Democrat Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

I hate political panderers.

I despise liars even more.

And I detest false teachers most of all.

And so, when someone rears his ugly head who fits all three categories, I can’t help but speak up and speak out. Or, in this case, to expose these charlatans for who and what they really are.

Exhibit A is James Talarico, the Texas state representative who is running for the U.S. Senate. If polls are to be believed, he currently holds a six-point lead over Republican Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas.

Will the Lone Star State go from red to blue this November? Time will tell. But if it does, it will be for two reasons.

First, the Republicans are running one of the most deeply flawed and scandal-ridden candidates in recent GOP history. Yes, outgoing Sen. John Cornyn is the epitome of an establishment politician, but at least he wasn’t an adulterer or accused of bribery and corruption. But thanks to a last-minute endorsement from President Trump, Paxton swamped Cornyn in a two-way run-off and now Republicans have to play with the hand they have been dealt.

Hopefully, President Trump will start actively campaigning in Texas and begin spending some of the $400 million war chest that MAGA Inc. has accumulated. Meanwhile, Talarico is setting fundraising records and blitzing the airwaves with $31.3 million in TV and radio ads.

“We’re a little behind on TV,” Paxton admitted to Newsmax last month.

You talk about your understatements. Paxton’s campaign has spent a paltry $150,000 on advertising since June and has been outspent by Talarico 7-1 so far this campaign.

The second reason why Talarico may win in November is because he is pretending to be someone he isn’t – an evangelical Christian – and spiritually naïve Texans seem to be buying it. Actually, I think Talarico is so misguided that he has convinced himself that he is an evangelical Christian.

Well, sorry to burst your balloon, Jimmy boy, but here is why you aren’t what you are pretending to be.

1. Evangelical Christians don’t question God’s gender, imply that He is nonbinary, or claim that there are “at least” six different genders. In fact, the Bible contains approximately 170 explicit references to God as “Father”; and the masculine Greek word for God (Theos) is used more than 1,300 times in the New Testament alone. Furthermore, basic masculine pronouns such as “He”, “Him”, and “His” referring directly to God appear on virtually every page of the Bible, easily numbering in the thousands.

2. Evangelical Christians don’t believe that the Bible sanctions or is silent about abortion. In Proverbs 6, Solomon lists seven things that God hates and one of them is “Hands that shed innocent blood.” Psalm 139, Jeremiah 1, and multiple other passages also make it plainly clear that every preborn baby has been handcrafted by God with a special and very specific purpose. Likewise, throughout the Old Testament, God condemns and harshly judges the followers of Baal and Ashtaroth for sacrificing their infants in ritualistic worship.

3. Evangelical Christians do not condone homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Whereas it is true that we are called to hate the sin and love the sinner, there is no getting around the fact that God refers to homosexuality as an “abomination” (Lev. 18:22) and both “vile” and “shameful” (Romans 1:26-27). He also states emphatically in Genesis 1:27 that He “created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”… and one chapter later, He ordained marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life (Genesis 2:24).

I could go on and on with the dozens of ways that James Talarico twists and misapplies Scripture to fit his own personal – and increasingly radical – political views. Just this past week, Talarico claimed that were Jesus to come back to earth, He would want to know why the government was reducing welfare benefits and closing the borders to illegal aliens.

For the record, Jesus did not promote bloated social programs that create a permanent underclass dependent on the federal government. On the contrary, He advocated for voluntary personal generosity to the poor and needy. Remember, too, that the Apostle Paul wrote – under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat” (2 Thess. 3:10).

Jesus also taught – and demonstrated – an adherence to government authority (Matt. 17:24-27; and 22:15-22)… and so did the Apostle Paul (Romans 13:1-7). That includes observing international borders and not crossing into a country illegally.

And no, James, Jesus was not an illegal alien when his parents traveled from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea where He was born. If you’d actually crack open a Bible once in a while you would know that they were there because they had been ordered by the government to travel to their ancestral home in order for an accurate census to be taken (Luke 2:1-5).

Exhibit B – or Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing #2 – is Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist pastor who is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Kansas. Hamilton, who is the founding pastor of Resurrection Church in Leawood, holds theological positions that are not just liberal, but also heretical.

Despite saying that he is reaching out to conservative evangelical voters as part of his “Leading From the Middle” statewide tour, Hamilton is espousing unbiblical viewpoints out of both sides of his mouth. Here are just a few...

1. Hamilton believes that “Christians must address” portions of the Old Testament in which God punishes both Israel and Israel’s enemies. In a 2014 interview to promote his book, Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today, Hamilton referred to God’s command to Joshua to take the Promised Land by force as “genocide”.

2. Even more disturbingly, Hamilton supports the Islamic belief in the divine origin of the Quran while questioning – and even undermining – a similar claim for the Bible, stating that “Christians do not hold, as Muslims do, that our holy book was dictated by God.” Excuse me, Adam, but doesn’t 2 Timothy 3:16 say the exact opposite? “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.”

3. Calling the Bible “complex”, Hamilton claimed in 2019 that “what Moses and Paul were addressing in their teachings on same-sex intimacy was very different from two human beings entering into a covenant relationship of mutual love.” On the contrary, Adam, Moses and Paul were crystal clear about homosexuality and same-sex marriage (see Point 3 in my discussion of James Talarico’s heresy). To me, the words “abomination”, “vile”, and “shameful” leave no room for misinterpretation… and as a not-so-subtle reminder, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for that singular sin.

And so, gentlemen, I leave you with the words of Jesus to the Laodicean Church in Revelation 3:16… “I will vomit you out of my mouth.” In this particular case, Jesus was fed up with the lukewarmness of the Laodiceans’ faith, wishing that they were either hot or cold. In the same manner, I wish you two charlatans would simply come out and admit that you are heretics, false teachers, and political hacks who will say and do virtually anything to get elected.

If you did, I would totally disagree with you and your positions, but I would grudgingly respect you for being honest about who you are and what you stand for. Instead, you insist on using deceit and deception to bewitch and beguile unsuspecting voters who should know better, but don’t.

I pray that the scales will fall from the voters’ eyes in Texas and Kansas before November 3rd and that they, too, will vomit you out of their mouths and off their ballots.

Editor’s Note: Just before “press time”, I became aware of yet another heretical comment by James Talarico who claimed in 2024 that “Christians and Muslims and Jews all worship the same God”. Um, no we don’t, Jimbo. Jews and Christians worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… and Christians believe that the only way to the Father is through personal faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Muslims worship Allah and believe that Muhammad was his last and greatest prophet, greater than Christ Himself.

Trying to appeal to every voter regardless of their religious persuasion, Talarico then rambled on about the cosmos and other New Age mumbo jumbo, doubling down on his heresy with the following comments…

“Whether you call that God, whether you call it the cosmos, whether you call it love or justice, that’s where we’ve got to root ourselves… It doesn’t have to be a church, doesn’t have to be a synagogue or a mosque or a temple,” Talarico said, suggesting “a yoga group” or “a book club” as other examples of places where people can find deeper meaning and a sense of belonging.

Not to be outdone, a 2022 clip of Adam Hamilton just resurfaced in which he told his congregation that “And when it comes to other faiths, I believe as a Christian that they are going to, when they get to Heaven, they’re going to see Jesus and they’re going to say, ‘Oh, it was you all along that I was searching for.’ But I don’t fear that those folks will spend eternity in Hell.’”

So, in other words, forget what Jesus said in John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” – because Pastor Adam Hamilton says that everyone is welcome in heaven regardless of who or what they believed in on earth.

"Why do Democrats keep nominating 'preachers' who reject the central tenets of Christianity?" tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a true evangelical Christian. Good question, Ted. Hopefully, the voters in Kansas and Texas will supply us with an answer – the right answer – in November.