Christian Nationalism, Deceiving Spirits and Doctrines of Demons

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron.” (1 Tim. 4:1-2)

“Some lies are so powerful that they have an evident spiritual dynamic behind them. These are lies crafted and promoted by deceiving spirits … Demons are theology majors and have systems of doctrine.” – David Guzik

American Reformer’s Woke Right Christian Nationalists tried mightily this year to secure levers of power both in the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in America – and, for their efforts, received two significant smackdowns in what certainly has been more of a spiritual battle than a political one. I’ll explain why that is after a brief recap of what was a very bad month for AmRef.

First, AmRef embarrassingly self-cratered at the SBC Annual Meeting on June 10-11. On every major issue that AmRef and its band of SBC enablers pushed there, the group doing business as “The Center for Baptist Leadership” lost. It lost on the Law Amendment. It lost on abolishing the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. It lost on a motion to secure “increased financial transparency” from SBC entities. And what was CBL’s immediate reaction online? Urging Southern Baptists to join with AmRef “to represent your bold, conservative and convictional Christian values and beliefs in the public square and political arena!” Why, because naive actual conservatives need a deceptive group posing as “conservatives” to lead them into losing even harder in the future?

What made this situation particularly satisfying was that, shortly before the annual meeting, AmRef – which critiqued the ERLC for Leftist ideology and working with George Soros-funded groups – was outed for being completely hypocritical on that point. In fact, AmRef’s SBC event had as its top-listed partner the Future of Life Institute, a group with its own Leftist ideological viewpoints (the “risks of climate change,” for example) and ties to the president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, who signed an FLI open letter about building “the global governance needed to make AI a force for good.”

Maybe AmRef’s leaders should just wear lapel buttons, reading: “Working with Soros-tied groups with Leftist ideology is only wrong when our enemies do it!”

Then, American Reformer got more egg on its face at the PCA General Assembly, which took place June 23-27. AmRef co-founder Nate Fischer readily admitted online that the denomination blocked the Woke Right group from exhibiting at the GA. But it still put on a side event at a secret location, with all registrations “subject to approval by the host.” Not only that, but AmRef put a cherry on top of its sundae of terrible event-planning by foolishly implementing a “no-press” policy, which it affirmed by rejecting the registration of a reporter from The Tennessean, a legitimate newspaper with a legitimate interest in the news value of the event.

Maybe AmRef’s leaders need to add another lapel button to their suit jackets: “Transparency? That’s only for our enemies!”

Then, pictures of the event released online showed the AmRef Presbyterians had some non-PCA buddies with them, as well: William “I’m All About Baptist Leadership, really!” Wolfe and Andrew Isker, who recently bemoaned the practice of giving kidney dialysis to “old people,” co-authored an awful CN book with vile antisemite Andrew Torba and co-hosts a podcast with the equally vile C. Jay Engel, who recently claimed “The Special Olympics shouldn’t exist.” Call me crazy, but nutty people showing up for events centered on leveraging power in denominations in which they aren’t even members should rank as highly suspicious to even the most charitable Christians in the PCA – and every other denomination.

But try as AmRef might to become the Big Cheese in a second denominational context, the PCA’s biblical understanding of what is at stake here thankfully prevailed. By substantial margins, the denomination ended up passing a statement that explicitly condemned both kinism and racial and ethnic supremacy (which are now openly held positions by many major Woke Right Christian Nationalist leaders), joining hands on the matter with both the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America. Additionally, the denomination agreed to form a study committee on Christian Nationalism.

Will AmRef finally admit defeat and close up shop? Of course not! Everything with these guys is about strategic huddling after discerning Christians hand them big losses and trying to figure out how to create yet another PR campaign that will allow them to re-emerge with new slogans, new agendas and fresh resolve to “win.” Now, William Wolfe has decided that he should start posting Bible verses in between new ERLC attacks, while Josh Abbotoy is pushing his New Founding-affiliated RidgeRunner aligned community again. But much like the Bad News Bears, AmRef will be back, you guys! “Just wait till next year!”

To which I say, with no sarcasm whatsoever: How long, O Lord? I’m so sick and tired of the entire Christian Nationalism movement -– of which AmRef is just a mere part -- that I can’t adequately articulate it. I’m sick of the whole crusade and all of its major and minor players. Yes, I’m sick of AmRef’s constant deception and hypocrisy. But I’m also sick of its friends’ and associates’ blatant antisemitism and disdain for all things Israel, hatred of non-whites, hatred of women, hatred of religious freedom and antipathy toward the U.S. Constitution. And don’t forget their collective willingness to tolerate and spiritually partner with some of the worst people – even heretics like Paula White (we’re looking at you, William Wolfe) – just to attain political and cultural power.

And yet, as I’ve been studying 1 Timothy, the first two verses of Chapter 4 have stood out to me in a fresh way. There is more wrong with the broader movement we know as Woke Right Christian Nationalism than just its unbiblical ideology. There is, I think, a dangerous spiritual component to this movement that really does reflect what the Bible says is a heeding of “deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.”

Again, as Paul tells Timothy: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron” (1 Tim. 4:1-2). The context is apostasy. Certainly, we see a lot of apostates today among the exvangelicals and the nones, among those who abandon Christian orthodoxy to major in hip political and social issues instead and among those who adhere to Christian orthodoxy but are really fakes, liars, charlatans or sexual deviants. There is no shortage of apostates today, and a great departure from the faith is certainly a sign of the latter days. But this passage also leads me to ask: How do these Christian Nationalists specifically fit the description of latter-day apostates that Paul lays out in this passage?

Commentator Albert Barnes observed: “Some of the characteristics of that apostasy were these; there would be a giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. Those who taught would hypocritically speak what they knew to be falsehood, having their own consciences seared.” In other words, the falsehoods these apostates speak without a twinge of conscience aren’t merely coming from the evil of their own hearts and thoughts. The Bible says these falsehoods ultimately come from evil spiritual sources: deceiving spirits with demonic doctrines.

Many of us who are not charismatic in any sense of the term (myself included) may feel a little uncomfortable saying that out loud, lest we get branded as wantonly blaming anything at all on “demons.” But that is what the text says about “some” of these end-times apostates: they “give heed” not merely to bad ideas, but to “deceiving spirits” themselves.

Pastor David Guzik, whom I quoted at the outset, notes in his Enduring Word Commentary that the first demonic doctrine is laid out in Gen. 3:4-5: “Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” He notes: “Since then, every demonic doctrine has found its way back to this root: the idea that we can be gods, and operate independently from God.”

In other words, the root of all demonic deception is convincing man that he can elevate himself to a place of preeminence, even becoming “like God.” That was the serpent’s big lie in the Garden of Eden, and that is his big lie now. As the Mormon president Brigham Young once put it in Journal of Discourses, “The Lord created you and me for the purpose of becoming Gods like Himself.” Historian and author Yuval Noah Harari echoed this idea in a 2017 interview about his creepy book, “Homo Deus,” telling one interviewer: “Human history began when men created gods. It will end when men become gods.”

Now you may say, “These Christian Nationalist main players don’t believe they can become gods! They may have some weird ideas about ethno-nationalism and white supremacy and reshaping America under a Protestant Franco, but they’re still Christians!” First of all, we actually don’t fully know what these guys believe, both because they are cagey about a lot of what they believe and also because they lie a lot.

But second, their entire, crystal-clear goal is takeover – acquiring enormous power and control by taking over both the political realm and large sectors of the evangelical church, which they actually believe is an attainable goal. They may not believe they can become literal gods, but they certainly seek godlike power, speak lies with hypocrisy and display seared consciences when it comes to their own personal character. Where in Scripture did the Lord Jesus ever tell us to lie in order to grab power? Or to use His name to gain trust within the church in order to stage a soft coup? Or to take over countries, strip people of their freedoms and force them to be “righteous?” It’s absurdly unbiblical.

Yes, only God knows for sure who among them is really saved, and maybe some of them will repent in the future, but to those of us paying close attention, there is simply no evidence of any Christlike transformation in most of these men at all. All you really have to do is examine their fruit. In fact, as a lot of these guys have felt increasingly comfortable revealing the darker sides of their radical ideology online, it’s become almost impossible to make a positive case that the lion’s share of them are born again.

You can tell a lot about people by what they don’t say, too. For more than two years, I’ve been reading their articles and social-media posts and watching their videos, and I see little to no genuine and unforced interest, among the majority of these men, in the true God of Scripture. I see little to no interest in the Bible, evangelism, prayer, discipleship, missions or helping their brothers and sisters in need. I see no humility. No attempt to be transparent or open or honest. No expression of their desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus. No repentance, ever.

But you know what I have seen, in spades? Christian Nationalists’ assertion of demonic doctrines like antisemitism and, among the Christian Nationalists who don’t make that assertion outright, a refusal to either denounce or cut ties with those who do.

So let’s consider: Who hates the Jews and the Jewish Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, more than Satan and his deceiving spirits?

Who tempted Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew 4, showing Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, vowing to give all of it to Him if He would just fall down and worship a rebellious fallen angel?

Who prompted Judas to betray the Lord in John 13:2? Who then “entered” Judas in Luke 22, right before he discussed with the chief priests and temple guard how he would betray Jesus?

Who now prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking to devour Christians?

We are warned so many times in Scripture of this tempter, this accuser, this Father of Lies, this Murderer and this Prince of the Power of the Air that you’d think we’d carefully look for his schemes every time a movement to destroy Christ’s church comes along. But we often do everything but that, which is why 1 Timothy 4:1-2 should be such a wake-up call for all of us.

With the way that Woke Right Christian Nationalists have been scheming and pushing their way into the heart of evangelical churches, not to mention conservative political circles, isn’t it entirely possible that these players may not be doing the bidding merely of their own ambitious, deceived and wayward hearts, but also the bidding of the very enemy of our souls and his deceiving spirits?

Those who care about staying faithful to Jesus Christ at this hour must not be deceived. This is a movement that has nothing less than both widespread political and spiritual destruction in its sights. These days, therefore, require great Christian discernment.

Who would have imagined how well Paul Harvey’s classic 1965 broadcast, “If I Were the Devil,” would resonate in 2025? But it does:

“If I were the devil … I would of course want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree – Thee. So I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I’d subvert the churches first …”