Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, now that so many brainwashed, naive Pollyannas are waking up. I know that's not you. You have already woken up a long time ago.

But many others are now waking up to how our own government has conspired against the American people and our constitutional republic, especially since the inauguration of the Trump administration. Well, I want to compare and contrast this phenomenon of conspiracy here in America with the top four conspiracy theories in the Bible. Oh, yes. First, let's be precise about what we mean. Conspiracy.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines conspiracy as a combination of persons for an evil or unlawful purpose, an agreement between two or more persons to do something criminal, illegal, or reprehensible, especially in relation to treason, sedition, or murder. A plot. That is the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of conspiracy. Those combination of persons who engage in a conspiracy do not bear you goodwill. Your government does not love you or intend to have your good or your welfare in mind when they act.

In fact, by their actions and policies over the last few decades, it is evident to those of us who are not naive brainwashed Pollyannas that those who govern us are absolutely malevolent towards those whom they govern. To them, they do not exist to serve and enrich us. But in complete contrast, we exist to serve and enrich them. They are the predator, we the prey. They are the parasite, we the host.

And that malevolence comes to expression in the conspiracies foisted upon us to subjugate us, exploit us, and ultimately destroy us. Soon after the JFK assassination, the CIA crafted a propaganda tool to diminish and deride anyone who questioned the government narrative concerning the assassination, that was a single shooter. That's the idea of the government narrative. There was a single shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, and he was responsible for the president's wounds on that day in Dallas in 1963. That propaganda tool was the pejorative label conspiracy theorist.

And by it, any person who questioned the received narrative and posited a combination of persons, if you will, a conspiracy, was a suspicious, unstable person with an overactive imagination. He was definitely outside of the mainstream and could therefore be easily dismissed, and his theories scoffed at and made irrelevant. A conspiracy theorist, right? How successful that propaganda tactic has been over the decades. But things are changing.

The people are waking up to not only the JFK of matter, but to a whole host of conspiracies employed by what has now come to be known as the deep state. Oh, how much they have in common with those conspiracies we find in the Bible over redemptive history. The first one from redemptive history I would like to bring forward is the fall. Yes, the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve. Behold the original conspiracy, after which all others are modeled.

The devil conspired in the Garden of Eden to draw our first parents from God as covenant master to himself, the serpent as covenant master. And he did this by three master deceptions. First of all, he sowed a seed of doubt, a seed of doubt. He said to Eve, hath God said, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden. And then secondly, a bald-faced lie.

He just came right out and said, you will not surely die, when indeed they did. And then C, or number three, he also sowed doubt with a half-truth. He deceived with a half-truth. He told Eve, for God knows that when you eat of it, that is the fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Oh, it would be a knowing.

It would be a tragic, deadly knowing. Well, the devil is the master deceiver. John in Revelation reaffirms this. He says in chapter 12, verse 9, the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him, unquote.

Conspirators deceive. How those who wish to tyrannize over us have deceived us. For example, 9-11 was exclusively planned and executed by Osama bin Laden, they say, and the Taliban. Oh, the U.S. government had nothing to do with it. Or there were definitely weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, except there weren't.

We were deceived into going in. Or the lockdown measures for COVID in 2020 will definitely keep us safe. Except they didn't. We were deceived for the whole COVID hoax. Or the COVID vaccine would definitely inoculate us from getting the virus.

Except it didn't. We were deceived into getting jabbed, were we not? Or the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Except it wasn't. We were deceived by the 51 intelligence community signatories to the letter that testified to that falsehood.

Oh, this is only a brief sampling of demonic deception by our government. They are only following in the footsteps of their father, the devil. In fact, our Lord told the Jews, he said, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Unquote. The serpent in the garden of Eden, the devil, Satan, our enemy of old, has provided us with the template for conspiring against our creator. And it must be admitted that all conspiracies of evil versus good are derivative of the original. But that doesn't mean that there are not other variations of that original model that have been employed. That brings us to number two, conspiracy number two, the Tower of Babel, the Tower of Babel.

In this vignette from Redemptive History, we must not forget the collective nature of this conspiracy in contrast to the singular nature of that first devised by the serpent. Oh, the plan to construct a stairway to heaven, as Led Zeppelin sings, right? That plan to build a stairway to heaven was a plan to erect a kind of siege ladder against the walls of heaven in order to storm and assault it on behalf of exiled mankind.

The Tower, per se, has been variously interpreted over the centuries as any one of these kinds of devices and designs that allow us to overcome the defenses of God in the Garden of Eden, in particular, the angel guarding the entrance with a flaming sword. The Tower of Babel was a conspiracy by the whole body of mankind to assault the throne of God Almighty and supplant his righteous rule with that of a lost humanity. They say, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

Oh, this was not just a simple primitive project to get at God in the skies, naively thinking that if they built it tall enough they'd get to heaven. No. The Tower of Babel was a united conspiracy to create an alternative paradise to that planned by God originally for mankind before the fall. As we know from Revelation, God's eventual design is for a garden city, which redeemed man will inhabit and cultivate and grow throughout eternity. What a glorious future.

It is that city which John sees, as he says in Revelation 21, and I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. The Tower of Babel is the serpent's alternative. Babel was the devil's labor to short-circuit God's plans and finally capture all of mankind as his covenant subjects in a ghetto briar patch rather than a garden city. And in Genesis 11, God recognizes it for what it is.

He says, behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them, unquote. While this hellish purpose is why God subsequently confused the one language of mankind and dispersed them over the face of the earth, and he began to build another people for himself in his choice of Abraham, from whom would come eventually Jesus Christ and his seed, a people of faith. That's the continuing story of redemption that we preach at New Geneva and other places, including here.

But that does not mean that humanity is through with trying to build that Tower of Babel. Oh, in our own day, that is exemplified in the conspiracy to bring to the nations of the earth a new world order, as Klaus Schwab calls it. And until recently, it was dismissed as a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. But now it is discussed openly, a new world order as a viable alternative to the chaos and conflict that we see around the world. It's especially true since the artificially contrived COVID crisis.

Yes, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum calls it the Great Reset. That is, the economies and cultures of the world must be radically scaled back, including the human population. In this new world order, as Klaus says, you will own nothing and be happy. This is from a white paper from the World Economic Forum that detailed some of the features of this dystopian vision of the future due to be in place by 2030. And that is, for example, you will live in 15 minute cities, out of range of which your credit card will not work, nor your ID be valid, nor cell phone be operational.

You will eat bug protein instead of beef, chicken and pork. You will live in a 250 square foot coffin apartment with no chance to own your own home ever. You will be surveilled and monitored 24 seven, 365 days a year, and everything will be done to discourage marriage, family and religion. Oh, we see this conspiracy being implemented around the world. And it is real and tightening around our throats like a bow constrictor squeezing a victim.

President Trump is aware of many of the elements of this conspiracy and is working to eradicate them from the American system. Let us pray he is successful and we must join him in his labors. And we as citizens do our own part to defeat this modern version of the Tower of Babel conspiracy. Well, the third biblical conspiracy I would like to bring forward to you and compare it to what's going on today is Haman versus the Jews. The character Haman from the Bible, from the book of Esther versus the Jews.

Here is a biblical conspiracy not often reflected upon, but it has pertinent application to modern days. In the period of the Babylonian exile, the Jews found themselves as a community apart from their homeland, serving the kings of Babylon and later Persia. In fact, the prophet Jeremiah advised the exiles to settle in, build homes, make families, and as he says in Jeremiah 29, seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."

And so it came to pass that the Jews made good the welfare of Babylon under King Ahasuerus to the point where he took to his queen Esther from among the Jews. But there was a fly in the ointment. Esther's uncle Mordecai refused to pay homage to King Ahasuerus' favorite in the court, who was an arrogant, ambitious sycophant named Haman. The king, as the text says, promoted Haman and advanced him and set his throne above all the officials who were with him. But this was not good enough for the Persian bureaucrat.

There was one impudent commoner who would not cravenly bow down when his chariot passed by, and that was Esther's uncle Mordecai. Every day, Haman had to see this resilient Jew standing there as he passed by while everyone else hugged the pavement and praised his name. And it stuck in Haman's craw like a fishbone swallowed in a southern barbecue. So in his bitterness and hubris, Haman concocted a conspiracy whereby he could destroy not only this upstart Mordecai, but the entire people from which he issued, that is the Jews.

Like Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings, Haman whispered ugly things about the Jews into Ahasuerus' ear such that he received permission and resources to utterly exterminate the entire race of Jews living in his kingdom. And the book of Esther records this. It says in chapter 3, letters were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces with instruction to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the 13th day of the 12th month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods, unquote. Oh, conspiracies against entire peoples are not new, dear listener.

No one reminds me more of the wicked Persian bureaucrat Haman than the wicked American bureaucrat Anthony Fauci. In many ways, he became the front man for the entire COVID hoax and its aftermath. Yes, Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 84 to 2022, and then advisor to the president. He oversaw the gain-of-function research on the COVID-19 virus. When Congress banned viral gain-of-function research, Fauci conspired to outsource that research to labs in Wuhan, China, complete with millions of dollars in research funds.

Fauci knowingly lied to Congress when questioned about that research. Fauci is financially vested in the patents on the COVID virus. He has made a fortune on the pandemic. He is financially vested in the mRNA vaccine, which was conveniently trotted out as the only and exclusive treatment for COVID. He deliberately suppressed and lied about the efficacy of alternative treatments, including and especially ivermectin or supplements.

Fauci incessantly hawked measures that were ineffective health-wise, that is, masks and social distancing, lockdowns, school and church closings, small business shutdowns. But they were effective in destroying the American economy, these measures, accustoming the American public to tyranny. Fauci lied about the deleterious effects of the mRNA vaccine. He suppressed the clear evidence that it neither inoculated anyone nor moderated the effects of COVID. And he also deliberately went about destroying the funding and careers of those doctors and researchers who contradicted him and his agency.

The so-called COVID pandemic was part of a larger worldwide conspiracy to acclimate the American people to tyranny and get rid of a large part of the population under a new world order or the Great Reset. Haman, the Persian bureaucrat, must be looking up from the pit of hell and marveling at the evil success of his American bureaucratic counterpart, Anthony Fauci. Conspiracies are a fact of life in this world, are they not, dear listener? Well, our last conspiracy from the Bible of the four great conspiracies is that of Judas Iscariot. Yes, here is the very pinnacle and paradigm of conspiracy and betrayal.

Dante, in his masterpiece Inferno, where hell is portrayed as nine concentric rings, each more terrifying and tortuous than the previous, well, Judas Iscariot is located in the very last ring at the bottom, along with Brutus, who conspired and betrayed Julius Caesar, subject to being in the very presence of Satan himself. And the conspiracy against Adam and Eve looms large also in the firmament of conspiracies, but nothing compares to Judas' conspiracy with the Jews against our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The evangelists document this very clearly. In Matthew chapter 12, when Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, the Jews were enraged.

But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. Or from Matthew 26, then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. Unquote. Oh, how many Christians freely admit that evil men can formulate a conspiracy against the Savior, but poo-poo, the corresponding fact that evil men can design a conspiracy against other men and institutions. In fact, an argument can be made that the conspiracy to crucify Jesus is a model for subsequent conspiracies against great men in the future.

But it also has direct correspondences with Satan's original conspiracy against God and our first covenant head, that is, Adam. For example, every conspiracy in redemptive history seeks either to grasp after a kingdom or seeks to preserve the one it already has, right? As Isaiah tells us about Satan and his fall, how you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of dawn. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high, Satan would brag.

Or when Jesus' powerful ministry won the approval of the people, the Jews said, excuse me, if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. Oh, the Jews. Conspiracies are about power, are they not? The plot to kill Jesus being no different. Or look and see that both the devil's conspiracy against Adam in the Garden of Eden and the devil's conspiracy against our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane involve the temptation and fall of mankind's covenant mediator, that mediator on behalf of the entire race of men.

As the Apostle Paul articulates so effectively in Romans 5, for example, Adam's fall plunged all of our race into sin and death since he was our first covenant representative, while Jesus' successful stand put upright before God a whole race of men since he was our new covenant mediator and representative. Oh, the Bible only and exclusively holds out covenant as God's economy in dealing with men. No dispensations, no other testaments, no. There is an old covenant with Adam as our mediator, and there's a new covenant with Christ as our mediator.

There is, in biblical understanding, a unity of the race such that what happens to our covenant mediator happens to us. Adam sinned and died in the Garden of Eden. Consequently, we, his children, sin and die as we propagate after him. And conversely, Jesus proved righteous and was raised to life at the cross. Consequently, we, his children, live unto righteousness, and we will also be raised to new life.

Oh. And also note, too, every conspiracy has what the CIA calls in their internal documents a patsy. A patsy is the person who is pre-set up by the real conspirators behind the scenes. In other words, he's framed to look like the lone and exclusive actor in an assassination or crime or violent act. The patsy takes the fall, the whole blame, even though many others were in reality part of the planned conspiracy.

Oh, circumstances are so manipulated that to the casual observer, the patsy looks like the only one who did the whole thing. Lee Harvey Haswald is the classic example. Oh, yes. Well, so it is then that Judas Iscariot has become the patsy in the conspiracy to crucify Jesus of Nazareth, for example. Matthew 26 tells us, what will you give me, he says, that is, Judas says to the Jews, if I deliver him over to you, and they paid him 30 pieces of silver.

And from that moment, he sought an opportunity to betray him, unquote. Oh, the Jews had well before decided to kill Jesus at some point, and Judas is only easing the way to the time and opportunity to do that. Oh. And so we see patsies also in our own day when it comes to conspiracies. On July 13, 2024, Thomas Crooks climbed on the roof of a utility building at the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, and took several shots at President Trump at one of his campaign rallies, right?

And then Crooks was shot in turn, too. But he wasn't alone. He was a classic patsy, was he not? More and more evidence is coming out that others from the Biden administration, Alexander Mayorkas, for example, from Homeland Security or the Secret Service and Chris Wray at the FBI, they were all intimately involved in the plot to kill Donald Trump. There was even at least one other shooter involved in the attempt, but Thomas Crooks is the focus, the patsy, who gets the blame for originating, orchestrating, and executing the whole enchilada.

Behold, dear listener, conspiracies are not new to redemptive history, are they? Do not be a naive, brainwashed Pollyanna, and I know you're not. The enemy of your soul is conspiring to destroy you, is conspiring to destroy me, to destroy all of us who love him, just as that conspirator exemplar, that is, Satan, the devil, the old serpent, just as he conspired to destroy our first parents, Adam and Eve, and just as he tried to do to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. All evil conspiracies are still hatched by evil cabals of men.

They're not done trying, dear listener, just because Donald Trump was successfully elected and inaugurated as president of the United States does not mean conspiracies will stop. Only in the Lord Jesus Christ will you find security against the enemy of your soul. Flee to the Lord Jesus Christ, embrace him as your savior and protector, and there will be no conspiracy fashion that will destroy you, dear listener. You will be safe and secure in the Lord Jesus Christ for eternity. It's in his name that we pray.

It's in his name that we take strength. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. I encourage you to join us for our worship services, and then also you will give us a call, perhaps, to give us some feedback and encouragement at area code 208-523-0196. 208-523-0196.