I have been deeply disturbed by the events that have unfolded in Minneapolis in recent weeks and the apparent disregard for the rule of law. I am very sad about the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti not only because it was an avoidable tragedy, but because the growing Gnosticism in the Evangelical Church seems to legitimize the behavior of people like Good and Pretti. I am afraid the response by progressive media is creating an environment where there is no longer just ethnic Gnosticism, or feminist Gnosticism, or transgender Gnosticism in the church, but now what I call “protestor Gnosticism.”

For example, in January 2026, the former MSNBC national correspondent, Joy Reid, who was raised Methodist, described the death of Renee Nicole Good as a “George Floyd moment” because she believes it serves as a wake-up call for white Americans regarding state violence. Reid argued that George Floyd’s death proved to the world that police could and would kill Black people on camera. She contends that Good’s death sends a similar message to white Americans: that “nobody’s safe” and that even those typically seen as protected by law enforcement—like a white suburban mother—are now “on the table” for state victimization.¹Way Up With Angela Yee. 2026. “Joy Ann Reid Explains Trump, Venezuela, ICE after Renee Good, 2026 Midterms + More.” YouTube. January 12, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJftF3MbExI. 14:00 – 18:00

While I can understand why people are angry about Trump’s extreme crackdown, the fact remains that if people had respect for the rule of law (Romans 13), and if Christians understood that God created borders and is sovereign over when those borders change (Acts 17:26), Good and Pretti would still be with us today. But, unfortunately, Gnosticism is not arrived at through the epistemological defaults of logic, reason, inference, or correspondence, but rather, what Karl Marx called “self-actualization” or the idea that man and his perfected social society is God.²Andrüshka Bürmaströva, “Speculative Gnosticism of the Marxist Faith: An Introduction to a Modern Religion”, Western Illinois University (journal), 2022, doi:10.1558/poth.v8i2.238251, 3-4

President Biden’s policy of letting illegal immigrants flow freely over our border is one of many political reasons –– including a general lackadaisical attitude toward immigration over the past twenty-five years –– why we have this problem. However, when I try to have conversations with Christians –– even Christians who don’t identify as progressive –– about these statistics and the Biblical arguments for strong border control –– or Israel, or socialism, or almost anything these days ––my efforts get deflected by accusations of hypocrisy on my part for supporting Trump despite his immoral behavior. I am flabbergasted. After Hamas’ attacks on Israel on October 7^th you would think people would want more border security, but again, Gnosticism is not arrived at through the epistemological defaults of logic, reason, inference, or correspondence. But rather, what Karl Marx called “self-actualization” or the idea that man and his perfected social society is God.³Andrüshka Bürmaströva, “Speculative Gnosticism of the Marxist Faith: An Introduction to a Modern Religion”, Western Illinois University (journal), 2022, doi:10.1558/poth.v8i2.238251, 3-4

The problem with this deflection by my Christian friends is that I am not the one stealing moral authority from God. Satan doesn’t care whether we are moral or not. He cares about whether we give Christ moral authority over our lives. Gnosticism makes man judge and jury over all issues related to morality by equating the God of the Old Testament with the Demiurge, who created the material world to trap divine sparks and keep humanity ignorant of its divine nature.

Marx’s Gnosticism and the New Apostles Who Teach It.

Karl Marx was also influenced by the Gnosticism of Friedrich Hegel, who taught a form of panentheistic evolution where God is a spiritual force evolving in and through the world. Hegel’s “Absolute Idea” was the belief that both man and God are not complete until there is reabsorption of both entities, and that the world is moving toward this eventual reality. Scripture, however, says God is eternal (Psalms 90: 2, John 1:1), and immutable (Mal 3:6; Ps. 33:11; Heb 6:17, 13:8) in relation to the world; thus, He does not change through time and is not affected by His relation to His creatures.

This ideology is exhibited among both Progressive and New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)/Word of Faith circles as the Spirit of Adoption/Sonship heresy, thus leading people to believe that believers can manifest on earth as gods (or little Jesuses).⁴Amy S., “Kris Vallotton ‘You Are Gods’,” Berean Research, June 27, 2017, accessed September 3, 2024, https://bereanresearch.org/kris-vallotton-you-are-gods/[/mfn] This heresy suggests Jesus’ life was an example of how we can fulfill our own divine potential.

Within the NAR, modern-day apostles and prophets have more authority than scripture; thus, any “new revelation” they receive from God, even if it contradicts scripture completely, is considered authoritative. Within the Evangelical Church, we do the same thing via the Evangelical Industrial Complex. Evangelicals today are more likely to read The Shack –– which has sold over 25 million copies on Amazon –– than to study the Bible inductively, despite the book’s heretical depiction of the Trinity as three separate gods, and its destruction of the ontology of God by depicting God the Father as an African American woman, and the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman. The Shack’s theology is not based upon scripture, but upon ‌Jürgen Moltmann’s book The Theology of Hope.

In an attempt to make the gospel more palatable to the oppressed, The Theology of Hope teaches that God comes in any form we need Him to be; thus, Jesus is black, a Palestinian, or, in the case of Minneapolis, Jesus is an immigrant. Or now, Jesus is the white, homosexual, progressive “Christian”, woman fighting ICE. The historical fact of Jesus being a Jew born and bred in Judea, six hundred years before Muhammad, and two thousand years before ICE was created, is irrelevant to the gnostic. Again, Gnosticism is not arrived at through the epistemological defaults of logic, reason, inference, or correspondence, but rather, what Karl Marx called “self-actualization” or the idea that man and his perfected social society is God.⁴Andrüshka Bürmaströva, “Speculative Gnosticism of the Marxist Faith: An Introduction to a Modern Religion”, Western Illinois University (journal), 2022, doi:10.1558/poth.v8i2.238251, 3-4

In June of 2020, during the height of the George Floyd protests, Hawk Newsome, co-founder and chair of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, stated during an interview on Fox News “if this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.”⁵BexarPatriot. 2020. “Martha MacCallum – Hawk Newsome – BLM Greater NY Chair – Black Sovereignty by Any Means – 6-24-20.” YouTube. July 3, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8norS7f4PRc. 4:10 – 4:30 Later he stated,

Think about the last few weeks since we started protesting. There have been eight cops fired across the country. You remember they were telling us that there was due process. That’s why the cop who choked Eric Garner to death and had kept his job and received raises for five years. Anytime a cop hurt a woman, hurt a child, hurt pregnant people, hurt our elders, there was always a call for due process. You must wait. You must wait. But the moment people start destroying property, now cops can be fired automatically. What is this country rewarding? What behavior is it listening to? Obviously not marching. But when people get aggressive and escalate their protest, that’s when you’re getting cops fired, and you have Republican politicians talking about police reform. I don’t condone nor do I condemn rioting, but I’m just telling you what I observed.⁶ BexarPatriot. 2020. “Martha MacCallum – Hawk Newsome – BLM Greater NY Chair – Black Sovereignty by Any Means – 6-24-20.” YouTube. July 3, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8norS7f4PRc. 4:45 – 5:45

I love the Lord. My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the most famous black radical revolutionary in history, and he was treated just like Doctor King. He was arrested on occasion, and he was also crucified or assassinated. This is what happens to black activists: we are killed by the government.⁷BexarPatriot. 2020. “Martha MacCallum – Hawk Newsome – BLM Greater NY Chair – Black Sovereignty by Any Means – 6-24-20.” YouTube. July 3, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8norS7f4PRc. 6:15 – 6:50

Because of their special knowledge (gnosis) as an oppressed class, people like Newsome see themselves as sharing God’s essence, and are thus given apostolic-like authority within Gnostic Christianity. Newsome regularly attends prominent Black churches in Harlem, such as Convent Avenue Baptist Church and Abyssinian Baptist Church, as well as the NAR mega church Hillsong, but which Jesus is he worshipping?⁸Norman, Derek. 2020. Review of How a #BlackLivesMatter Leader Spends His Sundays. The New York Times, October 2, 2020. It’s certainly not the Jesus of the Bible. Newsome’s Jesus is closer to the bumbling Jesus we find in the gnostic Broadway play Jesus Christ Superstar, where Judas Iscariot is portrayed not as a traditional villain who betrayed Christ, but rather as a tragic protagonist or deuteragonist. The illegal immigrant is today’s gnostic Judas Iscariot.

A Foretold Delusion

Sadly, so many Christians these days are influenced by the Gnostic tendencies of the NAR without even realizing it. We sing songs by Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and Elevation because they make us feel good. The songs are powerful, like the rock opera of Jesus Christ Superstar. Worship ends up being a mystical experience instead of anything resembling the early church. But again, Gnosticism is not arrived at through the epistemological defaults of logic, reason, inference, or correspondence. Gnosticism replaces the atonement by God, with feelings of man’s universal at-one-ment with God.

What does Newsome mean when he says we must burn the system down? This is the teaching of the gnostic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who also influenced Karl Marx, and who said “all that exists deserves to perish”— sooner or later, everything turns out to be false.⁹“Glossary of Terms: Tr.” 2026. Marxists.org. 2026 In addition to special esoteric knowledge, another key trait of Gnosticism is the immanentization of the Eschaton (to bring about the final event in the divine plan; the end of the world).¹⁰ Andrüshka Bürmaströva, “Speculative Gnosticism of the Marxist Faith: An Introduction to a Modern Religion”, Western Illinois University (journal), 2022, doi:10.1558/poth.v8i2.238251, 3-4 This is exactly what Newsome is calling for. What will this new paradigm look like? According to guidelines (before they were mysteriously taken down) provided by the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, white institutional power includes rugged individualism, the family structure, the scientific method, the Protestant work ethic, orthodox Christianity, and many more of America’s founding values.¹¹Watts, Marina. 2020. “In Smithsonian Race Guidelines, Rational Thinking and Hard Work Are White Values.” Newsweek

When the social justice warrior listens to the false gospel found in this music, his mind is in an altered state, thus making him more susceptible to Satan’s lie that we can become like God once we wake up to our divine spark. The oppressed have already been awoken to this fact; now the alarm clock has gone off for the white Christian, whose white privilege has become obsolete under the Trump administration.

Protestor Gnosticism is just another piece of evidence that we are getting close to Christ’s second coming. We are on the verge of a civil war in this country, which would be the fulfillment of 2 Thessalonians 2:3, which foretold a great delusion before the coming of Christ. What is happening across the country, and especially in Minneapolis, is the product of the spirit of lawlessness already at work (2 Thess 2:7). When the Holy Spirit no longer restrains this spirit, we can expect things to get worse. When there is no foundation to truth or when man is his own authority on truth we are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. (Hosea 4:6) Our search for gnosis leaves our country open to manipulation because we do not value critical thinking, logic, reason or correspondence.

New apostles of protestor Gnosticism are teaching doctrines of demons (1 Tim 4:1-3) when they steal Christ’s moral authority, for they are making themselves God by doing so (Gen 3). This is certainly the fulfillment of 2 Timothy 4:3-4, which states:

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”Ω

Stephanie Potts is the author of, Social Justice and the Deification of Man: What to Know When Talking with the Christian Left. She and her husband, Jim live in Dayton, Ohio, and have been married for 24 years. She worked with the federal government for 15 years as an intelligence analyst and then entered full-time Christian service in 2015. She first joined Haven Ministries in Denver, Colorado, in 2015 and then transferred to Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc in 2021. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations from Florida State University and her Master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems from Penn State University. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Christian Apologetics at Southern Evangelical Seminary. She has special interests in indigenous religions – especially Native American spirituality – and in responding to Catholicism and the social justice movement. Stephanie’s personal website: rainbowapologetics.com

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