Gab CEO Andrew Torba’s Plans for Religious Supremacy

CEO of Gab.com Andrew Torba describes his social network as a champion of free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online and all are welcome. Sign up, join some “trains” and gather large followings of people instantly and continually. Purchase promotional t-shirts and then “conquer the world.”

Mixed between religious pictures, current events, and frequent jabs at Parler, you’ll find Torba’s profile posting quotes promoting a world conquest through a brand of Christianity that plans to “dominate the world.” While promoting faith in Jesus, many of Torba’s posts are competitive and lacking in grace (Andrew Torba’s Gab Posts on Flickr).

Torba’s profile frequently posts quotes from the late David Chilton. Christian Reconstructionists like Chilton have a theonomic view which sees the job of the church as being to oblige nation-states and their people to conform to God’s laws through the concept of “Dominion Theology” which holds that Jesus cannot or will not return until the Church has taken control of the earth’s governments and social institutions.

Journalist Frederick Clarkson defined dominionism as a movement that, while including dominion theology and reconstructionism as subsets, is much broader in scope, extending to much of the Christian right in the United States. In 2005, Clarkson enumerated the following characteristics shared by all forms of dominionism:(7)

1. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.
2. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.
3. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles. (Wikipedia: Dominion theology).

The Great Commission to the Church does not end with simply witnessing to the nations. Christ’s command is that we disciple the nations—all the nations. The kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of Christ. They are to be discipled, made obedient to the faith. This means that every aspect of life throughout the world is to be brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ: families, individuals, business, science, agriculture, the arts, law, education, economics, psychology, philosophy, and every other sphere of human activity. Nothing may be left out. Christ “must reign, until He has put all enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25). We have been given the responsibility of converting the entire world. (4)

This is a call for world conquest by “the Church” instead of by Jesus at His return. This misinterpretation of the Great Commission (Matthew 5:13-16) creates a “mandate for the complete social transformation of the entire world.” In actuality, the scripture is only a mandate for “personal holiness” that will then manifest itself as salt and light to the world.

A godly law order will work to disinherit, execute, and supplant the ungodly and to conform the godly in their inheritance. For Christians to work for anything less is to deny God (Rushdoony; 2).

Because they perceive sin and its consequent evil as ethical issues, Reconstructionists believe that the Old Testament penal sanctions against certain sins are still in effect, and that it is the responsibility of government to implement those sanctions; because government has been usurped by atheists and humanists, it has perverted the role entrusted to it and is about to experience God’s judgment. That judgment will come in the form of destruction upon all human institutions that do not comply with God’s Law, and their replacement with Christian-oriented leadership.

It is the Church’s responsibility to place itself in the forefront of political and social action in order to take the reins of control out of the hands of the ungodly(the unethical), and implement rule under a theonomic structure (theo: God; nomos: law). This will establish Jesus Christ as Lord over His creation through the ministry of His Body, “the Church,” while He remains in Heaven.

Not unlike the puritans attempts, Ray Sutton, also a Reconstructionist, writes that the implementation of the Old Testament penal sanctions will bring this about:

First, Paul’s Romans 1:18-32 language indicates that New Testament penal sanctions are similar to the Old Testament. The vast majority of Old Testament penalties should still be instituted. As earlier sections of this book indicate, the proper hermeneutic for determining what carries over into the New Testament is the principle: continue what is not changed in the New Testament. This would apply to the penal sanctions of the Old Testament. The death penalty offenses that should be extended into the New Testament are witchcraft (Deut. 18:10-11), idolatry (Deut. 13:10), murder (Gen. 9:6), blasphemy (Lev. 24:11-23), homosexuality (Lev. 18:22.29), bestiality (Lev. 18:23), rape (Deut. 22:2527), adultery (Lev. 20:10), incest (Lev. 20:14), incorrigibility of teenagers (Deut. 21:18-20), kidnapping (Exod. 21:16), and some instances of perjury (Deut. 19:19-20).
…not every convicted homosexual would have to be put to death according to I Corinthians 6. In the New Covenant Age, only the “unreformable” element would be put to death.(Sutton’s emphasis)( 5).

The Puritan ministers attempted to establish a theocratic “Kingdom of God” by enforcing the Old Testament laws regarding witchcraft in New England’s Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Cotton Mather was the prosecutor of the Salem witch trials, and his father, Increase Mather, was a prominent Boston minister who became president of Harvard College. According to “Jewish Roots of the American Constitution“ by Paul Eidelberg, this Puritan minister turned educator based his contribution to the Harvard curriculum on his reading of the Talmud and other rabbinic commentaries.

To Jews, there is no Old Testament, so there can be no New Testament. There is the Hebrew Bible (Torah) and the Christian Bible (the gospels). One contains the law of Moses; the other the law of Christ. One is considered the immutable word of God; the other claims to add to and alter his word. Perhaps, most importantly, one holds hope for the coming of the Messiah (Mashiach) while the other claims that Christ was the Messiah who died for mankind’s sins.

Israel’s law was done away with at Calvary.  Israel’s law will be re-inaugurated as the law of the theocratic millennial Kingdom one day, but to enter into a relationship with the law during this age of grace now–the dispensation of the Church(the Church Age)–results in spiritual blindness of the mind: “But their minds were blinded; for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament; which veil is taken away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart” (2 Cor. 3:14,15).

The Puritan settlers of New England came to the New World to establish a society based on a strict Calvinist interpretation of the Bible. John Calvin established an autocratic system of government in Geneva in 1541 that was directed by a group of Presbyters, morally upright men who controlled the social and cultural life of the community to the smallest detail. They not only ruthlessly suppressed heretics and burned dissenters at the stake, but were determined to force old codes against play and idleness which led to periods of strict limitations on leisure and recreation throughout many Christian cultures.

While researching for Settlers of Cupheag, I came across “In Pursuit of Paradise” by Lew Knapp. Knapp had been Stratford’s historical society president and historian. His book is the story of the early planters who were in search of religious freedom. It details how our young country began as it fought the French and then the British for liberty. It also traces the evolution of our government as slaves were finally freed.

By 1600 the majority of the country gentlemen and of wealthy merchants in the towns had become Puritans, and the new views had made great headway in both universities, and at Cambridge had become dominant, …. The Fundamental Orders governed Stratford and the state until 1818.

Under this constitution, the General Court established capital punishment for twelve crimes; worshiping false gods, witchcraft, blasphemy, murder through malice, murder through guile, bestiality, homosexuality, adultery, rape, kidnapping, false witness causing loss of life, and insurrection. For other crimes, jailing, fining, whipping, pillories and stocks, and branding or cutting off ears sufficed…. (9; Knapp, p. 12, 16.)

Fleeing persecution for his beliefs, Roger Williams, pastor of the first Baptist church in America and founder and first governor of Rhode Island, fled on foot through snow and bitter cold and survived through the assistance of the Native Americans. Eventually, when he reached the upper bend of a bay he called it Narragansett after its inhabitants. In 1636, he bought land from the Narragansett chiefs at the headwaters of the Narragansett Bay near a fresh water spring which became Providence. The land was once a low, marshy shoreline of a large saltwater cove to the west that had a 7,000-year history of activity by native Americans.

Although some professing Christians were instrumental in colonizing the continent early on, the U.S. government was never formed to establish a Christian nation. Some of the framers of the Constitution were actually deists who denied the Lord Jesus Christ and even the very nature of the personal God. Yet, they wrote that document for a biblically-oriented people. Today the biblical ethic is no longer the guiding force for American society. But, in reality, every nation is always “under God.” (10)

In 1620, the Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod. Landing off course left them with the need to settle their own authority. William Bradford set up the elected form of government which was called “The Mayflower Compact,” this is the prototype for our national liberty. This was the first time that free and equal men had ever entered a covenant to create a new society, based on Biblical principles. One of these principles was that “all men are created equal in the sight of God.” A second was that “a government must only govern people who agree to submit to it.” (8)

These two principles became the cornerstones of America’s constitutional government. Bradford became governor of the Plymouth Colony for the first of 31 terms. He wrote the only complete history of the Plymouth settlement in a diary stretching 40 years. He turned the colony from Communism to free enterprise, insuring its prosperity. (10)

Choose carefully the things you read and to which you listen.  Be aware that the vast majority of works found in Christian bookstores are deceptions.  Before you read the writings of men, study the Scripture diligently in order to prove yourself worthy, a workman that need not be ashamed, rightfully dividing the Word of Truth (2 Timothy 2:15).

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, believers are instructed on how to live in a Christian life in the midst of a blinded, confused and sick society. The world has not changed since the apostle’s day when you look at the moral problems we face today and we confront the same issues in society that they did and we struggle against the same forces that they did. Human nature has not changed at all.

The world’s problems cannot be solved without changing “the heart of man.” God’s Word gives no commission to the church to fix the problems of the world. The problems of the world are all “symptoms” of sin. Only belief in the Biblical gospel saves humanity. God’s answer to sin is to reckon oneself to have died unto sin, and to be alive unto God in Christ. On that basis one is to “walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16).

Notes

1. Albert James Dager, Vengeance Is Ours: The Church In Dominion (Redmond, WA: Sword Publishers, 1990), p. 87. Media Spotlight
2. Rouses J. Rushdoony, “Power from Below,” The Journal of Christian Reconstruction 1:2 ,winter, 1974, pp. 9-10, quoted in Vengeance Is Ours., p. 174
3. David Chilton, Paradise Restored (Forth Worth: Dominion Press, 1985), p. 339, quoted in Vengeance Is Ours., p. 183.
4. Ibid., p. 213, quoted in Vengeance Is Ours., p. 184.
5. Ray Sutton, That You May Prosper: dominion by Covenant ;Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics [ICE], p.189, quoted in Vengeance is Ours., p. 188
6. Dager, Al, “Allegiance: To Whom Do We Pledge?” Media Spotlight Vol. 25—NO. 3, http://www.mediaspotlight.org/
7. Wikipedia, Dominion Theology
8. Mary Fairchild, “Settlers of Cupheag” mfairlady.com , 4/21/2006.
9. Knapp, Lewis G., “In Pursuit of Paradise”; Phoenix Publishing, published for The Stratford Historical Society, 1989.
10. Marshall Foster & Ron Ball, “Christian Home Learning Guides,” Zane Publishing, 1997.
11. Mary Fairchild, “Sea Kayaking Narragansett Bay: Native American Footpaths and Soul Freedom;” mfairlady.com, 12/1/2014.
12. Christians Together, Will the Church be All Conquering? 10/22/2011
13. Nitasha Tiku, “Trump Supporting CEO Kicked Out of Y Combinator Startup Incubator,” 11/12/2016.
14. Watch Unto Prayer, “The Synarchy: Judeo-Christian Theocracy.” Watch Unto Prayer.org
15. Crawford Gribbon, “Why Conservatives Shouldn’t Migrate to Gab.” The Critic, 1/22/2021.