John MacArthur, Tim LaHaye, and Dave Hunt, support heretics who promulgated antichrist doctrine. All three of these authors consider the Albigensians, Cathars, Paulicians, and Bogomils, as true or orthodox Christians.
All of these heretics believed that Christ never died, that His death was an illusion, and that the Creator of the physical world, and the God of the Old Testament, was the devil. This is most definitely antichrist. All of these heretics promulgated the heresy of Manichaeism, which was founded by the false prophet Mani.
John MacArthur, as educated as he is, does not consider the Albigensians, or Cathars, and Waldensians, as heretics, but as being a part of the original believers, when in reality they simply broke away from the Catholic Church and were not pre-existent to it. While MacArthur rejects the biblical discourses of certain medieval theologians, he accepts the heretical groups:
While the period produced some famous preachers, such as Peter the Hermit, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas, none handled the text in an expository fashion. Faint hints of Bible exposition have been detected among independent groups such as the Paulicians, Waldenses, and Albigenses, despite the fact that these groups are commonly dismissed as “heretics.” (MacArthur, Preaching: How to Preach Biblically, ch. 3)
Tim LaHaye, who is praised and lauded as a brilliant prophecy buff, sympathized with the Cathars of southern France, who were repressed by the Catholics:
In the period immediately following [Pope] Innocent III the Inquisition did its most deadly work in Southern France (see under Albigenses) (LaHaye, Revelation Unveiled)
Dave Hunt also accepted the Cathars, and the Bogomils (another heretical group very similar to the Cathars) as the being a part of the first church:
Furthermore, millions of biblical Christians resisted Rome for fifteen years before Luther or Calvin. Albigensis, Waldenses, Bogomils, Paulicians, Baptists, and those who simply called themselves “Christians” or “brethren” traced their doctrines back to the apostles and never obeyed the popes. (Dave Hunt, James White, Debating Calvinism)
Let us see what these “biblical Christians” believed in. I did a whole video on this:
The Albigensis, Bogomils, Paulicians were gnostics who followed the teachings of Mani, in which it was taught that Christ did not come in the flesh, but was a spirit or phantom. This is explicitly antichrist, for as John says
For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. (2 John 1:7)
Mani, like Muhammad, believed that the Incarnation never occurred, and nor was Christ–God in the flesh–even the son of Mary. Mani said:
God forbid that I should admit that our Lord Jesus Christ came down to us through the natural womb of a woman! …If you, however, mean to say that Mary was actually His mother, you place yourself in a position of considerable perl. (Disputation with Manes, 47, ellipses mine)
Like Muhammad, Mani taught against free-will, and promulgated the false belief of fatalism. (Socrates, 1.22)
As Muhammad did, Mani rejected the belief that Christ has a Father, and in regards to this belief, he proclaimed with wicked tongue:
For to me it seems pious to say that the son of God stood in need of nothing whatsoever in the way of making good His advent upon earth; and the He in no sense required ether the dove, or baptism, or mother, or brethren, or even may have a father (The Disputation with Mani, 50)
This is blatantly antichrist, for John says,
He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. (1 John 2:22)
The account of the Crucifixion in the Gospels was denied, for to Mani (and to Muhammad) people saw Christ crucified only as an illusion. (Augustine, Concerning Heresies, ch. 46, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. i, p. 37)
Mani believed that the Eucharist was an illusion, and in so doing he replaced the Eucharist with his own, and so reprobate was he that his followers were forced to eat a communion bread with semen on top of it, with the belief that parts of their god were locked inside of male seed. His followers were made to suffer other sexual deviances. One Margaret, under the age of twelve, was violated by Manichaeans in a strange ritual for their god.
Manichaean books spoke of men becoming women and women becoming men, in order to free through sexual intercourse “the princes of darkness of both sexes so that the divine substance which is imprisoned in them may be set free and escape.” Luckily their was foresight amongst the Church, and their vile religion was outlawed, and their members arrested by an inquisition, (St. Aug., Concerning Heresies, ch. 46, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. i, pp. 35-6, 39) since no toleration was to be given to error and blasphemy.
What sane society could allow for such a gang of reprobates to grow and to thrive? In our society today, cursed by the conniving, imprudent, and sophistical ideas of the Enlightenment, we pompously show off our religious tolerance, thus permitting the growth and multiplying of dangerous cults.
In the year 438, a law was written that prohibited the Manichaeans, declaring that they “shall not assemble in any groups, shall not collect any multitude, shall not attract any people to themselves, shall not show any walls of private houses after the likeness of churches, and shall nothing publicly or privately which may be detrimental to Catholic sanctity.” (Theodosian Code, 16.5, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. i, p. 45)
The Manichaeans were vegans who madly believed that even a fig contained the divine, that it wept when it was plucked, and that after it was eaten one would belch out “particles of God.” They were not allowed to eat eggs, to drink milk, to clear a field of thorns, nor did they eat any animal meat because they believed, like the Hindus, that other souls passed into cattle. They also did not kill animals to avoid offending “the princes of darkness who are bound in the celestials.” (St. Aug. Confessions, 3.18; Concerning Heresies; The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. i, pp. 36-7, ch. iii, p. 114) They partook in openly pagan activity, worshipped the moon, the sun, and the stars, even went so far as to pray to demons. (St. John of Damascus, On Heresies, 66)
Life itself was considered by Mani to be an abomination from which all of humanity should seek to be free. Couples within the cult were told never to conceive offspring, and forbade the propagation of offspring, since this would bring more life into the world. So immense was their hatred for life, that they said that to bring food to a starving human being who was not a Manichaean was to murder the food itself. (St. Aug. Confessions, 3.18; Concerning Heresies, ch. 46, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. i, p. 37) They were a cruel bunch, and saw themselves as superior, paralleling the self-exalting spirit of Islam. Like Muhammad, Mani intermixed his heresy with pagan traits; his followers prayed toward the sun in the daytime and toward the moon in the evening. (Augustine, Concerning Heresies, ch. 46, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. i, p. 38)
The antihuman doctrine of Mani spread to Armenia where its subscribers called themselves Paulicians. (See Skylitzes, Byzantine History, 5.8)
The Paulician sect made its way to the Balkans where it influenced a man in Bulgaria named Bogomil, who would start his own cult in his country. The Bogomils fabricated their own gospel called “The Bogomile Book of John,” in which Jesus tells John that God the Father, pitying the devil, gave power to Satan to create the world, and even to create human beings. It goes on to say that the devil was to one who created the Garden of Eden and commanded the people not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:
Then I [John] asked of the Lord [Jesus]: “When Satan fell, what place did he dwell?” And he answered me: “My Father changed his appearance because of his pride, and the light was taken from him, so his face became like heated iron and his face became altogether like a man’s. And with his tail he drew the third part of God’s Angels, and he was thrown out from God’s seat and from the stewardship of the heavens. So Satan came down into this firmament, and he could find no rest for himself. nor for those who were with him. Then he implored the Father: ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay Thee all!’ So the Father had pity on him and gave him rest and those who were with him, as much as they wanted, even to seven days. And so as he sat in the firmament and commanded the Angel who was over the Air and him who was over the Waters, and of the half of it he made the moonlight and of the (other) half of the starlight; and of the gems he made all of the hosts of the stars. And after that he made the Angels his servants according to the form of the order of the Most High, and by the command of the invisible Father (he made) thunder, rain, hail and snow; he sent forth Angels to be servants over them. And he commanded the Earth to bring forth every beast for food, and ever creeping thing, and trees and plants; and he bade the seas bring forth fishes and the birds of the skies. And furthermore he planned and made man in his (own) likeness, and commanded an Angel of the third heaven to enter into the body of clay.
And he took of it and made another body in a woman’s shape, and commanded an Angel of the second heaven to enter the body of the woman. But the Angels lamented when they saw a mortal form upon them and that they were unlike in shape. So he commanded them to do the deed of the flesh in the bodies of clay but they knew not how to commit sin. Then did the contriver of evil plan in his mind to make a Garden, and into it he brought the Man and the Woman. He commanded a reed to be brought, and this the devil planted in the center of the Garden, and the devil so hid his plan that they did not know his deceit. Then he came in and spoke to them, saying: ‘Eat of every fruit that is in the Garden, but do not eat of the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Again the devil entered a wicked serpent and seduced the Angel who was in the woman’s form, and (persuaded her) and worked his desire with her even in the form of the serpent’s sons even to the end of this world who work the lust of the devil their father.” (The Bogomile Book of John, 7-11)
In this antichrist book, Jesus even says that those who say that His Father created human bodies are fools:
Listen, John, my Father’s beloved; foolish speak thus in their deceitfulness that my Father made bodies of clay: but by the Holy Spirit He made all the Powers of the heavens, and holy ones were found with bodies of clay because of their transgressions, and therefore were they surrendered to Death. (The Bogomile Book of John, 12)
Though Bogomilism went underground, it continued to grow like bacteria multiplying in static murky water in the summer heat. Like the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whenever the Bogomils met someone who they desired to deceive, they flooded the man with all sorts of politeness to undermine his vigilance. As the heretics of America do today, the Bogomils also did not hesitate to call themselves Christian. A certain priest named Cosmas preached a warning on this deceptive polite fiction:
The heretics in appearance are lamb-like, gentle, modest and quiet, and their pallor is to show their hypocritical fastings. …The people, on seeing their great humility think that they are orthodox, and able to show them the path of salvation; they approach and ask them how to save their souls. Like a wolf that wants to seize a lamb, they pretend at first to sigh; they speak with humility, preach, and act as if they were themselves in heaven. Whenever they meet any ignorant and uneducated man, they preach to him the tares of their teachings, blaspheming the traditions and orders of the Holy Church. (The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, pp. 109, 114, ellipses)
But under all of that feigned kindness, was a roaring devil filled with foaming hatred against Christ. They denied the Trinity, called John the Baptist “the forerunner of Antichrist,” and harassed Christians with words such as these: “How can we bow to the cross? Is it not the tree on which the Jews crucified the Son of God? The cross is detestable to God. …Christ neither gave sight to the blind, nor healed the lame, nor raised the dead, but these are the only legends and delusions which the uneducated evangelists understood wrongly.” They rejected any honoring of Mary, hated all church icons, and declared with the utmost sacrilege: “We reject David and the prophets. We admit only the gospel; we do not cary out our lives according to the law of Moses, but according to the law given through the apostles.” (The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, pp. 110, 112, 115, 116, ellipses mine)
In accordance to the teachings of Mani, whenever a Bogomil would see an infant they would turn away, spit, and cover their faces, since they believed that babies were “little devils.” (The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, p. 114)
They hated the rich and the tsar of Bulgaria, yet they did not hesitate to take the property of their followers; for that is what heresy desires: power and to replace the Church.
By the twelfth century the cult made its way to the richest and most central part of Catholic Europe: Central France, where its followers would adopt the Manichaean title of Cathars, from the Greek word “pure.” (Augustine makes mention of a sect within the Manichaeans called “Catharists” in his Concerning Heresies, ch. 46, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, in p. 35)
It entered southern France when two heretics named Peter of Bruys and Henry entered the land and began to preach Catharism. The natives were so angered by their errors that they seized Peter and burnt him alive. But still the preaching of this heresy continued, and the community was allowed to grow in numbers without any significant intervention on the part of the Church to stop its growth.
Like Mani and the Bogomils, the Cathars forged their own bible called “The Catharist Bible.” In this damned book, it says that Jesus was not the eternal Son of God, but only one spirit out of innumerable other spirits in Heaven, Who chose to become the Father’s son after deciding to endure suffering. It also says that John the Baptist was a devil who baptized Jesus:
Then, seeing this, the holy Father said: “So then there is not one of you who desires to be My Son?” Then one of the spirits standing by, who was called Jesus, rose up and said: “I myself am willing to be the Son of the Father and to complete all things which are written in that book.” …After baptism by the great demon John, the devil carried Jesus hanging on his neck. (Catharist Bible, 4-6, ellipses mine)
It then goes on to say that Christ never died, but that only His death was an illusion to the Jews. It reads that “it seemed to the Jews that the Son of God was dead and that after death they had placed him in a sepulchre, nevertheless he was not truly dead, nor was he buried, though he seemed to be so.” (Catharist Bible, 18)
As the Manichaeans before them, they believed in the existence of two creators, one good and the other evil. The God of the Old Testament, they believed, was the devil and a “liar”, they also called him a “murderer” because of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the flood, and the slaughter of the Egyptians through the Red Sea. They called the Law of Moses “evil” because of its intolerance toward depravities and heresies, and they considered Joshua, David, and Moses, as advancers of the evil god, or the devil. Cathars held the deity of the New Testament as the good God, and for this reason they rejected the Old Testament, and their bible would only be a copy of the New Testament. (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, 1.10-12; 2.28, 52, brackets mine; Belloc, The Great Heresies, The Albigensian, pp. 72, 76-7; The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism)
And for those who may say that these accusations have no merit because they are from Catholic documents, here are the words from an actual Cathar book:
Our opponents [i.e., the Catholics] say that according to Genesis the Lord is the creator of the visible things of this world … But I say that the creator of the visible things of this world is not the true God. And I prove this from the evil of his words and deeds, and the changeableness of his words and deeds as described in the Old Testament. (In Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. iii, document 22, B, p. 135)
These blasphemous haters of truth deemed John the Baptist as one of the chief devils; they hated Christ and called Him “evil”, and libelously said that Mary Magdalene was His concubine (with this they agree with Mormonism), and that the true Christ was the one who appeared to St. Paul, since He came in the spirit and not the flesh in His visitation. Marriage was evil, and like the Muslims and Mormons, wine was forbidden. Like the Mormons, they most sacrilegiously said that God had two wives and even begat children with them. And also like the Mormons, they believed that Jesus was the brother of Lucifer. Similar to the teachings of Muhammad, they also denied the Incarnation. All of these beliefs led the Cathars into some very dangerous activities, such as magic and even open devil worship. (See Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, 1.10-12; 2.28, 52, brackets mine; Belloc, The Great Heresies, The Albigensian, pp. 72, 76-7; The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism; A Standoff at Lombers, 1165; Ranier Sacconi: A Thirteenth-Century Inquisitor on Catharism. These last three references are in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, pp. 109, 111, 112, 114, 117, 132)
A sect of the Cathars, called Publicans, were said to worship a demon named Luzabel who they believed “presides over all the material creation, and all things on earth are done by his will.” They also made “execrable sacrifices” to this devil. (Ralph of Coggeshall, The Heretics of Rheims, in Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, part 2, p. 81. That the Publicans were Cathars, see Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. iii, p. 104)
It is no wonder, then, that Cosmas, when preaching on the Bogomil Cathars, says: “And they worship the devil to such an extent that they call him the creator of the divine words and ascribe the divine glory to him.” They also believed that “everything exists by the will of the devil”. (The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, p. 113)
One Cathar named Guillelme Carreria was plowing his fields and the plower’s yoke was displaced, and upon this he said: “Devil, put back that yoke in its proper place!” (The Inquisitorial Register of Jacques Fournier, Invocation of the devil: testimony of Arnaud Laufre, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. ix, p. 264)
Concurring with many of today’s Evangelical Christians, and with the Latter Day Saints, they also believed that the Roman Catholic Church was the Harlot of Babylon of Revelation. They were so entrenched in this belief, that they affirmed that Christ assumed a bodily presence merely to incite us to fight against the Church of Rome, and to ask us to join the Cathar church. In a debate between the Catholic Abbot of les Vaux-de-Cernay and a certain Cathar named Theodoric, the heretic was so trumped and unable to answer his opponent’s arguments, that he said: “The harlot [of Babylon] has kept me long enough, she shall keep me no longer.” (See Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, 1.10-12; 2.28, 52, brackets mine; Belloc, The Great Heresies, The Albigensian, pp. 72, 76-7; Englebert, St. Francis of Assisi, ch. v, p. 61)
As you can see, these people were blatantly heretical and antichrist. These are the heretics John MacArthur, LaHaye, and Dave Hunt support. The question is, if Tim LaHaye and John MacArthur were confronted with these facts, will they change? What we found out that with many who read their material, its very difficult; they vehemently defend the Cathars as true Bible believing Christians.
Dave Hunt was confronted on this issue by Catholic priest Karl Keating, he never recanted his support for the Cathars and his book Woman Rides The Beast is littered with support for such heretics. The debate can be watched here, and if you go to 1:21:22, you can hear Keating and Hunt debate over the theology of the Albigensians:
Dave Hunt equates the Waldensians and the Albigensians when both of them had contradictory theologies. They did not agree with each other. While Waldensians accepted the Nicaean Creed, the Alibgensians did not.
What we discovered that with many, the issue is not an issue of truth, but an issue of making a political argument. Its sort of like the divide between republican and democrat and so it is to them, a divide between Catholic and Protestant and any argument even if it was a lie, becomes valid regardless that God is watching.