Pastor, here’s how to answer “Who’s really behind this…?”

You’ve heard it in the lobby after a big news week, in the comments under your livestream, in a text with a link to a three-hour documentary: “Okay, but who’s really behind this?” And then who’s behind that? There’s always one more layer. It feels like discernment. Often it’s a sermon of the serpent, and its best trick is pulling God’s people off mission. Here’s how I think about it as a pastor, and how I lead people out of it.

What conspiratorialism is

Conspiratorialism explains events mainly by hidden plots, so there’s always one more thing behind the thing. We all see what happened, but what if it was really these people? What if it was really that?

The church has its own version, and it’s the worst one. I call it eschatological conspiratorialism: date-setting, numerology, and mapping every headline onto prophecy far beyond what the text actually says. “See what just happened with the government? That’s right there in Ezekiel. That’s right here in Daniel.”

The serpent’s question

The serpent’s first move in the garden was to cast doubt on what God plainly said. Here he does it again: “Did God really say no one knows the day or the hour?” Jesus was explicit: “About that day or hour no one knows” (Matthew 24:36). And before He ascended, He told His disciples, “It is not for you to know the times or dates” (Acts 1:7). Then He handed them a mission instead. The serpent always wants us to trade the mission for the map.

Step 1 — Admit some conspiracies are real, then stay focused

Here’s why this one is sticky: sometimes conspiracies come true. Sometimes they were real. They’re interesting and entertaining and you want to get into them. But one conspiracy proving true doesn’t make all of them true. And most of those documentaries are entertaining, not educational.

Paul told Timothy to command people not to “devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies,” because they “promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work” (1 Timothy 1:4). If we begin to obsess, conspiratorialism starts pulling people along a cultish framework: there’s always one extra thing, and one more thing, and one more thing after that.

Step 2 — Teach a first-principles eschatology

I’m not going to tell you whether to be pre, post, amillennial, preterist, or partial-whatever. Within orthodoxy, you’ve got room. But if we all held a first-principles, Pauline eschatology, I think it would help most of us. It’s four lines, and I believe every camp can sign it:

• Christ is coming back.
• Christ is coming back soon.
• I don’t know when.
• I want to be found faithful when He does.

That’s the posture Jesus gives in the parables of the waiting servants and the bridegroom in Matthew 24 and 25: be ready, be doing what the Master told you to do. Teach those four lines to your whole church. When people start getting into dates and numbers and world events, you can say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’ve left eschatology and moved into conspiracy.”

Step 3 — Watch who’s selling what

Honestly, if anyone tells you differently, they’re probably trying to sell you something. And holy moly, have people bought books on that one. If I could go back thirty years and write a crazy eschatology book, I wouldn’t be working today. That flavor hit one generation hardest, but no generation is immune. Every era has its own version of the chart on the wall.

As pastors, we have to combat it. That means being slow to share anything we haven’t verified, from the pulpit or online. Our people take their cues from us.

Step 4 — Redirect the energy toward mission

The real danger isn’t that someone has a weird theory. It’s that conspiratorialism is mostly a giant distraction from reaching people for Christ. We should be hyper-focused on the Great Commission: go and make disciples of all nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). When someone in your church is pouring hours into who’s pulling the strings, ask them a better question: who in your life needs the gospel this week?

Who’s really behind this, pulling on the strings? It can be a massive distraction. Let’s be focused on the gospel of Jesus Christ and the mission of God through the local church and His people. Christ is coming back, soon. I don’t know when, and I want to be found faithful when He does.