For certain men whose condemnation was aritten abut long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and ddeny Jesus Christ, our only sovereign and Lord. Jude, v. 4, NIV
Even in the first few years of its existence, the Christian church faced the danger of false apostles and teachers infiltrating the membership for the purpose of exploiting the membership for their own purposes and benefit. Jude is writing a warning to be distributed among Christians who were facing persecution. It was easier to lead people astray during such times, so Jude writes with apostolic authority to warn Christians aboutt the fact that this was happening, and to set the primary focus of the Christian gospel back in place so that genuine Christian faith was defined and could be identified.
Though the issues about which Jude writes took place in the first century church, history is full of similar kinds of intrusions into the Christian church, intent on gaining trust in order to introduce apostasy and use the church, its people and resourses for their own purposes.
This is, in fact, happening right now, as a good sized segment of American Christianity, known as Evangelicalism, has been invaded by intruders for their own purposes, mainly political and financial gain, and has been hijacked and separated from the Christian gospel. The glaring inconsistencies that are showing up time and time again from what is an unholy blend of legalistic fundamentalist Christian practice with extremist right wing politics with what has been considered authentic Christian practice, rooted in an in-depth, historical, contextual and intellectual study of the Bible make it seem like the two things are not even the same faith.
The Christian Nationalism that has almost completely infiltrated conservative, white Evangelicalism bears no resemblance at all to the words penned in the New Testament, quoting Jesus as he laid out the Christian gospel and revealed God to humanity. As they have been historically, evangelistic outreach and the spread of the Evangelical version of Christian faith has never been about winning converts, it's always been about acquiring political power to use against perceived enemies.
The Fundamentalist Doctrinal Foundation of Conservative Evangelicalism
There's a reason right wing Evangelicals fear and disdain education. Their doctrinal and theological system is based on ignorance, not on a thorough study of the Bible using its original languages, as much of its historical and cultural context as can be discovered and incorporated, and on understanding the unique situations it addressed as instructional and inspirational, not as a set of rules or commandments applied universally.
What we now refer to as Evangelicalism in the United States started in the 19th century, among people who had no access to educated ministers and preachers, and who depended on a word for word, verse by verse rendering of the King James translation. King James himself changed the text of scripture, by pulling out somewhere around 16 books that had been part of the original canon. And his translators were careful to include his personal bias in their work.
So what emerged from nineteenth century America was a branch of the Christian church that has a nasty disrespect for education, especially in the clergy, and a fundamentally distorted perspective of Christian faith. It's belief in what they call the "plenary, verbal" inspiration of the Bible--that every word of the Bible is inspired by God, and that every part of the Bible is equally inspired contradicts the revelation brought by Jesus/ The Bible's writers themselves do not support this idea, nor is there any indication from them at all that what they were writing includes any kind of prophetic prediction about anything that will happen in the future.
The theology of "dispensationalism," which is not found anywhere in the Bible, is the idea that different eras of history are marked by events dividing them into "dispenstations." And the manner in which the teachings of scripture are applied in one dispensation are different in another. Without going into a long, complicated explanation of how that works, what it does is allow for setting aside the entire Christian gospel and the basic core principles of Christian practice taught by Christ, in favor of a war-mongering, murder-justifying apocalypse to usher in Jesus' second coming.
This perspective did not show up anywhere in centuries upon centuries of Christian theological study of the scripture. It is, in fact, an aberration that did not emerge until the nineteenth century, out of an age when Great Britain was building an empire to economically exploit the undeveloped world, seeing themselves as "God's chosen," and when the manifest destiny enthusiasm of Americans, combined with the revivals of the Second Great Awakening, led to the push for military conquest of our weaker neighbors, most notably Mexico, cloaked and justified as an evangelistic effort.
This Isn't Christianity, It's a Cult
The Bible is difficult enough to interpret. It's easy to discern that the single affirmation which defines what it means to be Christian is the acknowledgement that Jesus was the Son of God, fully human and fully divine, the fulfillment of messianic prophecy, whose purpose was to reveal the person of God to his human creation, and to provide a path to reconciliation and redemption with Him.
That doctrine comes from several places in the Bible, including Matthew, Mark, John, Paul and Peter, among the Apostles. If that is the case, and the written record of what Jesus did and taught is accurate, and in fact there is no way to prove anything more than the accuracy of the transmitted text, then there is no possible way to even consider that other parts of the Bible are equally inspired. The words of Jesus, who was Christ, are the interpretive filter for everything else in scripture.
If that's the case, while it is difficult to try and figure out all of the contexts and historical background that influenced the writing of the Bible, most of which no longer exists and is actually unknown to us now, that is how systematic Christian theology is developed. I doubt if there is one Evangelical in a thousand who has any idea of the history or inspiration of the Bible, and who sees it as anything more than a collection of sixty six books divided into chapters and verses, one of which could be their "life verse." Nor are they aware that the sixty-six book Protestant Bible that we use isn't the full text of everything that the church, over its history, has accepted as canonical.
People who are livid over things they see being 'added to" or "taken from" the text in Bible translations they don't like would be horrified to know the changes to the text made by King James alone, not to mention the things that church councils after the first century did. The only remaining complete, preserved actual text, protected by its isolation in Ethiopia, is the 80 book Ethiopian Bible. Any full study of Christian theology requires looking at all of this history, which American Evangelicals won't do.
The Apocalyptic Focus Which Doesn't Exist in the Bible
Evangelicals are overly obsessed with end times scenarios and the violent judgment of the enemies of God. They are waiting for a time when their preaching and evangelistic outreach is justified--a better term is avenged--and those who have refused to listen to them and their preaching are sent to hell. That is preached and taught and put in the context of how it is done in most Evangelical churches, especially in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles where it is used to generate applause like a pep rally.
And yes, as a former Evangelical myself, I've sat in church services where pastors generated rounds of applause by painting some picture in which godless liberals meet their maker and it's too late for redemption. That's the "dispensation" they believe is coming, which will usher in the return of Christ. And they get this all by simply ignoring the historical context of a couple of New Testament books, specifically Revelation. In order to arrive at this particular futuristic, interpretation of the Bible, the accepted standards of interpretation must be changed because the intention of the original author is not to prophetically predict an apocalypse at the end of the world, but to bring encouragement to the persecuted church in the first century.
If you want a good example of just how far out of the realm of orthodox Christianity this kind of theology and doctrine goes, and what it looks like, listen to the rantings and shriekings of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. It's characterized in the prayer of his pastor to bring death down on a politician with whom he disagrees, especially one who has a much clearer and accurate perspective of Christianity, Texas Senate Candidate James Talarico.
Here's a clear, Christian theological and doctrinal point. Neither the pastor, nor Hegseth, are demonstrating any belief or behavior that can be identified in any way as Christian. That's not a judgement, that's just simple observation.
There are encouraging signs that the Evangelical movement, I'm not going to call it Christian because it's not, is falling apart. Among white Evangelicals, there are organizational connections building that help people separate their faith frorm Trumpism. There's been a slow decline in membership and attendance among Evangelicals in the United States that shifted into high gear in 2016, resulting in declines that far exceed what the liberal mainline denominations have ever experienced. And while white Evangelicals increased their support for Trump in 2024, up to 82%, the actual number of self-identified white evangelicals who voted was down a full 20% from 2016. The largest Evangelical denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, has lost almost 3 million members since 2016, a 20% decrease.
If they want to survive after Trump falls, and he will fall hard, they'll have to educate themselves and their congregants in a truth that they do not know now, when it comes to the nature of Christ.
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