Nuff Said: Protecting revival, Twitterfiles, and Love your neighbor heresy
For those of you new to Notes from the Trail, “Nuff Said” is a recurring feature that highlights posts/articles from around the web that have drawn my attention in the following ways:
Made me think
Made me wonder
Made me feel
Nuff Said is different than The Roundup series in that it doesn’t focus on news but rather on what’s happening around the news.
Here we go:
Protecting revival
As the Asbury Revival began to close to the public1 and other breakouts spread to campuses across the U.S., a wonderful, behind-the-scenes look was reported by Christianity Today writer Daniel Silliman. It focuses on the Asbury University’s leadership sought to ensure that the revival was “protected” from outside influences and only sought to lift up Jesus. Their spiritual stewardship and prayerful management of this movement is truly exemplary.
As word spread, the crowds came, and debates raged online about whether this was a “real” revival, these men and women worked untold hours to make sure that everyone who sought God had food and water and restrooms and everyone was safe. Part of the story behind the story of the revival is the almost invisible work that went into protecting it.2
I highly recommend you read this article.
The Love Your Neighbor Heresy
As more and more information surfaces about the lies that were told by governments, agencies and glibly believed by the public during COVID, a deeply thoughtful, scripturally-rooted essay has appeared to rebuke spiritual leaders who urged their congregations to conform (whether by masks or by vaccines) using the scriptural imperative of “love your neighbor” to do so.
Stephen Wellum is professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
By far the most serious misuse of the command to love neighbor has been our government’s insistence that everyone be vaccinated regardless of age, medical condition, pregnancy, natural immunity, etc. Sadly, this sentiment was voiced by many “leaders” in the evangelical church, while those who questioned the “science” were mocked and scolded by many Evangelicals. For example, those who signed the “BioLogos Statement: Love Your Neighbor—Get the Shot!,” insisted that “love” obligated all Christians to get vaccinated regardless of their situation. Refusing the vaccine was tantamount to sin, and refusal to get the jab was most definitely deemed a violation of “love your neighbor!”3
This article is significant, and I urge you to read it. It is a gracious but penetrating exposition of why “love your neighbor” was a heretical way for Christian leaders or churches to approach the pandemic and may have actually been more about manipulating or guilting people to do something they had concerns/convictions about doing.
Back in July, I asked, “Are you promoting a lie? I care. I care because when we remain silent about lies, it promotes falsehood.”4
Twitterfiles
In the 17th Twitterfiles drop on Thursday, it was revealed that our government created a network of “disinformation labs” to essentially enforce a preferred narrative of communication.5 Twitterfiles have been made possible by Elon Musk coordinating with independent citizen journalists to uncover the corruption behind government’s collusion with social media, Big Tech, Big Pharma, academia and mainstream media.
In Thursday’s drop we learn about the “Global Engagement Center.”
Taibbi highlighted the vapidity of the newly-manufactured “anti-disinformation” organizations and the subservient compliance of news media to such organizations’ claims.
“Most of these ‘experts’ know nothing,” he wrote. “Many have skill, if you can call mesmerizing dumb reporters a skill, but in the area of identifying true bad actors, few know more than the average person on the street.”
He added, “The scary angle on GEC is not so much the agency as the sprawling infrastructure of ‘disinformation labs’ that have grown around it.”
If you’re saying to yourself, “TwitterFiles?! What are the TwitterFiles?” I’d honestly suggest that you set aside an hour and catch up. If you’ve watched a cumulative hour of mainstream media news in the past three years about COVID, you need to take same time and de-indoctrinate yourself.
The good folks over at Rational Ground have helpfully compiled and summarized TwitterFiles entries here (Drops 1-5) and here (Drops 6-10).
Here are Drops 11-16:
TwitterFiles 11
You can read the entire thread here.
TwitterFiles 12
You can read the entire thread here.
TwitterFiles 13
You can read the entire thread here.
TwitterFiles 14
You can read the entire thread here.
TwitterFiles 15
You can read the entire thread here.
TwitterFiles 16
You can read the entire thread here.
If you’ve made it this far…
Congratulations! Before you click away, I do encourage you to spend some time on the two articles about revival and “love your neighbor.” I recognize that the catching up on the TwitterFiles will be a time commitment. However, I hope you’ll block off an hour to do so.
Few projects have been as meaningful from a true, investigative journalistic perspective in our generation as these drops. Think Watergate on steroids. Some MSM outlets have only now begun to investigate what has been revealed, and the result has been a steady news cycle in the past two months of backtracking and obfuscating.
😳
Asbury Revival: Professor calls for end to 'public phase' as school scrambles to address overcrowding, by Jon Brown, Fox News, February 19, 2023
‘No Celebrities Except Jesus’: How Asbury Protected the Revival, by Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today, February 23, 2023
Thou Shalt Be Vaccinated: When “Love Thy Neighbor” Does Not Fulfill the Law, by Stephen Wellum, Christ Over All, February 20, 2023
Masks Still Don’t Work, July 27, 2022
Scott Adams uses the term “narrative poisoning.”
