File this under the “What did I just watch” category.  It was so absurd, so mindless, so bizarre, so kooky a concept, I didn’t think it was even possible it could be true.  It was being reported by the notoriously left-wing Right Wing Watch (a project of People for the American Way) which has a seeming obsession with misrepresentation for the sake of clicks and scare-mongering, so I was confident this was but another example.

But it was real.  He really said this, and by all accounts, he really seems to believe it.

He in this case is Florida minister and television broadcaster Rick Wiles.  Twenty years ago Wiles founded his media corporation, “TruNews,” which he bills as, “the world’s leading news source that reports, analyzes, and comments on global events and trends with a conservative, orthodox Christian” viewpoint.

I don’t know Wiles.  I don’t know anything about TruNews.  But if this is what is common from him and is the typical fare for his network, it sure would be nice if he would drop the “orthodox Christian” moniker.  There is nothing Biblical about this nuttiness:

“When you go to your favorite fast food restaurant, you are going to be eating a fake hamburger. You’re going to go to the grocery store and buy a pound of fake hamburger or a fake steak, and you won’t know that it was grown in some big corporation’s laboratory. This is the nightmare world that they are taking us into. They’re changing God’s creation. Why? Because they want to be God.

God is an environmentalist. He takes this very seriously. He created this planet, he created the universe and he’s watching these Luciferians destroy this planet, destroy the animal kingdom, destroy the plant kingdom, change human DNA. Why? They want to change human DNA so that you can’t be born again. That’s where they’re going with this, to change the DNA of humans so it will be impossible for a human to be born again. They want to create a race of soulless creatures on this planet.”

I was just studying and speaking on the 3^rd Commandment God gave Moses at Mt. Sinai – not to “misuse” or “wrongly carry” His name, thus profaning it among the nations.  We often trivialize that command to mean, “Don’t cuss using God’s name.”  And while we shouldn’t do that, the heart of the 3^rd Commandment speaks to the very offense I believe Wiles is guilty of perpetrating right here.   

What Wiles says is demonstrably false and staggeringly ignorant.  It’s akin to an Alex Jones, “turning the frogs gay” conspiracy theory.  But for my money, Rick’s irresponsible outburst is far worse.  To give his own bizarre ideas and agenda an authority they lack on their own, he attaches the name of Almighty God to them.  He ties to something patently false a name that is only to be praised – a name that is, in and of itself, truth. 

He diminishes God with this foolishness, He profanes His matchless name among the nations, and makes the important work of soul-winning – work that is infinitely more important than meatless burgers – much more difficult.

If Rick wants to say dumb things and raise money off of those who will buy it, more power to him.  But he needs to stop making the name of the Creator a punchline in the process.