoms. We don't really know that.

How would you know that? Because once you get the vaccine, you have no idea what it would have been like to get Covid without it. How do you explain this cognitive dissonance where you look at the facts of deaths and adverse reactions to the vaccine, the fact that it doesn't really truly protect you from getting or spreading it, and yet they continue to be able to pull this off and lock down society? We've been conditioned to live with lies for a long time now. And the most obvious example is we are told that if a man believes himself to be a woman, then he is a woman and that everyone must recognize him as her. And we must use different pronouns and no one is allowed to raise any objection to any of this.

Otherwise, you'll be smeared as a bigot and a hater. And so we all go along with this. And I know in America, it's very similar.

Canada is an interesting place right now and Australia is no different. And so I think the whole transgendered thing gives us a bit of a clue as to what's happening. We have been conditioned to go along with things that we know instinctively are not true, and yet we won't admit that to anybody. We just go along with it. And I think it's a really dangerous situation where the population is cowered into telling lies.

And of course, the more you tell lies, the more you ultimately come to believe them yourself. I say all that to say we're quite used to living with this cognitive dissonance. Now, in fact, you've got a perfect cognitive dissonance to survive in Western culture, where you're continually being told something that you know instinctively is not right. But you've got to go along with it to survive. Otherwise, you lose your job. You'll be demonized on social media.

You'll lose a lot of your friends. And so you go along to get along. And some people can say, well, you know, it doesn't really matter what harm is being done.

You know, it might not really hurt anybody to say that if a man believes himself to be a woman, well, then he is. Well, I think we're seeing in women's sport right now that it's not just live and let live. It does have real world consequences for people.

And women's sport is now in jeopardy because of this. But it creates a dangerous situation where people will listen to lies and just nod and go along with them because it creates a situation where people can get away with anything. And so governments are now telling us things that we instinctively know are not true. But we're told, don't believe your lying eyes. Believe us.

You know, the classic example I alluded to it earlier was and we all saw it around the world was when I think it was CNN had a reporter talking about a peaceful protest while the city burned behind him. And so we were literally told, don't believe your lying eyes. Just believe what we're being told by the media. And we all go along with it.

Who knows what's going to happen in the future? And if the population have been taught to be quiet and being taught to shut up and go along with things, it creates a situation where a tyrant could get away with murder and the population would just nod and go along having been conditioned to shut their mouths and be quiet. And so I think it's a dangerous situation we've gotten ourselves into. And that's why I admire people like you, David, and your program, which encourages people to say things that, you know, in other parts of the media you would not be allowed to say. I think speaking truth is very important.

It really is. And I look at this situation with Djokovic coming to Australia, coming into the country legally, and then being once they saw the uproar being deported because we can't have this. This is going to inspire the, quote, anti-vaxxers, the 10 percent of the country, you know. But I actually think Novak Djokovic, whether he knows it or not, was standing up for the second most important issue in the world right now. The individual liberty to choose to put what you want in your own body, not have someone coerce you to do that or lose your job over it or be kicked out of the country. I think he stood up for the second biggest issue with the first biggest issue, probably wondering what that is. I believe the biggest issue in the world is the gospel, how sinful men can be made right with a holy God. That's the biggest issue. Now, he's not standing up for that, but it is a big issue of individual liberties that he took a stand on.

And I respect him a lot for that. I really hope it makes a difference because as he's returned, I think, to Europe, he's from Serbia, we see news reports of what's going on in Europe. Similar, I think, in many cases to Australia, but maybe even going to be getting stricter, mandatory vaccinations everywhere, vaccine mandates.

And then the vaccine card, passport in Europe. Last question, James, is where is this going in the world? I mean, this seems like a biblical revelation end time scenario where you have a gigantic government being able to regulate where people go, what they can do, whether they can work, whether they can buy or sell. Where do you see this going? All right, James McPherson will answer that question coming up. You are listening to The Christian Worldview.

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Transcripts are also available. James McPherson, columnist for The Spectator in Australia, is our guest today. Let's get back to our conversation. Last question, James, is where is this going in the world? I mean, this seems like a biblical revelation end time scenario where you have a gigantic government being able to regulate where people go, what they can do, whether they can work, whether they can buy or sell.

Where do you see this going? Before we get to that, I think your point on bodily autonomy was really important. Whether you agree with Novak's stance on vaccinations or not, the bigger issue is, does the government have the right to tell you what you should do or must do with your own body? And sadly, frighteningly, many people, at least in our country, seem to believe that the government do have the right to dictate what you do with your own body.

Novak must be the first sportsman in the world to be disqualified for not taking a drug. But once you've got yourself in a situation where the government are able to tell you what you must do with your own body, I mean, the government own you, don't they? If you've no longer got even bodily autonomy, what do you have? And it's frightening to think that most people don't understand the simple thing that you articulated so well. This is an incredibly important principle. Forget vaccination or not vaccination.

The big issue is bodily autonomy. And so I'm with you, I salute Novak. He's not one of the most popular players here in Australia because he's a bit of a robot.

We prefer Nick Kyrgios or he's sort of a John McEnroe type. We prefer those figures in Australia, or at least we used to. Now we quite like robots who just go along with the government. Where are we going? Look, a lot of people believe, as you've pointed out, that the social credit score is coming, that all of our actions will be monitored and rewarded or will be penalised for actions that don't meet government requirements, whether it's that in terms of the emissions that we use, the food that we eat, the things that we say or don't say. And somehow that our ability to earn a livelihood or to trade and do business will be dependent upon us performing certain things and saying certain things.

It's not difficult to imagine that's where we're going. They're trialling it already in China, and it's not difficult to see with the technology being put in place here in Australia. We have vaccine certificates on our phones that have to be shown in order to enter restaurants in some places to get a haircut.

You've got to show your vaccination certificate. It's all digitalised. There's talk of more things being digitalised. It's not hard to see this being used down the track to exercise far greater control over people and not just according to whether you're vaccinated, but according to whether you've expressed the right opinions or not. And that's a scary proposition. So what do you think is driving this authoritarian world view? One of the interesting things that's happening at the moment is increased control by supranational organisations like the World Economic Forum, the United Nations. Increasingly, what happens in our nation is not being decided by electors, but being decided by globalist organisations and our politicians seem more concerned about reporting to them than they do reporting to the electorate. Even my non-Christian journalist friends, they all think we're headed for one world government, not in the sense that there'll be a president of the world or an anti-Christ figure, but they all believe that there'll be less and less national sovereignty and more globalised bodies that dictate to everybody across the world how you must live. And they're all desperately afraid of that as well.

Well, let's hope that fear leads them to understanding this is where the Bible and Revelation says it's going to go to a globalised government led by a global leader and that many will come to saving faith in Christ before it's too late. We so appreciate that you are speaking the truth about what is taking place in Australia. All of God's best and grace to you, James. Keep up the great work. And I hope we can we can talk again and get an update down the road.

Yeah, I would love that. Thanks so much for having me. It's always a joy to speak to friends from the United States. Love America and love what you're doing. And it was a privilege to be involved.

So thanks so much for having me. OK, that was James McPherson, a columnist for The Spectator in Australia. We have some of his articles that he's written about what we were talking about today linked at our website, thechristianrealview.org. Now, what's taking place there is basically what's taking place in Canada right now with just heavy handed lockdowns, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports. You can't cross the border without a vaccine passport. And this is why the truckers there are protesting. They've driven to Ottawa, the capital, and they park their trucks, their honking horns in protest of the Canadian government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who's very much of a leftist.

Of course, the typical playbook of the left is to castigate the truckers as white supremacists. But the truth is they are protesting to keep their individual liberties. As we mentioned in the interview with James McPherson, they're really standing up for the second most important issue in the world, which is individual liberty to make choices in life and not have mandates come down from government. The second most important issue after the gospel. So as we make a bit of a transition here in the program today, this is why it's a hard thing to reconcile why Christian leaders in America are using their platforms for government propaganda, whether on the issue of masks, vaccines, church shutdowns and other things that the government is trying to tell us about COVID. Megan Basham is a Daily Wire reporter and a believer, and she just wrote a explosive must-read article on this. It's linked at the Christianrealview.org.

Now, we spoke to her this week, and we're just going to play a snippet of the interview before playing the interview in its entirety next week. Here's part of that conversation with Megan Basham. How the federal government used evangelical leaders to spread COVID propaganda to churches. That really is the thesis of the column that there is the government, the Biden administration, the NIH is a government funded organization, the director of it, the head guy, Francis Collins, that he used not just evangelical leaders, but willing evangelical leaders like Ed Stetzer, like Rick Warren, like N.T.

Wright. And this is all linked and evidenced in your article, like Tim Keller, Christianity Today, the Gospel Coalition. These are the big headliners in evangelicalism. Basically, they were willingly used by Collins and the government to, I'll use this word, propagandize the evangelical world, whether regular Christians, churches, pastors, via this kind of media tour that he went on where he's representing, again, the Biden administration. Anthony Fauci works for Francis Collins at the time to give what we know now is a false narrative about COVID. The virus came from an animal, not a lab in Wuhan, that getting the vaccine or wearing a mask is about loving your neighbor or mask stop the spread of the virus.

And if you believe otherwise, well, you're just a conspiracy theorist. So let me just read directly from your column where you talk about the types of policies that Francis Collins has led the National Institutes of Health on. You write, perhaps the evangelical elites' willingness to unhesitatingly credit Collins with unimpeachable honesty has something to do with his rather Mr. Rogers-like appearance and gentle demeanor. Going by his concrete record, however, he seems like a strange ambassador to spread the government's COVID messaging to theologically conservative congregations. Other than his assertions of his personal Christian faith, there is almost no public stance Collins has taken that would mark him out as someone of like mind with the everyday believers to whom he was appealing. So the obvious question is, why has Francis Collins been so revered as this evangelical Christian then?

Well, you know, that's the question I've been trying to sort of sort through myself because there was so little critical thinking in the presentation of him. Another leader I think we need to include here, because he was also quite vocally supportive of Francis Collins, was Russell Moore, who was then head of the ERLC, the arm of the SBC that does public policy. The reason I bring that up is because all of them presented him very much as a Christian brother that I know. So they were sort of lending their credibility and their reputation as men of integrity to Francis Collins. To give you one example, Rick Warren specifically presented him as a man of integrity, a man you can trust. So they were sort of saying, trust us, trust us that this is a good man, that this is a strong Christian, even though so little in his record would back that up. And to be very clear, it was not exactly secret.

It sort of surprised me as I was working on the reporting that that people were surprised by what I was writing, because this was not covert. You could find articles in Time magazine saying because Francis Collins has these relationships with leaders in the evangelical world, he was dispatched the same way Anthony Fauci was dispatched to the secular media. Francis Collins was dispatched to the Christian media.

So he does this sort of tour, as you described it. And in all of these instances, he was not presented as a voice to listen to, a voice to consider. And maybe we will also weigh some other expert medical opinions. He was presented as authoritative and his views unquestionable. So to give you an example, when he talked about churches not meeting, he and Tim Keller agreed. There was no pushback that that represented the churches who chose to go ahead and start meeting again before the government said they could, churches like John MacArthur's in California. They were presented as the bad and ugly, a good, bad and ugly COVID responses within the church. There were other instances where he and T. Wright really sort of dismissively sneered at Christians who had questions about mask wearing or the vaccine. They sort of made a joke about, well, these people seem to think that Jesus is my vaccine.

So it was all sort of very dismissive. And the biggest problem with it wasn't even just a presentation of medical opinion, which is debatable. I mean, we're now finding that, one, there is a lot of medical debate on the efficacy of masks.

Even the CDC has pulled back from the idea that cloth masks are, as Francis Collins claimed, a life-saving medical device. That is very much in question now. But it was also that he presented it as an authoritative voice about gospel matters. He specifically said that, you know, doing these things, shutting down churches, wearing your masks, getting vaccinated, this is how you love Jesus.

This is how you love your neighbor. And these major Christian leaders and pastors came along with that narrative. There was no pushback. There was no critical thinking.

There was no debate about that issue. So that, for me, was where the story really got interesting because I went, you have a real concerning marriage here of church and state, where the state is now using the church as a platform to spread the messages that it wants to spread. And in fact, one of those messages turned out to be something that would have been personally damaging to Collins himself. If you're following the news cycle, you've probably seen in a lot of secular mainstream outlets that Collins and Fauci, females have now leaked where they said, we need to suppress these stories about the lab leak theory that the coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, which was always a very reasonable hypothesis. And now we know that some very early scientists came to Collins and Fauci and said, we believe this is a very reasonable hypothesis. And in fact, the likely origin of the coronavirus and they work to suppress that. Well, if you go into Christian media, you also find Collins saying that same thing to Christianity today, saying this is what this was nature made.

Humans did not create this virus. And so you have a Christian media outlet furthering that narrative. And then to get a little more unethical, Ed Stetzer wrote an article again repeating that it is it was conspiracy theory, it was indulging in sin for Christians to spread this idea of the Wuhan lab leak theory. Well, at that point, the article just disappeared when it became more apparent that in fact, it was likely that that was where the coronavirus came from. Stetzer's article on Christianity Today just disappeared with no editorial note, no acknowledgement. And the only reason I was able to find it was because it was still contained in the wayback machine, the Web Archive. If you're familiar with that, it will sometimes archive old articles, even if they're deleted. You can still find them. So that was where I found that. So it gave me the sense that they knew that they kind of knew that they had strayed and made some mistakes, but they weren't going to acknowledge the mistakes publicly.

They were just going to erase them. That was Megan Basham from The Daily Wire, a reporter there. You can read her article at thechristianworldview.org.

We're going to play the whole interview next week, so be sure to tune in for that. It's a very troubling situation, but also very illuminating. So much of this COVID hysteria and the overreaction to it is based on fear, a fear of dying, despite the fact that 99.9 percent of those who get COVID will survive it.

But Mike Gendron from Proclaiming the Gospel Ministry wrote a very insightful couple of paragraphs this week in his newsletter. He said the fear of physical death enslaves those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. They are more than willing to give up their God-given rights and freedoms to trust an untrustworthy government to protect them. They gladly submit to government mask mandates, contact tracing, compulsory shots, and lockdowns to protect them from the virus. Their constant fear and anxiety of physical death paralyzes them and makes them more susceptible to manipulation and control.

I'll just interject to say that this is exactly why people are so willing to give up their individual liberties in exchange for quote-unquote safety. Mike goes on to say, Yet their greater fear should be eternal death, where they will suffer the just punishment for their sins in a place of torment where they consciously experience pain and thirst from a burning fire. The horror and hopelessness is terrifying because the eternal state of punishment for their sins is irreversible. There is no second chance and no escape.

Man's eternal destiny is sealed at the moment of physical death. This is the bad news. Dying of COVID is one thing. That's bad enough. But dying without being reconciled to God and being justly sent to hell?

Well, there's nothing worse than that. But here's the good news. The Bible says believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

You will literally be saved from God's wrath and judgment over your sin because God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, His perfect Son to come to earth and live a perfect life and then to offer Himself on that cross as payment for your sin. If you've never repented and put your faith in Christ, we encourage you. We exhort you. We urge you in the strongest way possible.

Do that today. You can find out more by going to our website thechristianworldview.org and click on the page, What Must I Do to Be Saved. Thank you for joining us today on The Christian Worldview. Thanks also to our Christian Worldview partners and Samaritan Ministries for funding today's program.

In just a moment there will be information on how you can hear a replay of today's program, order transcripts and resources, and support this nonprofit radio ministry. So be encouraged. We may live in a challenging world, one in which even Christian leaders use their platforms to advance government propaganda.

But here's who we should trust. The Bible says Jesus Christ and His word are the same yesterday and today and forever. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of The Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out What Must I Do to Be Saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian Worldview partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview.