Vanguard Presbytery: Christ versus Marx
We live in times when Marxism under many labels is being foisted on an unsuspecting and naïve population. The problem of Marxism is in our governments and in our churches. I have told the members of my own congregation that Cultural Marxism is the most popularly preached message from the pulpits of most churches today. It goes under many different names: Social Justice, Critical Theory or Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ+, Intersectionality, etc. These movements divide and create class warfare which is the great goal of Marxism. Marxism teaches the historical determinism of revolution when the proletariat rises up to throw off the shackles of the bourgeoisie. As a result of this class warfare, the workers of the world will then finally join together to spontaneously rise up against the ruling class who are their oppressors. It is not difficult to perceive these messages coming from every part of our society today.
I once attended a Presbytery meeting in another denomination where Marxism was being taught to all the presbyters. It was not identified as such, but neither was the Scripture referenced in those lectures. The emphasis was on the themes of the oppressors and the oppressed, the privileged class and the powerless. White guilt and racism were prominent in the talks. Karl Marx would have been very proud that his theories were being proclaimed by ordained Christian ministers in supposedly evangelical denominations. Of course, Marx despised all religion and called it ‘the opiate of the people.’ Still, he would be proud that his theories have been dressed up and pawned off as the true Christian message. Someone has rightly said that Marxism is a Christian heresy. It pawns off the state as the replacement of God. Yet, it is puzzling that evangelical ministers cannot see the inherent conflict between the doctrines of Marx and Jesus.
In Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, Paul Johnson shows that V. I. Lenin rejected the core principle of Marxism. Lenin was a revolutionary and “believed that revolutions are not made by inexorable historical forces (they had to be there too, of course) but by small groups of highly disciplined men responding to the will of a decisive leader.”[1] Marx believed that there would be a spontaneous uprising of the proletariat which would usher in a utopian world. Sadly, there are good Christian men who still believe that denominations can be turned around by spontaneous uprisings. I have never read about a single such spontaneous uprising and I doubt that you have either. Every movement in the history of the world, whether good or bad, has been led by committed people who responded to the challenge. Jesus was a revolutionary in the best sense of the word, but certainly not in the way that our modern-day Marxists refer to Him. They use Jesus as though He is merely a cultural hero like Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary. They make Jesus after their own imagination which, of course, is sheer idolatry.
There are two men above all else who are behind this socialistic, communistic, and Marxist takeover of the Christian churches: George Soros and James Riady (of Indonesia). Most of you know who George Soros is. James Riady was involved in funneling illegal campaign funds to Bill Clinton with whom he has been friends since the 1980’s. Both of these men have given millions to fund liberal causes and to finance new projects or classes or departments at evangelical churches. They generally use front organizations so that the donations do not show up as coming directly from them. Such shell games are old hat to conspirators. I saw a list recently of all the different Christian organizations in the U.S. that are funded by these two men and it was truly staggering and heart wrenching. There are well-known Christian leaders who make regular trips to Indonesia to solicit donations from Riady. Soros and Riady only give with strings attached in true quid pro quo fashion. Just as Nike shakes down the NFL to support Black Lives Matter (a Marxist movement supported by Soros, at least), so Soros and Riady shake down Christian institutions, Christian leaders, and Christian seminaries. When their shakedowns end, there will be little left of the Christian faith in those institutions. I wish this were not so. But. It. Is.
True Marxism did not bring about the Russian Revolution or the fall of many other nations to communism. The spontaneous uprisings that Marxism taught would happen has never anywhere materialized and they never will. People are led by leaders. They do not independently come to the same conclusions all at once through some historical event and, therefore, move in mass with arms locked together. If Marx was blinded at that point, Lenin was not. Leninism took Marx’s theory in a new direction. Lenin knew that Marxism would have to be forced upon the consciousness of the proletariat. As Johnson wrote about Lenin:
When Lenin insisted that ‘consciousness’ had to be brought to the proletariat from without, by ‘vanguard elements’, and revolution pushed forward before it was ripe by ‘vanguard fighters’, he was in fact contradicting the whole ‘scientific’ basis of Marxist theory.[2]
I like Johnson’s references to ‘vanguard elements.’ Vanguard Presbytery is fighting for the return to true Christianity and the preaching of the gospel. We are unwilling to compromise the gospel of Christ for a message that vainly promises a utopia on this earth. I have seen what those Marxist utopias look like. Russia in 1999 showed no evidence of being a utopian society, but was struggling to recover from the systematic raping of their culture by the communists from 1917 to 1991, seventy-four years. In order for this nation to be revived, there must be a revival of pure Christianity. But we must learn from the one great fact of history which Lenin knew and Marx did not understand. All movements are led by leaders. Movements never are ignited by internal combustion any more than the world was created by a Big Bang. Physics teaches us that a body at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by a greater force. Thus, we must step out as vanguard elements to call the modern Church back to repentance and faith. I feel that is what is happening and everyone coming into Vanguard Presbytery has a renewed sense of optimism and hope. One of the members of the credentials committee, Joshua Light, emailed me last night that everyone they examine tells them how excited they are to be a part of Vanguard. The credentials committee has been kept busy with examining 2-3 ministers and/or churches each week. Some ministers come as pastors and others come as evangelists. But they come because they have realized that movements are always begun by vanguard elements and never by spontaneous uprisings to bring about change from within.
At the present, there are numerous people all across the U.S. who have emailed me or posted on my congregation’s Facebook page that they need a ‘Vanguard Presbytery’ church in their city. We hope to see new churches started all over this country. We welcome established congregations to join with us, but the goal for Vanguard should be to start new churches wherever possible. Paul saw a man in a vision calling him over to Macedonia and when he arrived there he found only a few women praying by the river. One of them, Lydia, came to Christ as he spoke to them. Later, Paul was thrown in jail and the jailer was converted the next morning. If churches are to be raised up, we need leaders. We need evangelists who will go there and preach the gospel. God has raised us up. We need to continue to pray that the Lord of the Harvest would raise up many more laborers. Where there are Spirit-filled leaders, God will continue to raise up sheep who hear the voice of Christ and follow Him.
Dewey Roberts, Pastor at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Destin, FL
[1] Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 54.
[2] Ibid., 56.
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