Wolves, "Sheepdogs," and the Gospel of Leviathan

Preaching the gospel of Leviathan: Rev. Kellogg.

We want to live pure, we want to live clean, we want to do our best; sweetly submitting to authority – leaving to God the rest….

From “Obedience,” a children’s song teaching the supposed virtues of “Positive Christianity”

“For I know this -- that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”

The Apostle Paul, quoted in Acts 20:29-30

The Rev. Dan Kellogg of Gold Creek Community Church in Mill Creek, Washington wants young people to understand that he is “edgy” – an expression never used by people who warrant the description – and that his rock concert-style worship services appeal to the “young and hip.” 

Kellogg and his fellow pastors displayed those traits in a memorably misbegotten rap video produced for “Back to Church Sunday” in 2012.



A few years earlier, during a six-week series entitled “Permanent Ink,” Kellogg invited a tattoo artist on stage inscribe body art on member of the congregation. 

A different kind of "mark."

“We actually believe that this represents something that we can apply, something popular in our culture, that we can apply some spiritual truth to,” Kellogg explained to Seattle’s ABC affiliate. “Some people have thought through what they want permanently on their body, and what we want to talk about is what you want permanently on your soul, too.”

The Reverend carefully observes that there are limits to this principle.

“The one you won’t want to on yourself is the `666,’ right?” he prompted the congregation as the tattoo artist did his work. 

What someone takes into his or her heart is more important than the decorations adorning that person’s skin, according to Rev. Kellogg. This being the case, the pastor should explain why he teaches his congregation to “take the mark” by internalizing a message of submission to Babylon.

During a recent Sunday service described by a congregant as a ceremony of “police worship,” Kellogg led the congregation in a ritual during which each of them raised his hand and recited the following oath:

I pledge to do my best to follow the law.
I pledge to thank a police officer for their [sic] service.
I pledge to call 911 if I see someone suspicious in my neighborhood.
I pledge to watch the back of our officers as they fulfill their duties.
I pledge to pray for the safety of all members of law enforcement.

“They were telling people to basically worship government and worship police no matter what,” the astounded and horrified church visitor told Infowars.com. “No mention of police brutality, no mention of the stingray [covert electronics surveillance] systems grabbing our data….”

The previous week’s service, continued the correspondent, “was military worship where they played clips of American Sniper,” using that exercise in war pornography to instill reverence for the “sheepdogs” blessed by God with a “gift of aggression” and who supposedly use that gift to protect the flock by dispatching “evil-doers.”



This was not the first time Gold Creek Church has performed this liturgy of submission to the State and its armed enforcement caste. An earlier observance of this kind took place in January 2010 following the death of Officer Timothy Brenton, whose family attends Gold Creek. Brenton left behind a wife and two young children, and it was appropriate for the church to conduct a memorial service and extend its love and sympathy to the murdered man’s family.



Rather than doing this, however, Kellogg – dressed in police attire – used the occasion to preach about the supposed virtues of unconditional support for State-anointed dispensers of violence, and to administer “an oath taken by church members to support and assist police, not work against them,” as Seattle’s ABC affiliate KOMO summarized.

Gold Creek Community Church was not the only congregation in Washington State to conduct a ceremony of this kind this year. The Real Life Church in Greenacres sponsored the “Spokane Sheepdog Seminar” on January 31. The speakers at that event –Lt. Col. David Grossman, a retired Army Ranger, and his associates Carl Chinn and Jimmy Meeks– are circuit-riding evangelists for the Homeland Security State who focus their efforts on the Evangelical Christian community. 

At each stop on this year’s tour, Grossman and his missionary companions will teach a message that neatly inverts the one preached in the New Testament. 

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear,” Paul explained to Timothy, “but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

Grossman’s “gospel,” by way of contrast, dictates that Christians should consider themselves powerless, embrace the spirit of fear, look with distrust upon those who are not similarly alarmed – and to regard with servile reverence those who are endowed with the divine “gift of aggression.” 

“Our enemy is denial,” Grossman insists. “Denial is a big, white, fluffy blanket we pull up over our eyes and pretend the bad men will never come. Denial equals negligence.” 

The wolf/sheep/sheepdog taxonomy taught at the dinner table by the cinematic version of Chris Kyle’s father is a nearly verbatim rendering of Grossman’s treatment of the subject. 

The on-screen monologue so closely tracks Grossman’s essay that Jason Hall, who is credited (if that’s the proper word) with writing the “American Sniper” screenplay, may be vulnerable to a plagiarism suit. 

Owing to his demonstrated prowess at killing people from a distance, the late Chris Kyle is seen as the alpha Sheepdog – but every police officer, according to Grossman and his acolytes, is a member of the same exalted pack. They are thus elevated above the ovine masses who are told to seek their protection. 

Yes, both the “wolves” and the “sheepdogs” are capable of horrible violence, but where the latter are concerned Grossman insists that we are not to take counsel of our fears. Sheepdogs "would no more misuse this gift [of aggression] than a doctor would misuse his healing arts," he maintains, even though Sheepdogs understandably "yearn for the opportunity to use their gift to help others."

Curiously, Paul didn’t mention “aggression” in the inventory of spiritual gifts found in the twelfth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians. It’s also impossible to find a parable or a version of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus extolled aggression as a commendable trait, rather than teaching forbearance in the face of provocation. The use of violence in self-defense or in defense of one’s family is compatible with biblical teachings, but this is not “aggression” in any sense.

The first biblical example of the “gift of aggression” is the account of Cain murdering his brother. Significantly, Cain was also the first political figure in the biblical account: After being driven into exile from his family, Cain built a city named after his son, Enoch (Gen. 4:16-17). Aggression is the antithesis of every Christian virtue, and the indispensable foundation of every political state. 
 

Grossman.

When presenting their concepts to Christian gatherings, Grossman and his comrades – in entirely predictable fashion -- invoke, and misapply, Romans 13:3-4: “Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’ servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

“There is no need to fear authority if one is not engaged in wrong-doing,” insists Jimmy Meeks by way of a dishonest summary of those verses. This puts him in a difficult position regarding the turbulent history of the early Christian Church, which was led by devout men who were well-acquainted with chains and prison bars, and most of whom were “lawfully” put to death for their refusal to obey directives issued in the name of “authority.” There is the additional complication presented by Jesus Himself, Who was “lawfully” executed on a cross while bracketed by common criminals. 

Meeks assumes that disobedience to state “authority” and “wrong-doing” are essentially the same thing. One principle clearly taught in the New Testament is that those who follow Jesus can expect to get in trouble with those who presume to rule other human beings – but that this offers no reason to fear what such usurpers can do to them. This is precisely the opposite of the message of unqualified submission to “authority” being peddled by Grossman, Meeks, and their epigones. 

“I find it very interesting that in the Bible there are only a few occupations that are said to be `of God,’ that they are jobs that God Himself created and placed upon the earth,” continues Meeks. “One of them is the job of a police officer” – a claim he buttresses with an extravagantly creative rendering of Romans 13:4: “The policeman is sent by God.”

“Could it be any more clear?” Meeks exults. “God is the author of police work…. As police officers we are authorized by God Himself to mete out the necessary justice: make the arrest, give the ticket, even take a life if need be. And God supports us in this matter…. [I]t is an awesome thought to consider that God calls us His `avenger’ who is deputized to execute His judgment.”

Every act of threatened or actual violence committed by a police officer, therefore, carries divine sanction, and those on the receiving end of those ministrations are reprobates worthy of such treatment. Those who obstruct or criticize the State’s divinely appointed ministers of violence are resisting God Himself. They are the “wolves” who must be identified and dealt with; hence the emphasis on teaching the flock to scrutinize the behavior of their neighbors and report any actions or opinions that might undermine this Godly order. 

As heaven is my witness, this is not a parody.

“Sheepdog” training doesn’t just focus on the omnipresent threat posed by the “wolves.” It also cultivates disdain for the "sheep."

Jesus taught parables involving the concept of sorting wheat from tares, or sheep from goats. Grossman emphasizes the idea of separating the pitiable and pathetic “sheep” from the valiant and virile “sheepdogs.” One inevitable consequence of this indoctrination is that at least some pastors – men who are supposed to love, serve, and sacrifice on behalf of their flocks – are taught to be contemptuous toward the “sheep” of their fold.

“The vast majority within the church are sheep,” concludes Stuart Vogelman, executive pastor of the Real Life Church, which sponsored the January 31 Sheepdog Seminar. “Pastors tend to be sheep, as well. When it hits the fan, they’ll hide behind the sheepdog.” 

This most likely would be the case – at least for those who don’t enjoy the calm courage that comes from knowing the Good Shepherd. Helping people make His acquaintance has traditionally been the chief calling of Christian pastors. At least where matters of church security are concerned, Grossman wants pastors to teach reliance on the sheepdogs, rather than the Shepherd. 

At Real Life Church, security personnel are to be chosen from among the “sheepdogs” in the flock. They are given intensive firearms and emergency response training and expected to be vigilant “watchmen” of the church grounds. This much is certainly commendable: Church security personnel are numbered among the large and ever-expanding population of private peace officers, who – unlike their government-employed counterparts – actually protect persons and property. However, Vogelman emphasized, in an emergency the church’s “sheepdogs” must yield to their government-licensed superiors, who have “government-given authority.”

“My team is trained,” Pastor Vogelman explained to me in a telephone interview. “If there’s a police officer [on the scene], he’s in charge. You follow orders from him. We respect them, we defer to them” – even if the private security personnel are more competent in the use of firearms and better-equipped in other ways to deal with an emergency. 

“Authority” trumps competence, and preserving the divinely ordained social hierarchy is apparently more important than protecting the flock. This is why, in the event of shooting or similar eruption of violence, Vogelman and his fellow sheepdogs “know that we’ll probably wind up on the ground and handcuffed, along with everybody else, until the officers have sorted out what’s happening.” 

Asked about concerns expressed by people who criticize excessive force and other abuses by police, Vogelman replied: “I’m a licensed State Patrol chaplain, and I minister all the time to guys who wear bullet-proof vests. I have some pretty strong views about the subject.” Although he declined to elaborate on those views, he did acknowledge that within his congregation he has heard some criticism “from the sheep” about what they regard as the pastor’s excessive concern regarding security issues.

“Denial really is the most important problem,” Vogelman insisted, retailing Grossman’s central talking point. He likewise reiterated the Sheepdog Seminar claim that violence at churches and church-operated venues is more prevalent than school violence. Sheepdog speaker Carl Chinn calculates that between 1999 and 2014 there were 549 deaths resulting from “deadly force incidents” at houses of worship or congregational facilities. This works out to fewer than 37 such deaths each year from among the more than nine million Americans who attend weekly worship services. 

That figure is a little more than one-third the number of Americans who die in automobile-related accidents every day. In empirical terms, Church-focused criminal violence is a manageable problem, not an existential crisis requiring a general mobilization. 

Ah, but we have to remember that we’re a nation at war, insists retired police sergeant (and unofficial “Sheepdog” publicist) Joe Gaines: The big picture requires that we “Add in the potential for terror attacks in our schools and churches by foreign extremists, as they have done all over the world….” 

Addressing the same point, Meeks tells his audiences that “open source US intelligence” confirms that “al-Qaeda and ISIS are monitoring American church websites for church function dates and particularly church pilgrimage activities.”

Unless we do as our heaven-sent “sheepdogs” require, our church softball leagues will be soft targets for ISIS-directed terrorist attacks. If you consider that threat assessment to be unrealistic, then you’re guilty of the grave sin of “denial.”




Each “Sheepdog Seminar” begins with a screening of the film “Faith Under Fire,” which portrays a horrific 1980 church shooting in Daingerfield, Texas that claimed the lives of five people. Intriguingly, nowhere in any of the “Sheepdog” training materials can we find so much as a syllable devoted to the most hideous church-related “deadly force” incident in recent US history – the 1993 annihilation of the Branch Davidian congregation at Mt. Carmel outside Waco. 

David Koresh and his followers were certainly security-conscious. As the ATF learned, the Davidians were more than adequately armed and much more proficient marksmen than the government-licensed killers who attacked the group’s sanctuary. 

The church was sufficiently fortified and provisioned to withstand a prolonged siege by the FBI. The pastor and his “sheepdogs” held the enemy at bay for 51 days before being murdered in a chemical weapons attack that led to a catastrophic fire – with Delta Force commandos gunning down anybody who attempted to escape the holocaust.

The Waco atrocity receives no mention in the materials provided by Grossman and his colleagues because it demonstrates the inescapably lupine nature of government-licensed “sheepdog.” Their function is not to act as benign protectors of the “sheep,” but to serve the “thieves and robbers” who corral the flock to be fleeced or slaughtered (John 10:1-10).

Grossman’s “Sheepdog Training” seminars will attract the kind of people who dismiss Koresh and his followers as “cultists” because they didn’t acknowledge the divinity of the State. Whatever else may be true about the Branch Davidians, their worthy defiance placed them in the company of the early Christians who were denounced as atheists and “wrong-doers” – and often put to death in exceptionally sadistic ways -- because they refused to offer a pinch of incense on the altar of Caesar. 
 

An FBI commando poses in the ruins at Mt. Carmel.

“Non-thinking Evangelicals are helping to build the police state even more than the socialists in this country,” laments Dr. Phil Fernandes, President of the Institute of Biblical Defense and pastor of the Trinity Bible Fellowship in Bremerton, Washington. 

Assuming that the assessment by Dr. Fernandes is accurate, the turnout for the “Spokane Sheepdog Seminar” is a harbinger of ominous times: The event drew more than 250 people from six states, including Alaska and California. Vogelman proudly reported that this included “thirty to forty cops – federal, state, local, sheriffs and deputies, people from the Department of Homeland Security,” in addition to dozens of church elders, and scores of pastors. 

Grossman and his comrades have scheduled seven more seminars this year. At each they will train and equip hundreds of influential people to minister on behalf of the Homeland Security State – strengthening the sinews of Leviathan in the tragically mistaken belief that they are “doing God a service.”


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Lon Horiuchi: American Sniper

Primed to kill: Law enforcement officers at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, August 1992.

Somewhere, a figure clothed in a pseudonym has been tracking the box office returns of “American Sniper” with great interest and no small measure of envy. He may be among the tens of millions who contributed to its unprecedented commercial success, assuming that a visit to the local Cineplex is permitted under the terms of the federal witness protection program. 

Many who have seen the cinematic tribute to the late Chris Kyle describe the experience in religious terms, recalling how a chastened, reverent silence descended on the theater as the end credits rolled. If the individual once known as Lon Horiuchi was part of the congregation, the impious sentiment of jealousy may have tainted his devotion. After all, he had also been true and faithful to his commission as a state-employed killer, shooting people from long distances at the command of his superiors; why isn’t he the object of similar veneration? 

Chris Kyle, as everyone is required to know, was a Navy SEAL. Lon Horiuchi was an infantry officer and graduate of West Point before becoming a sniper with the FBI and a member of its “Hostage Rescue Team,” an Orwellian designation for a unit that functioned as a death squad at Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993. 

Both Kyle and Horiuchi have been described as deeply religious and devoted family men. To the extent presently known, Kyle was a much more prolific killer than Horiuchi, which makes him more admirable in the eyes of the segment of the public that regards state-sanctioned murder as the highest and holiest public calling.

Unlike Horiuchi, who retreated into anonymity after the August 1992 federal standoff at Ruby Ridge, Kyle became a best-selling author-by-proxy and a “reality TV” celebrity following his retirement from the military. The resulting sense of artificial intimacy with the public helps explain why millions claimed to have felt a personal loss when Kyle was killed by a fellow Iraq war veteran. 

His funeral was a state-focused orgy of grief rivalling that decreed by Soviet officials in 1982 following the death of Leonid Brezhnev. When Horiuchi eventually pays his debt to nature he will earn a brief mention in the “Whatever happened to?” section of whatever media outlets happen to notice his passing. 

 

This is tragically unfair. If proficiency at state-authorized killing constitutes heroism, Horiuchi has been shamefully denied the honor to which he is due.

The victim of Horiuchi’s first documented “kill” was a woman who was holding an infant. Kyle inaugurated his career in the same fashion.

“I looked through the scope,” Kyle narrated by way of his ghost writer. “The only people who were moving were [a] woman and maybe a child or two nearby. I watched the troops pull up. Ten young, proud Marines in uniform got out of their vehicles and gathered for a foot patrol. As the Americans organized, the woman took something from beneath her clothes, and yanked at it. She’d set a grenade.”

Without any of the agonized reluctance exhibited by his cinematic avatar, Kyle shot the woman twice.

 

“It was my duty to shoot, and I don’t regret it,” Kyle insisted. “The woman was already dead. I was just making sure she didn’t take any Marines with her. It was clear that not only did she want to kill them, but she didn’t care about anybody else nearby who would have been blown up by the grenade or killed in the firefight. Children on the street, people in the houses, maybe her child….”

Kyle described this woman, who was trying to defend her neighborhood from violent foreign invaders, as “blinded by evil. She just wanted Americans dead, no matter what. My shots saved several Americans, whose lives were clearly worth more than that woman’s twisted soul.”

Vicki Weaver, the victim of Horiuchi’s kill-shot, was standing in the doorway of her family’s home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.  The family had come under federal siege because of Randy’s refusal to become an informant within the Aryan Nation white supremacist group. Randy had been manipulated by an ATF undercover operative named Kenneth Fadeley into selling a shotgun with a sawed-off barrel. Eight months after that transaction, two of Fadeley’s comrades in that detestable organization demanded that Randy become an informant, threatening his home and family if he didn’t cooperate.

For more than two years, the Feds and their dutiful servants in Bonner County pursued Randy and his family. The US Marshals Service became involved, infiltrating the family’s property and seeding surveillance devices near the cabin. In August 1992, as they prepared to arrest the “fugitive,” one of the marshals alerted the family’s dog, Stryker. Randy’s only son, 14-year-old Samuel, went to investigate, suspecting that Stryker might have encountered a predator. In fact, he had – albeit of the two-legged, tax-devouring variety.

A gunfight erupted in which US Marshal William Deegan was killed (almost certainly by friendly fire), suffering a fate not inappropriate for any other prowler or burglar. As Samuel fled to the cabin, he was shot in the back – ripped apart – by automatic weapons fire.

Within a day, the Weaver family’s pathetic dwelling had been transformed through official propaganda into an “armed compound” – the term used to describe any habitation owned by people the Regime has decided to kill. Randy and a family friend named Kevin Harris had stepped out of the house to tend to the body of 14-year-old Sammy Weaver, which was in an outbuilding nearby.

The rules of engagement for Horiuchi and the rest of the HRT stated that FBI snipers “could and should” shoot any armed male seen outside the family’s cabin. That authorization was broadly comparable to the rules of engagement under which Kyle operated while in Iraq: “Our ROEs when the war kicked off were pretty simple: If you see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and they’re male, shoot ‘em. Kill every male you see. That wasn’t the official language, but that was the idea.” (Emphasis added.)

The “could and should” language employed at Ruby Ridge was revised and expanded without official sanction. In subsequent congressional testimony, former FBI sniper Dale B. Monroe insisted that anyone inside the cabin was also fair game, because of the “threat” they supposedly posed to FBI agents operating a helicopter in the airspace above the property.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Ruby Ridge was considered a “kill zone” – just as Fallujah, Iraq would later be for Kyle and his comrades. Before Horiuchi slaughtered Vicki, he attempted to murder Randy with a shot to his back intended to sever his spinal cord. A sudden and unanticipated movement by Randy saved his life: The intended kill-shot struck his shoulder and exited his armpit. Another shot struck Vicki in her head as she  cradled her 10-month-old daughter Elisheba. The bullet passed through her body and wounded Harris.

Although the FBI would later insist that Vicky’s death was inadvertent, Horiuchi himself would confirm that he knew the identity of his victim.

A psychological profile of the family produced by the Bureau identified Vicki, rather than her ex-Green Beret husband, as the dominant personality in the family. James “Bo” Gritz, an ex-Special Forces Colonel who acted as a negotiator during the 10-day standoff, later testified under oath that the FBI had deliberately targeted Vicki out of the belief that she “would kill her children rather than ever allow them to surrender.”

Kyle’s lethal ministry was one of “saving lives,” he and his supporters have insisted – not lives unworthy of life, such as the Iraqi “savages” for whom he expressed such disdain, but the incomparably valuable lives of his comrades-in-arms. 

Ruby Ridge, August 1992

Horiuchi’s comrades offered the same defense of the FBI sniper’s murderous actions at Ruby Ridge. By killing Vicki, he acted “to save lives,” insisted fellow FBI sniper Dale Monroe. Like the unnamed Iraqi woman, Vicki must be regarded as a hateful, irrational, marginally human creature who simply didn’t understand that when the Empire makes a proprietary claim on you and your family, it is not only a crime but a sin to resist.

The FBI’s theatrical professions of regret over Vicki’s death belied the fact that the battalion of combat-outfitted law enforcement personnel on the scene at Ruby Ridge celebrated the killing as a noble victory: With full knowledge that Mrs. Weaver was dead, they named their staging area “Camp Vicki,” and used a public address system to taunt Randy and his surviving children by pretending to speak on behalf of his dead wife. 

During his ministry of bloodshed in Iraq, Kyle displayed the same contemptuous, bullying attitude toward the population he was there to “liberate.” His unit adopted the logo of The Punisher, a nihilistic, Marvel Comics character. They made a point of tagging every available surface with the slogan: “Despite what your momma told you, violence does solve problems.” 

 Kyle proudly recalls that “we spray-painted it on every building and walls when we could. We wanted people to know, we’re here and we want to f**k with you…. You see us, we’re the people kicking your ass. Fear us because we will kill you, mother****r." 

The invading army of which Kyle was part turned Fallujah into a vast charnel house. Horiuchi’s comrades made an abortive attempt to do the same on a smaller scale at Ruby Ridge. At one point during the standoff,  a news crew from KREM-TV in Spokane saw several large canisters of gasoline being loaded onto an FBI helicopter, which took off and circled the Weaver “compound” – only to veer off suddenly after being videotaped by observers on the ground.

This is an "arsenal"? Confiscated guns at Ruby Ridge.

But for the inconvenient presence of witnesses, the FBI would have fire-bombed the dwelling, immolating its inhabitants and destroying all of the evidence. A few months later, at the end of the 51-day siege at Mt. Carmel, the FBI keep the media and emergency personnel more than a mile away from the Branch Davidian sanctuary during the chemical weapon attack and subsequent holocaust. Horiuchi, it shouldn’t surprise us, participated in that atrocity as well.

At the time of his death, Chris Kyle was president of Craft International, a Homeland Security contractor involved in training domestic law enforcement agencies.  This provokes an interesting question: Is it possible – not likely, perhaps, but possible – that one of Kyle’s instructors was an enigmatic, Hawaiian-born Japanese-American well into middle age who graduated from West Point in the mid-1970s? If Kyle and Horiuchi ever met, they would have quickly learned that they had a lot in common. 

Whether or not such a meeting took place, Horiuchi no longer has any reason to hide. The box office triumph of “American Sniper” suggests that the mainstream American public is prepared to welcome back – nay, to embrace and celebrate – someone who displayed the same variety of "heroism" on the Homefront that Chris Kyle exhibited overseas. 

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Dum spiro, pugno!