This piece is going to be relatively short and, well, not so sweet. In fact, one might detect a hint of wormwood in it.

If anyone thought that the pseudo-theologians and televangelists, all with Dominionist agendas, would stop their nonsense even briefly following the presidential election and the victory of Joe Biden, they would have been fooled. While some, such as Paula White-Cain, do indeed seem to presently be in hiding, the usual actors, such as Jim Bakker, the Swaggarts, and their cohorts, are all still hard at it. Nor have those who are completely deluded by these so-called religious leaders swayed by the obvious falsity of all the so-called “prophecies” predicting the reelection of Donald Trump. Somehow, evil forces and the devil himself are in the mix so that what God had intended simply didn’t happen. The rational needed to even go there is an astonishing thing, no doubt.

Let me begin by illustrating the danger of religious leaders who openly direct their followers as to how to vote and for whom to vote. Within the past week or so, as I was watching Frances & Friends, a question from one of their, apparently, ardent followers came in. The questioner stated that their child was being taught that the Eastern Orthodox religion was a branch of Christianity in school and the questioner wanted to know if that was true or not. Frankly, I almost literally had to pick myself back up off of the floor after that question was raised! Beyond the fact that ANY thinking person should know the answer to this, I was absolutely astonished that the question was being posed to Frances and her panel. It didn’t surprise me, but it astonished me. The email writer, instead of thinking for maybe five minutes, or asking his/her pastor, or looking Eastern Orthodoxy up in an encyclopedia (maybe they couldn’t spell it; I don’t know), or even looking for the answer via the internet, instead posed the question to this august panel of religious “experts”. The obvious implication being that, since they did not try to find the answer by any other method, they were placing their full, unconditional trust in this panel. Thankfully, the panel did answer the question correctly. After all, one never really knows what they might say concerning any given subject, literally. I hope I don’t have to actually answer the question for any reader here….

The point here is exactly that there actually are people who will trust no one else other than their own choice of religious leaders. In this case it happened to be Frances and her panel, but it could just as well have been any other religious personage or group. They were trusted over any other source, including the very teacher in question. The insult to the intellect is so mind-boggling that I can barely comprehend it!

But, yes, it gets even worse. Yesterday it was all over the internet that some former Israeli space security chief had stated emphatically that aliens from other planets do indeed exist and that the world is not ready for that knowledge (why anyone would make such a statement to the whole world and then say the whole world is not ready for the knowledge is an absurdity in and of itself that is difficult to fathom – a clear logical fallacy). As for the article and further statements that this obvious nut-case made, referencing the “Galactic Federation” and Trump’s role are concerned, I don’t even want to get into that. Suffice it to say that this guy is on about the same level as Michael Flynn.

So, naturally, the subject was brought up on Frances & Friends yesterday, with Frances asking the panel if they believed in aliens and inviting callers to respond also. If I needed a big laugh, this would have brought it on if it had not been so horrific. I won’t even get into what the callers said mainly since none of their responses had anything whatsoever to do with the question, but instead focused on other conspiratorial ideas floating around. Even the panel seemed irritated with them. Yes, there really are a few ideas that even Frances & Friends won’t accept, believe it or not. But they will still cultivate the conspiratorially-minded people.

But, it was what members of the panel said that was most enlightening – or not, depending on one’s perspective. And, of course, Jim Nations was, as always, the most conspiratorial among them, with the others not far behind. Basically, their consensus was that aliens are really demonic beings disguising themselves as aliens to take our focus away from thinking about God. Do I really need to say more here? I mean, after all, if you believe in aliens there is no room left of God, right?

Anyway, most by now might rightly be thinking that it couldn’t get any worse than this. Sadly, most would be wrong on that point. See, over the course of the last two days Jim Bakker has had as guests on his show publisher Thomas Horn and the co-author for his latest book (Antichrist and the Final Solution), Terry James.

To even begin to try to delineate the absolute nonsense that both of these pseudo-intellectuals spouted would take me, well, another books worth of material. But, some of the most astonishing points made, in my view, included (1) a reference to a supposed Essene prophecy predicting exact dates for the end times and the return of Christ (spoiler alert – no such text exists) and (2) this absolutely insane idea that the Antichrist will appear during another pandemic, worse than the one we are presently experiencing (caused by the asteroid Apophis), and that he will somehow be the only one who has antibodies in his blood that will cure it and everyone who takes the vaccine made from his blood will, therefore, receive the mark of the Beast. I kid you not.

Now, such rantings and ravings from this guy are not unusual at all. Every time he is on the show I sense that he is competing with the likes of Derek and Sharon Gilbert for how far he can stretch sheer lunacy. But in this instance he is clearly treading on the dangerously absurd. After all, who with any moral integrity or even concern about people in general would, during a pandemic, put out a book proposing completely baseless conspiracy-theories and absurd religious propaganda rolled into one, I think clearly designed to frighten the public, mainly Christians, into not taking whatever vaccine may come along? After all, if a future vaccine could be dangerous to the Christian, whose to say that the one being developed as we speak isn’t also nefarious in some way? It is being developed faster than any vaccine in history, so there must be something up with that, right? Don’t laugh too much; I have actually encountered people who think just like that. And those like Tom Horn, Jim Bakker, and the Swaggarts feed their conspiratorial thinking even as it is cloaked in religious garb. THAT is the danger. People actually believe what these so-called religious leaders tell them – above science, above reason, above intellect, above everything.

Finally, back to the so-called Essene prophecy – Tom Horn referred to the so-called Essene prophets as “highly accurate prophets” as if they were a notch or two above any other prophets who have ever existed. The trouble for him, and anyone who believes him, is that scholars who have studied the Essenes for years (including me) know that ALL of their end-times prophecies had to do with, and were “fulfilled”, if you will, already in 70 CE! Every single thing they wrote about took place at that time, period. Why, you may ask? Exactly because they made it happen that way. They instigated the entire thing. I laid it all out in my first book “Apocalypse and Armageddon” some years ago! So, trust me, there is NO Essene prophecy that delineates any scenario having to do with our time or the future beyond 70 CE, period. If there were, I would not only already know about it and have written about it, but we wouldn’t need Tom Horn to tell us about it now because scholars would have been making it known for some time. And there is absolutely NO reference whatsoever to the year 2025 as Horn insists, nor to the asteroid Apophis hitting the earth in 2029, as he insists it will, in ANY ancient prophecy, including those of the Essenes. All he and his co-author have written is a very bad, and dangerous, fiction.

Have a nice decade.