The Church Neutralized–Part Three

by Al Benson Jr.

One might almost say that the neutralization of the Christian Church went along with the “reconstruction” of the old Confederate States in the late 1800s after Mr. Lincoln’s War

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At the conclusion of the shooting part of that war the Yankee school teachers descended upon the Southern states like a swarm of locusts. Thus was the public school system, as we know it, brought into a South which had little experienced anything quite like it. That’s not to sway that the South was an ignorant region by any means but simply to say that it had never experienced anything quite like Karl Marx’s vision of public education before the War. After the War it was all but taken captive by it

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And along with the Yankee teachers came Yankee churchmen determined to force their view of religiosity upon what they considered an unregenerate South–unregenerate in that it had never widely accepted Unitarianism and/or socialism.

But not all Southern folk were fooled. Francis Butler Simkins in A History Of The South observed: “An Alabamian expressed the opinion of most white Southerners when he said: “Perhaps the greatest liars and most malignant slanderers that the North has spewed out upon the South since the close of the war, are the reverend blackguards that have been sent among us as ministers of religion.”

Joseph Canfield, in his authoritative book The Incredible Scofield and his Book has given us some insight on how new doctrines were introduced into our churches in the 1800s. Joe told us that “The Niagara Conference grew out of a major effort which originated with the Plymouth Brethren. In the period after the Civil War, they pushed very hard to get general acceptance for that interest in prophecy which had started in England following the French Revolution. While there had been millenial elements in the movement which forced the United States into the Civil War, the Plymouth Brethren position had not completely taken over. The church or at least a large part of it had to be directed to the view that its hope was its own failure.”

It goes without saying that such a doctrine is at complete odds with the traditional orthodox Christian view. Gary DeMar, in The Reduction of Christianity asked an interesting question regarding this situation. He said “If Christians retreat from the cultural issues of the day, who will, humanly speaking, visibly control the future course of history? If Christians won’t, humanists will…Christians retreat because there is no hope. As more Christians retreat there is less hope. Finally, the whole cultural field is left to humanists who insist on taking us down the road to an international statist utopia.” And you have to admit that with dispensationalism this is the reward we have reaped–a failing church doing nothing but trying to save souls in bunches to get them into heaven. To them nothing else matters. And while saving souls is important it is not the end all of everything.

Joe Canfield also noted the time John Nelson Darby spent in St. Louis with Rev. James Brookes, the pastor of a Presbyterian church there. And he noted: “Darby concentrated on an area in the United States which had strong connections with the Continent which had hatched ungodly ideas. It was in that city that he profusely scattered the seeds which flowered into Dispensationalism.” St. Louis in the mid-1800s was a hotbed of radicalism. Many of the socialists and Communists from the failed socialist revolts in Europe in 1848 ended up in the St. Louis area. Canfield also noted that”…the blossoming of Darby’s movement in its American form was entrusted to a man bases in St. Louis who had a ‘French Connection?’ That man was C. I. Scofield.” Beginning to get the picture yet?

You need to read Joe Canfield’s book about Scofield. It seems that Scofield was, to say the least, rather an “interesting” personality. Canfield told us that Scofield married his second wife before he bothered to divorce his first wife, and that Scofield, only three years after his “conversion” was called to preach at the First Congregational Church in Dallas, Texas. This was only five years after the “official” end of “reconstruction” in the South. And for those who understand “reconstruction” in the South, they realize it did not really end in 1877 when the Yankee troops pulled out. It has continued right on down to the present day here. The Yankee troops left but the Yankee school teachers and some of the Yankee churchmen stayed on because they understood what “reconstruction” was really all about.

The church Scofield pastored in Dallas grew. It had started out with seventeen charter members–eleven of them being from the North. Scofield went on to become acting missionary superintendent for the Congregationalists in the Southwest, which included churches in Texas and Louisiana. He went on to become president of the board of trustees of the Congregationalists Lake Charles College in Lake Charles, Louisiana. So he was able to spread the doctrines of J.N. Darby throughout the deep South within a decade after the supposed end of ‘reconstruction.’

Pastor Duane Garner, who I have mentioned previously, has noted that “Dispensationalists have no multi-generational focus. As they consistently apply their theology to their mission and lives, they find it foolish to take on any effort that may take several years, even several generations to finish…Instead of viewing their own homes and descendants as their greatest mission field and greatest opportunity to impact the world for the cause of Jesus Christ, they fear to bring children into the world…They see little need to facilitate the training of great musicians, skilled artists or gifted writers. There is no time for such efforts. The creation is dying and everything is going down the sewer. The results of this dogma manifest themselves in the Church’s steady retreat from society.”

Can you begin to envision the results of such a theology in a “reconstructed” South after the War of Northern Aggression had reduced that part of the country to almost a complete shambles?

I have long contended that Dispensationalism was the theological arm of Yankee “reconstruction” in the South.. The timing for its bursting full-blown on the South was propitious. It reduced churches in the South from bastions of their culture into virtual nonentities, content with only “getting people to heaven” and little else. What a come-down from the preaching of stalwarts like R. L. Dabney and Benjamin Morgan Palmer! And this is where we are in our day–God help us!!!

To be continued

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The Church Neutralized–Part Two

by Al Benson Jr.

In the area of the neutralization of the Christian Church one of the greatest neutralizers has been the theology of what we call dispensationalism as promoted in the Scofield Reference Bible. This theology has reduced much of the church to doing little more than promoting an endless exposition of John 3:16, no matter what the sermon topic is listed as in your Sunday morning church bulletin.

I have been in churches like this. No matter what the church bulletin says it will be about the sermon almost always ends up as an exposition of John 3:16 with an alter call and twenty eight verses of “Just As I Am” to close out the service. After all, to preach on anything else might get us into dirty politics and we want to avoid that like the plague so we just stick to John 3:16 and you will never have to worry. This is the sad legacy that dispensationalism has left us–this and how everything centers around the promotion of national Israel to the exclusion of the Christian Church which is, in the final analysis, really only “Plan B” with national Israel being Plan A.

Many will be surprised to learn the dispensational theology is a fairly new occurrence in church history. You never saw it much before the 1820s. Biblical commentaries in the 1850s that I have seen never mentioned some of the material you see in the Scofield Reference Bible.

Rev. Duane Garner, a pastor in North Carolina, wrote about some of this several years ago now for a lecture. He wrote: “Some historians trace it (dispensationalism) to the visions of a young Scottish woman named Margaret McDonald, a member of the Plymouth Brethren Church whose trances revealed to her that the return of Christ would be in two distinct stages. She dreamed that the believer would be caught up with the Lord in the air preceding the days of the antichrist and before a final revelation of Christ at the end of the age. Others trace this view directly to Ms. McDonald’s pastor, J. N. Darby, who left the Church of England to join the Scottish Plymouth Brethren in 1827. Darby first made use of the two-stage return of Christ in his sermons in 1830 and continued to develop the idea throughout his ministry…Darby can rightly be considered to be the father of dispensationalism for he was the first in the history of Christianity to write and preach using the dispensational hermeneutic.”

Rev. Garner also informed us that, in 1956, a former president of the American Baptist Association, Albert Garner (no relation) admitted that the “then popular views concerning the rapture and the resurrection of the dead were not more than fifty years old.” So this was, indeed, a new doctrine, even though most of its adherents do not consider it so. Most people in this country got it from the Scofield Bible, first published in 1909

John Nelson Darby made several trips to this country and he made several trips across the Great Plains on the new Union Pacific Railway, something most Americans couldn’t afford. Robert L. Pierce, author of the book The Rapture Cult commented on this and noted: “Darby’s unusual mobility for his day and time, and his seeming lack of financial problems.” Most ministers in that day and time were just not all that wealthy, so if Darby had no apparent financial problems running all around this country, then who financed him?

There are a number of things that the dispensationalists claim are future events (which puts them in a context of being subjects for today’s “prophecy conferences”). Christians adhering to the dispensational viewpoint spend much time dealing with these “end times” subjects and thereby mostly ignoring what goes on in the world around them now. Actually most of those “end times” things they think are in the future have already happened.

In his book He Shall Have Dominion Kenneth L. Gentry Jr. has noted, on page 169 “Thar Matthew 24:4-33 en toto has been fulfilled seems quite obvious on the two following bases. First, its introductory context strongly suggests it. In Matthew 23, Jesus sorely rebukes the ‘scribes and Pharisees’ of his own day (Matt. 23:2ff), urging them finally to ‘fill up then the measure of your fathers’ who killed the prophets (23:31-32). Christ says that they are a ‘generation’ of vipers (23:33) that will persecute and slay His disciples (23:34). He notes that upon them will come all the righteous blood shed on the earth (23:35). He then dogmatically asserts: ‘Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation‘ (23:36).’…In 23:36, He dogmatically asserts all these things shall come upon this generation. He closes the relevant portion of the prophecy by repetition of the time frame: Matthew 24:34 says, ‘Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled.’ And just forty years later Jerusalem was destroyed! Contextually the ‘this generation’ of Matthew 24:34 must speak of the same idea as that of Matthew 23:36.”

So lots of the stuff we were taught about these events being in the future by dispensationalists selling books about the “end times” have already gone by. They are history, not present day prophecy about our future. The Christian Church has been sold a bill of goods designed to keep them concentrated on history that has been reinterpreted as future prophecy. All this keeps their minds off current events while they hope for a secret, imminent “rapture” to get them out of the current world mess so they won’t have to deal with any of it. The real truth may just be that the Lord wants them to deal with it not to try to run away from it.

To be continued.

The Church Neutralized–Part One

by Al Benson Jr.

There has been a systematic neutralizing of the Christian Church that has been going on at least since the 1830s in this country. Those participating in this neutralization have mostly taken the Fabian approach in enacting their agenda–doing it gradually so that most people don’t even realize it has been happening. If you are willing to take a backward look you can begin to see how it has been happening.

Two groups that have promoted this neutralization, at least at their leadership levels, have been Unitarians and Dispensationalists. I don’t contend that the rank and file in these groups are necessarily all aware of this. Many probably are not. But the leadership that has moved them to where they are today has been and is aware of what has been done and what is being done.

In this installment I will deal with the Unitarians, with their mandatory public schools They are the first step in this process. Through people like Horace Mann they worked to downgrade the influence of private Christian schools so they could push their agenda of compulsory public schooling. It is interesting that, in this critical area, the Unitarians took the same approach as did Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto–“Free education for all children in public schools…”

So naturally, Christian children ended up in these public schools–a situation that, sadly, continues to this day because most Christians seem to have lost their sense of discernment about both the origin and the agenda of public schools. Christians should have resisted this in the beginning, but they mostly didn’t. They were conned into going along with it and in succeeding generations their children have been pretty much neutralized. Oh, Bible reading was allowed for quite awhile–morning devotions for the kids and all that. They didn’t dare drop the hammer all at once. That would have been much too apparent and many Christians would have pulled their kids out right away. So they had to gradually draw them in by allowing a little of what Christians were familiar with to keep them comfortable–sort of like putting the lobster in cold water and then heating it up gradually so they won’t notice what’s happening. And it worked! Today many Christians will denigrate Christian schools because they don’t have all the bells and whistles public schools have and they will defend the public school system as though it were mandated in Holy Writ. I know. I have argued with some of them about that over the years. Even evidence of what the public schools have done to children will not change their minds–even when you present them with evidence of the Unitarian/socialist origins of public education. Mostly they don’t want to hear it or see it. And you will be dismissed by them as some sort of “right-wing reactionary.” After all, aren’t public schools right up there with God, motherhood, and apple pie?

The good folks that have succumbed to this mindset have been neutralized and they don’t even begin to realize it. And when I say all this I am not indicting all individual public school teachers. We have a niece that teaches in a public school. She hates it, but unfortunately, she can’t find a Christian school that can or will pay her enough to live on. And that is another whole problem.

Let’s face it. The public schools in our day are, for the most part, blatantly anti-Christian. They will strongly support the Marxist Black Lives Matter group, but let a teacher or a student bring a Bible to school and read a brief passage from it and all hell with break loose! Quoting the Koran in public school is okay, but not the Holy Bible–never the Holy Bible! That’s verboten! And yet Christian parents put up with this. Frankly, I don’t expect this to change anytime soon. Certainly not in my lifetime. There are several good books out there by both R. J. Rushdoony and Samuel Blumenfeld that go into the history of public education in this country. I have listed some of them in previous articles over the years.

The fact that all of this is tolerated by Christian parents is evidence that the Christian Church has, in the main, been neutralized. The next installment of this article will be almost guaranteed to make lots of good folks mad at me, but what I will say has to be said.

Neutralizing Christians

by Al Benson Jr.

There was an interesting article on World Net Daily for October 22nd by Michael Nedderman about the millions of Christians in this country who just don’t bother to vote or assume any civic responsibility at all. They just ignore it all as if it didn’t exist. Mr. Nedderman estimated that there are about 40 million Christians who do not vote in our elections.

He observed that “Every American who doesn’t want to see our beloved nation transformed into a godless, socialist, ‘workers’ paradise’ must vote to stop the threat of the systemic Marxism that has infected our society through the efforts of today’s Democratic Party. Sadly, about 40 million Christians don’t take this threat seriously enough to even vote (15 million Christians not registered;…).”

Again, he noted that “Those non-voting Christians are a huge percentage (44%) of the 90 million eligible Christians (all denominations). How is it possible that so many who aspire to Christian moral responsibility are so cavalier about such a consequential civic responsibility, one that has such grave moral significance?”

The questions he asked are good ones and need to be discussed and debated in Christian circles. But they won’t be for the most part. Why? Because the church has been almost totally neutralized in the area of politics and this is not a recent development. It goes back to the 1830s, maybe a little earlier and neutralization in this country became very apparent in the early 1900s with the advent of the Scofield Reference Bible and the eschatology it promoted.

Scofield got a lot of his theology from John Nelson Darby in England. Check out Darby on the internet. You will find more than I can deal with in this article. In his book Death of the Church Victorious Pastor Ovid Need Jr. explains Darby’s eschatology of the failing Christian church. On page 187 he tells us: “Having no promise of victory on this earth, the church failed. Therefore, it must be spewed out of God’s mouth. Then God will establish his throne in Jerusalem and literally reign, doing what the church failed to do, for it had no grace from God to make her any different from the world. Darby was quite dogmatic–the church cannot be restored in strength to reach the world. With no grace from God, the church has no power to overcome sin. The early church failed, and, therefore, has only God’s judgment against it. Darby took several shots at the Postmil Reformers,…The apostles, taught Darby, never looked for a long continuance of the church; rather they looked for the Lord’s soon return. Accordingly, the only thing left for the church is to realize its lack of responsibility.It has no worldly concerned on this earth, for it is forbidden to try to set evil right.”

I don’t know about you, but Darby’s vision for the church, or its lack thereof, is not the way many of us view the church and its mission in this world. Yet millions of Christians in the last 130 years have bought into Darby’s failing church syndrome and they use that for their justification that Christians should have nothing to do with politics ,culture, education or any other human endeavor. They believe it is all “of the world” and so they just refuse to have anything to do with any of it.

It seems like every new generation has a Hal Lindsey type out there telling us that the Lord’s return will be anytime in the next 3 minutes and therefore we should do nothing in this world but prepare to be “raptured” out of it. I’ve been hearing this for about 60 years now. As for Hal Lindsey it seems about every ten years he puts out an updated version of one of his books telling us that the Lord’s return is imminent and we can all prepare for it by buying one of his latest editions. I have often said that I would love to see the stock portfolios of some of these “end times” preachers who tell us the world will end soon (hopefully not before we buy their latest book). This do-nothing attitude among Christians in our day is a result of the eschatology of Darby–that was seized on by Cyrus I Scofield and popularized in his bible back in 1909, although he didn’t give Darby much credit for it.

If you want to check out Scofield I would recommend a book by Joseph Canfield, a friend of mine, now deceased. The book is The Incredible Scofield and his Book and it was published by Ross House Publishers in Vallecito, California. Check it out on Amazon. The orthodox Christian faith which follows sound doctrine has little use for the theological wasteland of Darby and Scofield, yet these two seem to have captured and neutralized much of the church in this country.

The faulty theology of Darby and Scofield is one major reason that Christians in our day don’t bother to vote or get involved in politics or do much of anything else except try to “be nice” to everyone. Christians need to be concerned with what kind of country they are leaving for their grandchildren because, in all probability, their grand children are going to have to live in it. If they refuse to take any action to improve things what are they leaving for a legacy for their posterity? And what if their hoped-for “rapture” doesn’t come along to get them out of this mess? Then they will have to learn to deal with it like the rest of us.

Suffice it to say that their view of the church is not my view of the church. I believe the Christian church will be victorious in the long run as long as Christians are willing to pitch in and do their part to make it so. The Lord will exercise His Sovereignty through His people–regardless of what Darby and Scofield have tried to peddle to us as the “great neutralizer.”

Communism–A Religion of Terrorism

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Whittaker Chambers, the author of Witness is quite blunt about what makes communism really tick. He has written: “The Communist Party, despite occasional pious statements to the contrary, is a terrorist organization. Its disclaimers are for the record. But its record of kidnappings, assassinations, and murders makes the actions of the old Terror Brigade of the Socialist Revolutionary Party look merely romantic. No argument can reach the Communist Party unless it sees in it some self-serving advantage. It respects only force.” To update a bit, you can say the exact same thing about these communist groups operating in this country today–Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and a host of others. Their willful depredations in many of our major cities show that they only respect force–and when the police are ordered to stand down in the face of their planned destruction then there is no force to detract them from doing whatever they want.

To see the planned terrorism of the Communists in action Chambers told us a bit about the purges under Stalin. These were purges in which the Communist state even killed many of its own. Chambers told us: “This great massacre, probably the greatest in history, was deliberately planned and executed. In the interest of the Revolution…the group of Communists headed by Stalin decided that the historical situation through which the world and the Communist Party was passing, justified them in killing off those Communists who opposed their indispensable strategy and tactics. Those killed have been estimated from several hundred thousand to several million men and women. The process took about three years, 1935 through 1938. Its immediate purpose was to give the Stalinists absolute control of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, then of the Red Army, then of the secret police (G.P.U.).” So if you had some in your own Party that dared to disagree with you on some minor point you just killed them off…The charge on which they were one and all destroyed, the charge that they had betrayed their handiwork, was incredible. They were the Communist Party. If the charge were true, then every other Communist had given his life for a fraud. If the charge was false, then every other Communist was giving his life for a fraud.”

You have to realize that there was no room for divergences of opinion among communists. You adhered to the Party line or you were tomorrow’s cannon fodder. The fact that the Party line might change from one day to the next made no difference. The Stalin-Hitler pact was one instance of this. The Party line changed literally overnight and faithful Party members were automatically expected to go with the flow–and heaven help those who dared to disagree!

Chambers wrote about Communism that “denies the soul in the name of the mind.” And he gave us a quote–“Man cannot organize the world for himself without God; without God man can only organize the world against man.” The French Revolution proved that. And the Marxist mentalities among us today still have not learned that lesson after over two hundred years. Their current attacks on the white race have shown that they have learned nothing. I have no doubt whatever that if they felt their attacks on us would be tolerated they would cheerfully kill millions of us. Maybe at this point what they are afraid of is that many of us will shoot back. Communists are really stingy when it comes to spilling their own blood. They love “doing it unto others” but they don’t want it “done unto them.”

I recall, in the late 1970s, an article I read about four communist terrorists that went into a church in South Africa, armed with AK 47s and started shooting helpless church members. There was one man in the congregation that was armed with a 38 revolver and he shot back at the Red thugs wounding one of them. That was enough for them. The communist thugs, AK 47s and all, fled the scene, faced down by one lone man with a 38! Most communists are really cowards when they meet any resistance.

So the communist faith is one that promotes terrorism–and the one thing they fear is resistance. Determined resistance usually seems to deter them. The problem today is–will anyone give them determined resistance?

I have a friend who is a keen observer of the world situation and from time to time he offers me some biting comments. In response to my last article he said the following–“Add to this the Higher Criticism and the heavy infiltration by Communists into the church and the seminaries and we have a church that is not able to stop this onslaught against this nation. By this means Christianity has been reduced to a spectator’ sport.” While there are obviously some exceptions to this, I am afraid there are not nearly enough to make a difference at the national level. And a watered-down church, with watered-down doctrine is not nearly strong enough to resist not only national terrorism, but also theological terrorism in some form.

Why People Become Communists

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Whittaker Chambers, in his book Witness deals with the rationale of why many people end up embracing communism. They perceive that the faith of communism will protect them in times of crisis. Of course this never really happens, but then, most people never stop to figure that out.

Chambers notes, on page 192, that “Few Communists have ever been made simply by reading the works of Marx or Lenin. The crisis of history makes Communists; Marx and Lenin merely offer them an explanation of the crisis and what to do about it. Thus a graph of Communist growth would show that its numbers and its power increased in waves roughly equivalent to each new crest of crisis…The economic crisis which reached the United States in 1929 swept thousands into the Communist Party or under its influence. The military crisis of World War 2 swept in millions more;…Communism is never stronger than the failure of other faiths.” One wonders if the apostacy in the churces might have had anything to do with this

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Chambers also observed, on page 195, that “The dying world of 1925 was without faith, hope, character, understanding of its malady or will to overcome it. It was dying but it laughed. And this laughter was not the defiance of a vigor that refuses to know when it is whipped. It was the loss, by the mind of a whole civilization, of the power to distinguish between reality and unreallity, because, ulltimately, thouugh I did not know it, it had lost the power to distinguish between good and evil. This failure I too, shared with the world of which I was a part. The dying world had no answer at all to the crisis of the 20th century,…” This explains, at least in part, as to why Chambers became a Communist.

I ask myself, in all of this cultural morass, where was the Christian Church? Was it speaking to this situation and no one was listening? If so, then you can’t blame the church if she spoke and no one listened. But what if the church wasn’t dealing with this or was sending mixed messages?

Where was the church in this country in the early 1900s? Remember, we are talking about twenty years, in some cases less, after the publication of the Scofield Bible with its many “notes” explaining what the Scriptures are supposed to be telling us. Scofield was influenced by the Plymouth Brethren and John Nelson Darby. In his book Death of the Church Victorious Pastor Ovid Need Jr. explained what these folks believed. He noted, on page 169 that “In the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, ‘the ideas that went to make up Brethrenism were in the air, and were extensively obtaining embodiment.’ Largely because of this, these groups shared a determinism not to get involved in ‘secular’ affairs, which ‘represented a retreat into the shelter of spiritual monasticism…’ No part was played by them in politics, except the giving of submission and honour to the powers that be, and the offering of prayer for them.’ Thus we see that rather than attempting to convert the nations to Christ through the gospel, the movement reacted by withdrawing. These small groups devoid of spiritual leadership started in the British Isles, and the hopeless faith was brought into the U.S. through immigration. Because they only reacted against sin instead of acting upon the word of God, theirs was a serious over-reaction against all social involvement, an educated clergy, a systematic interpretation of Scripture, and any involvement in civil government–they threw out the baby with the bath water.”

In other words, in the 1800s and early 1900s we had a church in this country that was mostly devoid of anything having to do with civil government and sought to avoid any contact with the real world. Admittedly there were exceptions to this, theologians like R. L. Dabney, who saw the direction the country was headed in and tried to warn those who had enough sense to listen. Unfortunately, most by that time did not want to listen and so what brave people like Dabney tried to warn them about was all but ignored. By the early 1900s we had a church in this country that was mostly in the throes of retreatism. And such a church is not equipped to deal with any real crisis So the Communists steal in and pretend to deal with the crisis that the church couldn’t, or wouldn’t, deal with.

Do you begin to see now why we have had some of the problems with communism that we have had? An informed church could have dealt with much of this. But a church that believed that communism in only a political entity will deal with none of it because they feel it is “of this world” and so is not worth bothering with. The church’s failure to deal with communism as a competing, anti-Christian theology has not been helpful. They have, in fact, conceded this world to the devil as if it were beneath the Lord’s notice. They have apparently forgotten that part of the Lord’s Prayer that says, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

What Communism Is And Isn’t

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Too many Christians have swallowed the fantasy that communism is nothing more than one more political philosophy. As such they have been led to believe that it is “of this world” and therefore they need have nothing whatever to do with anything concerning it which includes being in opposition to it. They have been taught that we should be “so heavenly minded that we should be no earthly good.” Unfortunately, most have willingly complied–therefore they are waiting to be taken out of this life so they don’t have to do anything about the mess we currently live in. It’s lots easier that way–no responsibility to try to make things any better or to change the culture around them–just coast along and let the Lord do it all. To their chagrin they will find out it doesn’t work that way, even though that is what the notes in their Scofield Bibles advocate.

In this instance they could take a lesson from Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist who broke with the Communist Party and embraced the Catholic faith. Chambers wrote the monumental book Witness in which he told about his years as a Communist as well as exposing many he knew in the Communist Party, including Alger Hiss, first Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Chambers explained communism in a way many Christians in our day would probably not be able to grasp. He stated: “First, let me try to say what Communism is not. It is not simply a vicious plot hatched by wicked men in a sub-cellar. It is not just the writings of Marx and Lenin, dialectical materialism, the Politburo, the labor theory of value, the theory of the general strike, the Red Army, secret police, labor camps, underground conspiracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the technique of the coup d’etat. It is not even those chanting, banered millions that stream periodically, like disorganized armies, through the heart of the world’s capitals…These are the expressions of Communism, but they are not what Communism is about.”

He continued: “Communists are that part of mankind which has recoverd the power to live or die–to beat witness–for its faith…It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind…Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God. It is the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world.”

In other words, communism is the religion of man, without God there to get in his way and to prevent him from doing all he wants to do to gain power over the lives of others–all others! Chambers understood the true theological nature of communism, an anti-God, anti-Christ religion that manifests itself in the political realm but is every bit as theological as it is political. Would to God more Christians had the ability to figure this out.

Witness was originally printed in 1952 but it was reprinted in 1985. You might want to check out amazon.com and see if the 1985 version is still available. It was reprinted by Regnery Gateway Inc. It is a big book. Over 700 pages, so it will take you awhile to read it. In going over my notes in the book I noted that I had read most of it twice before, back a few years, but you can always learn more from a good book by the rereading of it.

Chambers names names and gives you a good running history of Communist activity in this country in the 1930s-40s, especially around Washington.

It finally dawned on Chambers that communism was both wrong and evil. He broke with it because he became convinced it was the right thing to do. Interestingly, when he broke with communism he felt he was leaving the winning side and going over to the losing side–but he still felt it was right, no matter the personal results to him.

I can remember, years ago, I talked to a man in the church we attended at that time, in Indiana. I explained to him my reasons for opposing communism. To which he replied “You are going to lose. You know that don’t you?” I thought that was a surprising comment for a Christian to make, but, in light of where much of the Church is at in our day, I don’t suppose it was atypical. I can remember replying to him that “In the final analysis it isn’t important who wins and who loses. Doing the right thing is what counts.” With a little more wisdom now, I can certify that, in the long run, the communist will not win. He may prevail in the short term, but the Lord will have the final say. He may use His people to have that say–and to do that He may even use some of them in the political realm. Maybe that is an idea more Christians should start getting used to, even though, at this point they shrink from that thought.

If the Lord’s people refuse to confront that which is evil, He may end up finding others who will be more willing to tackle what is evil and to expose it.

Training Your Children To Be Compliant Little Marxists

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Recently, I did an article about Herbert A. Philbrick’s book “I Led Three Lives.” In that article I mentioned Louis Budenz, the director of the Communist newspaper “Daily Worker” and how he had broken with the Communist Party and returned to his Catholic faith

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According to one account I read, Karl Marx said “The education of all children, from the moment they can get along without their mother’s care, shall be in state institutions.” This would be consistent with the 10th plank in his “Communist Manifesto” which said, in part, “Free education for all children in public schools.”

This was something Louis Budenz sought to warn people about after he broke away from Communism. He wrote an autobiography, “This Is My Story” as well as other books and articles which exposed what the Communists were trying to do to this country.

In 1954 Budenz wrote about Communist penetration of our educational systems and part of his work was posted on http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/educatio.htm which I cannot possibly quote all of here, but I will give you a few of his comments. Budenz said: “In undermining a nation such as the United States, the infiltration of the educational process is of prime importance. The Communists have accordingly made the invasion of schools and colleges one of the major considerations in their psychological warfare designed to control the American mind…Those who contend that Communists should be permitted to teach in our schools ‘as long as they do not teach Communism openly in the classroom’ have not acquainted themselves with the ABC of Red infiltration…In the classroom, the Communist teacher or professor very rarely, if ever, teaches Marxism-Leninism openly. There are hundreds of indirect ways of reaching the same end…Dr. J. B. Matthews, after careful examination of the records, declares that since 1935 ‘the Communist Party has enlisted the support of at least thirty-five hundred professors–many of them as dues-paying members, many others as fellow travelers, some as out-and-out espionage agents,…” And he goes on to list a whole batch of them, most of whom are probably deceased at this point so I will not list names,, but they taught at such prestigious schools as Columbia University, Rutgers University, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, New York University, even at Union Theological Seminary. Since he wrote this back in 1954 you can bet that number his increased considerably.

People have been warning us about Marxist penetration of public schools at least since Budenz did it but mostly parents pay no attention. It’s easier to just look the other way and ignore all of this. That way you don’t have to get involved and do something about it. You can just coast along and pretend its all “pie in the sky bye and bye.” Kind of like the “rapture theory” in theological circles.

Problem is, it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious, and many writers have of late been warning us of this situation. I have seen literally dozens of articles on the internet in past months telling parents what goes on in various public schools around the country, and some of it is pretty gross.

A recent article appeared on https://www.dailysignal.com on August 16, 2020 by Douglas Blair, who is an administrative assistant at the Heritage Foundation. He wrote: “Your children are being indoctrinated. The education system designed to teach them how to think critically has been weaponized by the radical left to push an anti-American agenda…I worked with kids from ages 3 to 13 and saw the brainwashing that exists at all levels of education. The left uses a combination of propaganda and suppression to push kids into the ensnaring grip of socialism and anti-patriotism. First is the propaganda. Teachers will assign work instilling the idea that the pillars of Western civilization were evil, and that their memories deserve to be thrown in the trash…Another way the left propagandizes is through the normalization of its views and positions as nonpolitical. The Black Lives Matter organization is a prime example of this. Many of my colleagues wore Black Lives Matter pins and apparel to school in blatant violation of school rules forbidding political statements on clothing. When I asked for a justification of the behavior, I was told it wasn’t political to support the group, it was a matter of human rights.” Anyone who knows anything at all about Black Lives Matter knows that is a complete croc. The group is Marxist to the core, and its leaders even admit as much.

But Blair continued: “But it wasn’t just a matter of teaching that America and the West are evil. Suppression of ‘wrongthink’ is equally as important to the brainwashing process. The lessons I was allowed to teach were also censored…The suppression extends to American religious values as well. I would try to engage my students with folk stories from around the globe to teach them world history and other cultures. Story time went on without a hitch until I decided to tell stories from the Bible. Other teachers began to complain I was preaching Christian values to the children and attempting to convert them…After sharing the story of the Tower of Babel, I was told to switch back to non-Christian stories or face consequences.” It was okay to teach about non-Christian cultures, but don’t you dare to say anything good about the Bible or Christianity. That is just not prrmitted in public schools–which proves my contention that these schools are really anti-Christian institutiions.

And Blair concludes with a scathing indictment. He notes: “The young adults who today gleefully tear down statues of the Founding Fathers were incubated in our very own schools, groomed to burst from the education system and burn America down.” In other words, our public schools are being used as vehicles to tear this country down. But then, if you understand the theology behind public education, you realize this was the agenda from day one! This is not some new thing, some new “progressive” fad. This has been an ongoing agenda since the 1830s. It has just accelerated in the past few years.

This is an area I have had a concern about since our days in West Virginia in the mid-1970s. Do I think many will listen? Probably not. But at least, if you read this, you can never say no one ever told you what was going on. There have been many that have tried to tell you over the years, most of them far more eloquently than I have, and still you have not listened. The generation of budding Marxists in our schools at this point may well end up tearing down the system and then you won’t have to listen to dissenting voices anymore as they will all be silenced.

Marxist Religion And Its Infiltration Into Our Institutions

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Herbert A. Philbrick, in his penetrating book I Led Three Lives made a number of astute observations that it would behoove us to give some consideration to in our day.

He told us, for instance, by asking a question, when he said: “What was it that instilled such devotion into these Communists, to labor so hard for such a distorted cause. What was it that got into them? Was it sincere belief in the prattle of communism? Was it disillusionment and frustration that led them into these paths?” Actually what had gotten into them was a religious faith, though most of them would not have labeled it as that. It was a theological premise that Karl Marx was some sort of secular deity, possessed of the wisdom to right all the wrongs in the world.

Philbrick also told us, of public schools, that “The subject of Communism was seldom discussed, much less studied, in public school…I could not recall having seen a single textbook on the subject of communism. (Even today, very few public schools provide either courses or textbooks on communism.” The few books I had come across in the public library appeared to be mostly by apologists for communism; Walter Duranty (of the New York Times), Corliss Lamont; millionaire son of the multi-millionaire Thomas Lamont; or Rev. Hewlett Johnson, a clergyman high in the Church of England.” Lots of information in these few comments. Public schools of that era taught nothing about communism (not entirely an accident). I can remember, when I was in the sixth grade in public school, there were several books in the school library that gave glowing reports about the United Nations, which was fairly new at that time. It was presented as the last, best hope for mankind–something that has turned out to be a hollow shibboleth.

Public schools in our day seem to have reversed the non-teaching about Marxism or communism. We are now graduating students from them that prattle about how wonderful some sort of communism would be for our country and how “racist” and capitalist this country is and capitalism is listed as the cause of racism, so the two are intertwined with each other.

Note his comments about public libraries. No books in them except for those that apologized for communism. Makes you wonder who was running the libraries doesn’t it. It’s a little bit better in some instances today but you still have to be discerning about what you pull off the shelves to read on the subject of communism.

And after the kiddies get through their latest exercises on the class struggle in high school there is college. Philbrick mentioned a particular person in this regard and I will quote him. He said: “The young woman with the red hair was Dr. Hulda McGarvey. I had previously encountered Hulda in connection with the Sam Adams School for Social Studies, and regarded her as one of many misguided liberals enticed into teaching posts in the Communist-front training school. But I was shocked to see her here in the inner circle of the Communist party. A graduate of Smith College and Columbia University, a former instructor at Mount Holyoke College, and an assistant professor of psychology at Smith, she was a highly regarded academician, unknown for any intimate Communist party connections.” How many other professors in our day are like this woman? Although nowadays professors mostly don’t trouble to hide their Marxist proclivities.

I can remember, a few years after my high school years, a man in the church we attended at that time did not want his son to be taught by one of the English teachers I had had in high school. He was in the Air Force Reserve and had somewhere gotten the info that this teacher was a Communist and refused to have her teach his son. I can’t verify his concerns. This was all over 50 years ago now, but I recall he was quite vehement about this situation, and let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me. Philbrick mentioned, on page 224 of his book “…a teachers’ (Communist) cell in the public schools,…”

Believe it or not, even the Unitarians came in for “honorable” mention in Philbrick’s book. He mentioned, on pages 71, 132, and 239 various Unitarians that were more than willing to aid the Communists in their endeavors.

Philbrick also mentioned, on page 155, Louis Budenz, who had been the managing director of the Communist Daily Worker newspaper. In 1945 Budenz broke with the Communists and returned to his Catholic faith, somewhat of a shock for the comrades at the time. Years later, I got to know a man who had talked with Budenz after he broke with the Communists and apparently Budenz gave him quite a bit of information as to how the Communists operated at that time.

But, to close this out, one more observation regarding Marxist theology–in regard to the indoctrination given to potential Marxists, Philbrick told us that: “Marxism teaches them to resign themselves to the collective future, to give up the shaping of their own personal destinies, and to accept the alleged inflexible laws of class warfare and ultimate victory for the proletariat. They can simply let themselves go and be carried along to a goal they think they cannot escape.” You can see where such a mindset can become a theological belief. And it is no different today. The belief in violent communist revolution in our day is still a theology. Maybe one of the questions we need to address today is–who is the devil using to direct this theology and how much are they spending to promote it?

The Practice Of Marxism Is “A Criminal Code Of Behavior”

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

The quote in the title of this article is by Herbert A. Philbrick, author of the book I Led Three Lives republished way back in 1972. Democrats and other fervent devotees of the political and theological left would probably love to have this censored out of existence. However, Philbrick’s nine years of infiltrating the Communist Party gives him an excellent perspective on communism that few in our day seem to possess.

I will quote Mr. Philbrick at some length because he provides insight on Marxism that seems all but lost in our day, what with all the young people in many of our schools having been taught that, somehow, communism will solve all the world’s problems if only we can enact it. These kids really don’t have a clue to what they are promoting yet think they are brilliant enough to lecture older folks about how wonderful the most evil and fraudulent system in the world is. I can only pray the Lord will wake at least some of them up, and by so doing, help them to shut up about something they do not begin to understand. If some of them could talk to those who survived and escaped Communism as I have they might begin to gain a more accurate perspective.

Mr. Philbrick says: “But the seeds of Marxism bear evil fruit. When put into practice the theories of Karl Marx become, in all essential elements, a criminal code of behavior. The methods used by the followers of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung are depraved, and any ‘new world’ the Communists create becomes a nightmare instead of a dream. The ‘Peoples democracies’ are reverse prisons where honest people are locked up and the gangsters are the wardens. Wherever Communism touches the lives of people, whether in the free world or in the prison of nations, there is heartbreak, sorrow, disaster and death. The greatest fraud of this century is the promotion and sale of tyranny in a package labeled social progress” This is every bit as true today as it was when Philbrick wrote it originally, probably over six decades ago now.

In another revelation he noted: “…the Communist movement is not genuinely anti-fascist, any more than it is genuinely in favor of civil liberties, better housing, peace, or any of the other causes its leaders so ardently espouse. If every basis for Communist discontent today were suddenly removed and their every demand granted, tomorrow the professional leaders of the Communist Party would find or provoke new causes of discontent, and would draw up a fresh list of demands.” This holds true today for Antifa, Black Lives Matter and the whole coterie of Marxist-oriented groups that operate in our day. Their whole agenda is not about really helping people–it is about gaining power, however they can, any way they have to.

And Philbrick observed: “The ‘professional’ Communist is another breed…He knows precisely and exactly what he is doing. His goal is power–total, relentless, invulnerable and irreversible power.” The “professional” communist in our day may not be a “party” member. He probably isn’t. Yet he is a fanatical devotee of the religion of Marxism and Marx’s “ten points” as recorded in the Communist Manifesto are probably his “ten commandments.”

Many Christians have accused me over the years of being too “political” because of my opposition to communism. What these good folks fail to realize is that Marxism is, at root, a theology, an anti-Christian theology that manifests itself in political issues. Were it not an anti-Christian theology it would not have persecuted Christians as vehemently as it has all over the world. The fact that is has done and is doing this shows it is an anti-Christian theology the same as Islam.

As Democrats in this country move further and further to the left they begin to sound more like Marx and less like Harry Truman. This is no accident. The present Democratic establishment has been captured by those with a Marxist mentality and worldview–the promoters of a false, anti-Christian religion. Christians need to wake up and begin to understand the theology of Karl Marx so they don’t end up supporting causes that will ultimately undermine their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.