Most normal, thinking people who weren’t gullible enough to buy the propaganda all the mainstream media narrative surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak knew from the beginning, or at least had enough common sense to suspect, that COVID-19 leaked from the lab in Wuhan, whether by accident or on purpose. It was obvious from the beginning that there was a massive effort to distract from any effort to expose the truth or to even look into it—a gigantic cover-up was clearly underway.

What’s even sadder is that some of our religious leaders went along with it and urged Christians to blindly follow, like cattle led the slaughter, whatever our government leaders told us.

Take Russell Moore, for example, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). He kept platforming a pro-homosexual, pro-abortion self-professed “Christian scientist,” Francis Collins, who was the head of the NIH at the time, to downplay the idea that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab. He just kept pushing the mass vaccination program instead.

And then there’s Joe Carter. He’s a pastor at David Platt’s McLean Bible Church and also another former ERLC leader. He wrote a nice hit piece over at The Gospel Coalition bashing “conspiracy theorists,” comparing people who believe in “conspiracies” to those under Satan’s influence. He even said that “Satan has found no shortage of marks among God’s children.” Drivel!

Worst of all was Ed Stetzer, though. Stetzer, one of the former head of Southern Baptist’s Lifeway Stores and current Billy Graham distinguished chair at Wheaton College, who called the idea that COVID-19 leaked from the lab in Wuhan foolishness. How can he be so sure? In a now-deleted hit piece he wrote at Christianity Today (which is still available on the Wayback Machine), he wrote:

“I understand the mistrust many Christians have toward the media and government. But this mistrust too often leads believers not to be more discerning but instead to become more gullible to any alternative narrative.”

He then pointed to Ephesians 5:16 implying that not listening to our government dictators is “unwise.”

“If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can’t stop you,” Stetzer continued. “If you want to believe one of the dozens of conspiracy theories already circulating, that’s your call. But if you do, what will you do when you start believing that the vaccine is also part of this conspiracy?”

Comparing those who believed at the time that the COVID-19 virus actually did originate from a hostile Chinese virus lab to those who believed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, Stetzer wrote:

“I still believe spreading unproven speculation is bearing false witness and I still believe we need to repent when we have borne such witness. We need to spend more time in God’s Word and less time being influenced by social media trolls and clickbait.”

Of course, now that those pesky “conspiracy theorists” are being proven right, and even the government is changing its tune, all these obstreperous “leaders” are silent. Just recently, the U.S. Energy Department concluded that our conspiracy theory was, well, most likely true after all.

Will Ed Stetzer believe it? Will Russell Moore, Francis Collins, or Joe Carter admit they were wrong? Without the noise and pressure from the “conspiracy theory community,” would there have been any effort to seek or disclose the truth or would we all just be sitting here getting juiced up with a deadly vax completely blind to the truth? Who are the gullible ones here? As Christians, we should desire to know the truth—and the truth is not always easy to find in a world filled with fallen men motivated by self-preservation rather than God. If we can’t trust our so-called Evangelical leaders, there’s certainly no one left to trust, but God.