Netflix ‘adapts’ Steinbeck’s ‘East of Eden’ — and Satan gets a sympathetic makeover



Any thrill I might have experienced upon learning an “East of Eden” adaptation was in the Netflix pipeline was rapidly extinguished by memories of the latest screen desecrations of beloved classics.

Earlier this year, provocateur Emerald Fennell turned Emily Brontë’s Gothic tragedy “Wuthering Heights” into cheap fodder for the smut-obsessed. This summer, Netflix retconned Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” — complete with culturally fluent pioneers and a DEI-mandated American frontier.

They are systematically eliminating our clearest portraits of evil because behind them lies the Christian realities that inspired them.

As for Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey,” I thought it was a cinematic success, but it still made the face that launched a thousand ships a lesson in representation, while casting transgender “Elliot” Page as the Greek warrior Sinon, who’s not even a Homeric character.

I’m already recoiling thinking about the heresy that animates feminist auteur Greta Gerwig’s upcoming “Narnia” reimagining, which intends to emasculate Aslan and turn Lewis’ sacrosanct creation myth into a secular 1950s “rock opera.”

I could go on, but that’s enough to make plain the pattern of Hollywood’s utter disregard for adapting the literary canon faithfully. Always it must infuse its warped catechisms, lest we plebeians forget where it stands.

But being the masochist I am when it comes to these matters, I watched Netflix’s “East of Eden” anyway, and I have to tell you, I was genuinely gutted by what I witnessed. Not annoyed by predictable woke tropes, although those were there too. No — gutted.

My visceral shock, however, was less about the revision of John Steinbeck’s perennial Cain and Abel allegory and more regarding what that deliberate modification reveals about the dismal state of our culture.

Will the real Cathy Ames please stand up?

If you haven’t read Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” (and please do!), I’ll take the liberty of giving you a little teaser: The novel's antagonist, Cathy Ames, is certainly one of the most heinous villains in American literature, if not in the entire Western canon.

The book introduces her with this haunting bit of prose: “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.”

And that’s an apt entrance for Cathy. She is a monster at birth, a mutant at the soul level, a fiend cloaked in human flesh. Modern-day psychologists would diagnose her as an incorrigible sociopath who takes pleasure only in the torture, humiliation, and demise of other people.

Cathy is also what critics call a “static character”: She undergoes virtually no meaningful change over the course of the novel. More unsettlingly, she remains almost impossible to relate to at a human level. Steinbeck gives her no humanizing backstory that draws our sympathies, no redeeming ethical or moral arc, no thing we might point to and say, “See, that’s why she behaves so horribly.”

Static characters are almost humorous in their simplicity, and they serve a variety of purposes in literature. But in Cathy’s case, her function is symbolism. She is an emblem for unadulterated evil, and that’s neither my nor the literary authorities’ verdict. It’s Steinbeck’s. In a letter, he called Cathy Ames “a total representative of Satan.”

It’s a tailor-made description, given she frames two young boys for sexual abuse, drives a man to suicide, and burns her parents alive all by the age of 16 and the end of the chapter that introduces her. In hopes you will read the book for yourself, I won’t spoil the rest of the unspeakable horrors that unfold at Cathy’s polluted hand.

But as sinister as she is, Cathy Ames plays a paramount role in this story. “East of Eden” is a moral epic, meaning it’s not just an entertaining tale about fictional people and events. It actually employs those things for the explicit purpose of drawing our attention to the cosmic war between good and evil, heaven and hell, God and the devil. Cathy, as I’ve already noted, represents the dark side of that epic struggle. Humanize her in any way and you collapse the entire framework.

But surprise, surprise — that’s exactly the sin the makers of Netflix’s “East of Eden” committed.

A moral epic gets the Hollywood makeover

Writer Zoe Kazan told Reuters, "We wanted our audience to be able to identify with every single character, the ones that are good on the surface and the ones that are evil on the surface because if we think about people that are evil or bad as being not human, we don't learn anything about ourselves."

A pleasant sentiment, except no logical reader could conclude that Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames is evil “on the surface.” He makes it unmistakably clear from the outset that she is not just a perpetrator of evil but the embodiment of evil itself. “A malformed soul” are his exact words.

So to correct Ms. Kazan, Cathy is nonhuman in that she lacks the very qualities that make one so — empathy, moral quandaries, regret, emotional baggage, anything that would resonate with a real human being. The Bible gives Lucifer no domesticating backstory, so why should his literary stand-in have one?

Actress Florence Pugh, who plays Cathy in the series, had her own nauseating comments: “She can still make terrible decisions and face awful consequences, but there can also be ... an understanding of her history and her past, which makes her the way that she is.”

Except being a static archetype, there’s literally nothing in Cathy’s history or past to explain her savagery. The fact that she is inherently and incurably evil is the entire point of her character.

But that won’t do for Hollywood. It must tinker and snip at a classic until it creates its desired Frankenstein's monster. Thus Kazan gave the diabolical Cathy Ames a tragic backstory, turning her from a Satan figure into a woman we can pity, even as she destroys. She suffers abuse, acquires trauma, is driven to desperation, and, of course, experiences the cold hand of misogyny. It’s not even worth delving into. Suffice it to say it’s a lie. More important to me is the "why" behind it.

When killers get poignant backstories

The show's egregious misreading of Cathy raises an important question: Are the makers of this blasphemous series just stupid, or are they up to something?

That’s a rhetorical question. You know as well as I do there’s an agenda at play. What might surprise us is how ugly it is.

Obviously, these Hollywood revisionists are well aware Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames is not a sympathetic character in any sense of the term. But they chose to rewrite her as one anyway — and it has nothing to do with the audience wanting to “learn something about themselves,” as Kazan sold it.

"Introspection" is a reasonable sop to satiate the masses, but it’s a ruse. Cathy must be remade, for she represents the very thing the progressive left wants to retroactively undo. As long as objective evil breathes, it stands as a barrier to their dark vision for the world: a dystopia ruled by moral relativism, where one man’s act of slaughter is another man’s tragic mental break.

Or should I say woman’s? After all, the morally intact part of the nation has been watching, mouths agape, for months now as thousands of people (most of them mothers) fought for a woman who admitted to methodically strangling her three young children to death in a basement. “Postpartum psychosis” was an evocative enough backstory to tip the pity scales in Clancy’s favor.

A similar and equally disturbing trajectory of events surrounded the premeditated stalking and murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. His admitted killer, Luigi Mangione, was made into a sympathetic vigilante by radicals who cheered his “courage.” His chronic pain, denied claims, and manifesto then made him an ideal mascot for progressives’ agenda to blame “the system” rather than the criminal.

Karmelo Anthony, the “good kid” who stabbed an unarmed student after a verbal confrontation, claimed self-defense, and was cast as a victim of racism, is yet another example.

There is a pattern here, and it reveals a dark truth: There is much power to harness when you give a killer a poignant backstory.

RELATED: 'I think they're demons': Why JD Vance refuses to downplay supernatural evil

Silver Screen Collection/Kent Nishimura-Pool/Getty Images

Television tells a vision

But backstories, even those belonging to killers, are not off limits. On the contrary, they are the lens that allows us to see the gray, the nuance that tempers dichotomous thinking. Much good results from understanding motive so long as the line of objective morality remains unblurred — because for every degree it fades, Pandora’s box opens a hair more. And then suddenly, the demons are too numerous to count. And they do not go back in the box willingly.

But Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames is designed to make us look at those bloodthirsty demons, not the complexities of real people living in a broken world. To adapt her character, or any similar character, in this way is a calculated attempt to corrupt what C.S. Lewis called the “Law of Human Nature,” the idea that man is born with a moral radar.

No doubt entertainment has been powerful in the dulling of man’s intrinsic moral compass. Under the guise of artistic license, it surreptitiously conditions the masses. True to its name, television tells a vision — in this case, that evil is really just the manifestation of trauma or poverty.

By turning a Satan symbol into a tragic figure, a Netflix series becomes propaganda for the progressive push for absolution. And of course, the communists are cheering. Explaining away evil is their vision too, you know. The only difference is their endgame isn’t equity or decarceration; it’s dominion.

Christianity in the crosshairs

I initially thought it was ironic they chose a famous moral epic — the least fitting vessel — to undermine the idea of pure evil. But then I realized that’s exactly why they chose “East of Eden.” They are systematically eliminating our clearest portraits of evil because behind them lie the Christian realities that inspired them. If your goal is to unmake evil, Christianity is where you must aim the arrow.

Steinbeck’s 600-page epic boils down to a single word. After God rejects Cain’s offering in Genesis 4, he tells the soon-to-be fratricidal murderer: “Sin lieth at the door ... and thou shalt rule over him.” After a long spiritual journey, the character Lee discovers that the Hebrew translation for “shalt” — timshel — is less of a command and more of a gracious offering.

Despite Satan and his wicked pull on the hearts of man, “thou mayest” rule over evil. That is the lesson Cathy’s son Cal — who fears he has inherited his mother's malevolent nature — walks away with.

But when you get rid of objective evil, what is there to rule over? That’s what really guts me. By painting evil as buried trauma, the series offers a secularized, counterfeit timshel. Biblical permission to recognize and deny Satan’s influence turns into a therapy session on handling our misfortunes better than our forebears. It would be a decent message if it didn’t obscure precisely the cosmic war between good and evil that “East of Eden” seeks to illuminate — a darkness our culture exploits for any number of nefarious ends.

The war is real, however, and there's no opting out of it. You can distort works like "East of Eden" to pretend that it isn't, but you remain a combatant nonetheless. Just one who's chosen to fight for the losing side.

Did these 6 movies about Satan accidentally summon him to their sets?



Horror has always had a respectability problem. But filmmakers eventually discovered a useful trick for getting around it: Make the monster a metaphor.

The creature in "The Babadook" isn't merely a boogeyman under the bed; it's grief and depression. "It Follows" has been read as everything from an allegory for sexually transmitted disease to a story about sexual trauma and mortality. Jordan Peele's "Get Out" turned body-snatching horror into an examination of race and liberal paternalism. Even "Hereditary," which gives us actual demons, comes wrapped in grief, mental illness, and inherited trauma.

Moore was said to have been decapitated, horribly echoing the death Richardson had devised for the movie.

Nothing wrong with that. Horror works best when it gives physical form to intangible fears.

But the metaphor also provides a convenient escape hatch. Whatever battles of principalities and powers we see on screen, we know the real horror lurks in our minds — best addressed with modern, morally neutral techniques like therapy.

Asking us to believe in monsters that stand for nothing more than themselves — real monsters, in other words — takes us uncomfortably close to an idea Christianity has maintained for 2,000 years: Supernatural evil actually exists.

It's no wonder filmmakers who want their commercial success with a side of art-house respectability don't often go there.

But there might be another reason as well. When filmmakers do attempt to depict the devil, he has a curious way of making himself known through strange disruptions to the production: fires, equipment failures, injuries, even death.

Almost as if he would prefer to be dismissed as a fairy tale.

Here are six movies that took supernatural evil seriously — and the strange things that happened while people were making them.

1. 'The Exorcist'

If any movie were ever cursed, surely it was "The Exorcist." William Friedkin's 1973 adaptation of William Peter Blatty's novel has plenty to say about a broken family, psychiatric medicine, and a priest suffering a crisis of faith.

But when Regan MacNeil starts speaking in strange voices and contorting her body, "The Exorcist" is blunt about the cause: demonic possession. Friedkin brings an almost documentary realism to material that might otherwise have been safely dismissed as gothic fantasy. Audiences fainted, vomited, and fled theaters. The movie became a cultural phenomenon.

And if the stories that emerged from the production are to be believed, audiences weren't the only ones disturbed by its unflinching treatment of evil. The trouble started before Friedkin had even begun shooting in Iraq. A statue of Pazuzu, the demon who possesses Regan, had been built in Burbank and shipped to Mosul for the movie's opening sequence. It never arrived.

Somehow, Pazuzu ended up in Denmark. “It was lost,” Friedkin recalled years later. Shooting in Iraq was delayed for weeks while somebody presumably worked out how to get the demon to the right country.

Things got worse back in New York. In the early hours of the morning, a fire tore through the set of the MacNeil house at 20th Century Fox's studio on West 54th Street.

“The production manager called me at 4 a.m. and said, ‘Don't bother to come to work today,’” Friedkin later recalled.

“I said, ‘Why? Am I fired?’”

No. The set had burned to the ground. Well, most of it had. Regan's bedroom — the room where Friedkin was filming the exorcism — survived. Investigators never established what caused the fire. Friedkin later blamed a pigeon that had flown into a light box.

Production shut down for six weeks while the set was rebuilt. Then Ellen Burstyn hurt her back. During the scene in which Regan strikes her mother, a stuntman attached to a wire was supposed to yank Burstyn backward. After several takes, Burstyn told Friedkin that the stuntman was pulling too hard.

“Well, it has to look real,” she remembered him replying.

On the next take, she landed hard on her coccyx and screamed in genuine pain. Friedkin kept the camera rolling. Burstyn later summed up her relationship with the director rather neatly: “He was always great with me. Except when he permanently injured my spine.”

Burstyn went on to do many more films. Others in the cast weren't so lucky. Jack MacGowran, who plays director Burke Dennings — murdered by the possessed Regan in the movie — finished his work and died of influenza at 54. Vasiliki Maliaros, who played Father Karras' mother, also died during production.

In the 1998 BBC documentary "The Fear of God: 25 Years of 'The Exorcist,'" Burstyn remembers others connected with the production dying as well: the newborn child of an assistant cameraman, the man responsible for refrigerating the bedroom set, and a night watchman.

None died in accidents while shooting the movie. But there were enough deaths, injuries, delays, and other mishaps that people began talking about a curse.

The actor playing the conflicted priest and trained psychiatrist who attempts to save Regan got a more explicit warning. In "The Fear of God," Jason Miller recalls eating and studying his lines at the Jesuit residence while filming at Georgetown. One day, an elderly priest handed him a medal of the Blessed Virgin and asked whether Miller had ever heard of “intervention.”

“If you do anything on the devil, anything at all on the devil to reveal him as the trickster that he is,” Miller remembered the priest telling him, “he will seek retribution against you, or he will even try to stop what you're trying to do to unmask him.”

The priest told Miller the medal would protect him.

About three days later, Miller was walking through the Jesuit residence on his way to dinner when something caught his eye in one of the side rooms. He went back and looked, only to see the old priest lying there in a casket.

By 1974, Castle of Frankenstein magazine was running an article with the wonderfully unsubtle headline The Curse That Hangs Over "The Exorcist."

Eventually, Friedkin called the Rev. Thomas Bermingham, the Jesuit priest serving as a technical adviser to the movie.

“Would you come down and exorcise the set?” Bermingham recalled Friedkin asking in "The Fear of God."

Bermingham refused. “I don't want to increase anxiety or anything like that,” he told him. But Bermingham wasn't laughing off the possibility that they had gotten themselves into something strange.

“There was definitely a feeling that it could happen,” he says in the documentary. “We were playing around with something. I even felt it. I felt we were playing around with something I shouldn't be playing around with.”

He blessed the production instead, just in case.

2. 'The Passion of the Christ'

Mel Gibson's 2004 "The Passion of the Christ" isn't a horror movie, although anyone who has sat through the scourging scene might dispute the point.

But neither is it the kind of "faith-based" film that confines the battle between sin and redemption to the dialogue. Gibson keeps the personification of evil in the frame.

Satan stalks Jesus through Gethsemane. He moves through the crowd as Christ suffers. During the scourging, he carries a grotesque child. After Christ's death, Gibson cuts away from Calvary to show Satan defeated. On screen, Satan can only howl in rage. What happened off screen suggests a more active opposition.

Jim Caviezel, the man playing Jesus, was struck by lightning. Producer Steve McEveety recalled seeing the bolt hit him from roughly 100 feet away. Assistant director Jan Michelini was struck too.

Which would already make for a pretty good story, except Michelini had reportedly been struck by lightning once before during the same production.

Caviezel later joked that the strike lit him up “like a Christmas tree.” Contemporary reports said neither man was seriously injured.

Caviezel had previously turned down three opportunities to play Jesus. He accepted Gibson's offer because, he later said, he sensed the director's commitment to telling the Passion story “without restraint.”

Be careful what you pray for.

The lightning strike was far from the only hardship. Caviezel separated his shoulder carrying the cross. He developed hypothermia while hanging nearly naked in bitter winds during the crucifixion scenes, followed by pneumonia and a lung infection. The elaborate makeup left his skin raw. During the scourging, one of the actors missed the protective board behind Caviezel and struck him across the back hard enough to tear the skin.

At one particularly miserable point, hanging on the cross in the cold, Caviezel remembered crying out to God:

“So you don't want this movie to be made?”

Caviezel kept making it anyway; appropriately enough, the suffering itself began to serve the movie. He received Communion daily, prayed the rosary during the long hours in makeup, and went to confession during production.

Caviezel also came to see his suffering as part of what made the performance work. Recreating the crucifixion on a comfortable soundstage, he later said, would have lost some of its “effect and reality.” The cold, the injuries, the exhaustion — things that might have stopped another production — became part of the movie Gibson and Caviezel had set out to make.

3. 'The Omen'

If "The Exorcist" created the cursed-movie template, "The Omen" perfected it.

The 1976 movie is even less interested in metaphor. The little boy at the center of the story really is the Antichrist, and the people who figure this out have a nasty habit of dying before they can do much about it.

Bob Munger, the advertising executive who helped originate the premise, later recalled warning producer Harvey Bernhard about making the movie in the first place.

“If the devil's greatest single weapon is to be invisible,” Munger told him, “and you're going to do something which takes away his invisibility to millions of people, he won't want that to happen.”

Bernhard eventually became convinced Munger was right. “The devil was at work,” he said years later.

The stories began before audiences had even seen the movie. In April 1976, New York magazine was already reporting that Gregory Peck's plane had been struck by lightning while he was traveling to London to make "The Omen." The magazine named screenwriter David Seltzer and director Richard Donner in connection with troubled flights as well. Executive producer Mace Neufeld later recalled a lightning strike on his own flight. The surviving accounts make it difficult to say exactly how many people were struck by lightning, which is not ordinarily a problem a movie production has.

The close calls continued once Neufeld reached London. He later recalled walking out of his London hotel with his wife when a bomb exploded about a block and a half away. The couple also had reservations at Scott's, the Mayfair restaurant bombed by the IRA in November 1975. Both bombings are real; Neufeld recounted his brushes with them in the 2020 documentary series "Cursed Films."

For one of the movie's most memorable scenes, Damien visits a safari park and the baboons go berserk at the sight of him. The sequence was filmed at Windsor Safari Park. During the production period, 22-year-old keeper Sidney Bamford was killed there by a tiger. Later curse accounts claimed the keeper died immediately after the filmmakers shot the sequence. Contemporary reports establish the tiger attack, but not that timing or that Bamford personally worked with the movie.

And then there was the airplane the filmmakers didn't take. Donner later recalled that the production had intended to use an aircraft for aerial filming, only to lose it at the last minute when it was reassigned to Chinese customers. According to the story, the plane subsequently crashed.

There was a remarkably similar accident during production. On November 20, 1975, a Hawker Siddeley executive jet carrying a Chinese delegation took off from Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, flew into a flock of lapwings, lost power in both engines, overran the runway, and struck a passing car.

All nine people aboard the aircraft survived. All six people in the car died.

The timing and the Chinese passengers make it a plausible match for the crash Donner remembered. What the investigation doesn't establish is that "The Omen" crew had ever booked that particular plane.

The strangest story came after "The Omen" was finished.

Special-effects designer John Richardson had helped create one of the movie's most gruesome deaths. Photographer Keith Jennings is standing by the side of a road when a sheet of glass slides from a truck and takes off his head. Richardson's effects team accomplished it with a rigged dummy and replica of actor David Warner's head.

In August 1976, Richardson was in the Netherlands working on "A Bridge Too Far" when he was involved in a car crash. Richardson survived. Sculptor Liz Moore, traveling with him, did not. Biographical accounts date her death to August 13.

Over the years, the accident acquired two details that made it irresistible to anyone writing about the curse of "The Omen." Moore was said to have been decapitated, horribly echoing the death Richardson had devised for the movie. And Richardson was said to have emerged from the wreck near a road sign reading:

Ommen — 66.6 km.

The crash and Moore's death are well attested. Those two grisly details are not. No contemporary report or official record located in our research establishes that Moore was decapitated. Richardson did later recall a roadside marker involving sixes and a road leading toward Ommen, but the famous “Ommen — 66.6 km” sign has never been independently verified.

By then it hardly mattered. "The Omen" had acquired a curse almost as elaborate as its screenplay.

Fox eventually made the legend part of the product. By 2000, the DVD included a featurette called "Curse or Coincidence?"

4. 'The Possession'

The 2012 movie "The Possession" had something most demon movies don't: a supposedly genuine haunted object behind it.

The “dybbuk box” was an old wine cabinet whose strange history had first attracted widespread attention on eBay. Kevin Mannis supplied a terrifying history involving a Holocaust survivor and a malicious Jewish spirit. Owners supposedly experienced nightmares, illnesses, and other misfortunes.

The story spread online, made its way into newspapers, and eventually became the inspiration for a Hollywood movie.

Then odd things started happening on the movie.

Director Ole Bornedal recalled production lights exploding even though they weren't switched on. About a week after filming ended, he said, a warehouse containing props from the movie burned; Bornedal said he never learned what caused the fire.

Years later came a fairly devastating blow to the legend: Mannis admitted that he had invented the box's elaborate backstory. So much for the haunted box.

Except Mannis inventing a story about a wine cabinet doesn't explain why Bornedal said lights exploded. It doesn't explain the warehouse fire either.

Bornedal himself offered the best skeptical argument. “Would we have noticed if this had been a ‘Love Story’? Perhaps not.”

RELATED: Inside the mind of a Catholic exorcist: Fr. Chad Ripperger talks shop with Shawn Ryan

Photo by SIMON WOHLFAHRT/AFP via Getty Images

5. 'The Omen' (2006)

Thirty years after the original "Omen," Fox decided to make it again, if only to take advantage of a uniquely demonic release date: June 6, 2006, or 6/6/06.

Director John Moore had been raised Catholic, and maybe that's why he found the strange happenings that befell him so unnerving.

Two days of footage involving the discovery of Damien's 666 birthmark were destroyed. Moore received an airfare costing exactly $666. And a promotional videotape apparently wound up overwritten with ESPN footage even though, Moore said, the machine wasn't capable of recording.

Moore was disturbed enough to wonder whether making the movie might offend God. Eventually, he reasoned that a movie acknowledging the existence of evil necessarily acknowledged the existence of good.

As for Fox, the curse was great publicity. Although perhaps even the box-office bean counters were a little shaken by the movie's first-day box office:

$12,633,666.

What were the odds? Pretty good, as it turned out. Fox distribution executive Bruce Snyder admitted that the studio had adjusted the reported estimate to give it the demonic final digits.

“We were having a little fun,” he said.

6. 'The Deliverance'

By the time Lee Daniels made "The Deliverance" in 2024, the old stories had become part of Hollywood folklore.

Daniels had read about what supposedly happened during the making of "The Exorcist" and "Poltergeist." His Episcopalian mother warned him about making a movie dealing with demonic evil.

“She was just like, ‘You are a portal. You work from a place of groundedness, and your soul is open, and I don't want anything bad happening to you,’” Daniels recalled.

He took precautions. The production brought in an ordained Christian who conducted deliverances on set. Daniels also instituted daily prayer circles.

“We prayed every day,” he said.

Netflix HR reminded him that Christian prayer couldn't be mandatory. Daniels told anyone who didn't want to participate that they were free to leave.

“There were a few that left, but for the most part, most of them wanted to be covered by the blood of Jesus,” he recalled. “They knew what was up.”

The precautions didn't prevent "The Deliverance" from acquiring a curse story of its own.

Daniels' sister had appeared in every movie he made as his “good luck charm.” For "The Deliverance," she appeared in a scene with Glenn Close involving chemotherapy.

Two days later, Daniels said, his sister was diagnosed with lung cancer.

“My dog died on set,” he added.

Mo'Nique had a more explicable brush with the supposed curse. While filming an outdoor scene involving a demon, Mo'Nique said material being blown around the set made it difficult for her to breathe. Afterward, she was hospitalized with an enlarged thyroid.

“It was a lot of things happening with ‘The Deliverance,’” she recalled.

None of this proves that anything supernatural was happening. Mo'Nique herself described a perfectly physical reason for becoming ill. Cancer diagnoses and dead dogs require no demonic explanation.

But half a century after "The Exorcist," Daniels went into another movie about demonic possession worried enough about the old curse stories to pray over his set every day and bring in someone to perform deliverances.

Then his sister got cancer, his dog died, and one of his stars wound up in the hospital.

Glenn Beck's message to conservatives who TRULY want to defeat the left



Jeremy Boreing has a new series out on Amazon called "The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin," which is a live-action historical fantasy series adapted from the novels by Stephen R. Lawhead.

“Almost everything on television now is about witchcraft and, you know, all of this crap. Not much is about Christianity. So I started watching this, and it starts with pagan gods and everything else, and I’m not going to give anything away, but it doesn’t last with the pagan gods very long,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck explains.

“And nowhere on television are you getting that kind of message in a good-quality series,” he says.

Glenn also notes that he’s “not getting anything" for promoting the series.


“It is so controversial in our circle of friends. You know, it’s ridiculous,” he says.

"Can we stop all this, please? Can we please stop? I don’t consider anyone a competitor. And I don’t know why everybody is considering everyone else a competitor. We’re not competitors.”

“You know who we’re competing against? Satan. We’re competing against evil. We’re competing against Marxism. We’re competing against apathy. We’re not competing against each other,” he continues.

“Why we don't all promote one another, why we don't all help each other, why we all don’t celebrate everybody’s victories when they have it is beyond me. Here is a TV series, and the downside is I don’t think another season’s going to be made unless this is wildly popular, and I think it could be if people will search it out,” he adds.

Glenn calls the show “as good as anything [he has] seen in that genre.”

“And everybody should say something about it. It’s a victory. That was beautiful and well done. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen our side produce,” he adds.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Josh Howerton tells Shawn Ryan how Satan's brazenness is backfiring



BlazeTV host and Lakepointe Church Pastor Josh Howerton recently discussed with the eponymous host of the "Shawn Ryan Show" the ongoing war against Christianity and what set the stage for America's present "prodigal son" moment.

While he recognized that Christ's church is now, as ever, assailed on all sides, Howerton emphasized that many have awoken in recent years to the reality that there are dark spiritual forces at work in the world and also that there are also prevailing forces of light whose victory was secured at Calvary two millennia ago.

'That light has a name.'

Early in their conversation, Howerton told Ryan — who recently announced that he has resumed going to church — that the war on Christianity is primeval; that after the Fall, Satan declared "war on the offspring that God's going to use to redeem the world. So that's the storyline of the entire Bible. It's Word versus world."

"The Bible says the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. The Bible actually calls Satan the little-g god of this world," said the pastor, who noted also that when tempted in the desert, Jesus Christ did not correct Satan when the dark one claimed dominion over the kingdoms of the world.

Howerton noted that there is "this tacit assumption throughout the entire Bible that Satan is really over all of the world's systems — and that's why everything in the world aligns against one thing in particular, and it's Christianity — Christ and Christians. That's baseline."

Expounding on an observation shared with him by Middle East expert Raymond Ibrahim that this satanic contempt makes sense of otherwise nonsensical political alliances — such as those formed in recent years between LGBT activists, feminists, and Islamists — Howerton noted, "The unifying principle is the enemy of my enemy is my friend: anything but Christianity, and anyone but Christ."

Howerton also detailed the commonalities between the Antichrist referred to in the Bible and Mahdi, the messianic figure in Islamic eschatology who is supposed to defeat Muslims' enemies in the end times, and strongly suggests that the purported angel who spoke to Muhammad was the same demonic entity Saint Paul warned of in 2 Corinthians 11:14.

Ryan had expressed interest in whether Christianity was actually growing, citing statistics highlighting the years-long trend of widespread apostasization in America, which recent polling indicates has actually slowed down.

Although Howerton reassured Ryan that Christianity is "globally growing," he noted that "in my lifetime, Christianity in America has generally been declining. I'm 43; 1983. Feels like the tide's turning."

RELATED: America’s fastest-growing Christian voice is joining Blaze Media

Screenshot - Courtesy of "Shawn Ryan Show," YouTube

Ryan observed that widespread disenchantment with and distrust for government and various institutions has prompted people to seek something concrete and true, and this has driven them to Christ.

He also agreed with Howerton's suggestion that the increasing immorality and vile actions exhibited in the West have awakened people to the twofold reality "that there was a non-ignorable dark force in the world" and that "if there's a darkness, there must be a light, and that light has a name, and His name is Jesus Christ."

The pastor likened this particular moment of apparent religious renewal and spiritual awakening to the biblical story of the prodigal son's return.

"He spends all his money on parties and strippers and alcohol and, you know, whatever. And then if you read that, there's this little verse, and everybody skips the verse that I think is most important, where he gets to the spot where he spends all the money and ... everything that he thought was gonna make him happy, and it just didn't," said Howerton.

"It says, 'and then he came to his senses,' and he started running back to his father."

Howerton added, "We got a bit of a prodigal nation."

Like the prodigal son, the pastor suggested that it has finally dawned on America, "Everything else didn't work, but I know I can go home to Dad."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

How Lucifer fell: The origin of Satan and sin in heaven



The fall of the angel Lucifer is a story that oftentimes doesn’t get a lot of attention, as many Christians tend to focus on how the devil plagues humanity today.

But how did Lucifer become the devil? What did that devolution look like, and when did sin really begin?

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” BlazeTV host Rick Burgess sits down with Pastor Mac Brunson to dive into the origin story of the cosmos’ greatest enemy.

“Somewhere in eternity past before God created the heavens and the earth, He created what we call, or what Scripture calls, angels,” Brunson says, noting the different varieties of angelic beings, including seraphim, cherubim, Michael the archangel, and messenger angels like Gabriel.

Lucifer, he notes, was none of these, however. “Created above all the others,” his name means “light-bearer,” and he was “far more beautiful” than the others.

Rick argues that God, despite being all-knowing, “is not afraid of choices” and allowed the angels to make their own.

“He certainly gave angels intelligence; he gave them personality. They each have a name. ... They also have the ability to communicate, not only to communicate with man ... [but also] with each other,” Brunson adds, highlighting the individuality and agency of angelic beings.

Lucificer was no different. Free to make his own choices, he rebelled against God.

Brunson, reading from Isaiah 14, recounts Lucifer’s evil desire to “ascend to heaven,” “raise [his] throne above the stars of God,” “sit on the mount of assembly,” “ascend above the heights of the clouds,” and “make [himself] like the Most High.”

“And he makes that choice, and Revelation tells us that a third of the angels went along with him, and, of course, they were cast out of heaven,” he says.

“So sin did not begin on earth; it began in heaven? That’s why Jesus says we’re going to have a new heaven and a new earth?” Rick asks.

“That’s exactly right,” Brunson says, noting that “evil begins with this creature [Lucifer].”

But his power always has and always will pale in comparison to God’s.

“He’s a problem for us, but —” Rick says.

“He’s not a problem for God,” Brunson concludes.

To hear more of the theological deep dive into the origins of heaven and Satan, watch the episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

‘Queer is God’s design’? Allie Beth Stuckey calls pastor’s sermon on LGBTQ ‘blasphemy’



Patrick Preacher is the “pastor for queer ministry” at Trinity Lutheran Church (ELCA) — and what he preaches is as bad as his title sounds.

“This particular pastor says that hell doesn’t really exist as a physical place except for the manifestation of anti-LGBTQ discrimination here in America. That that is actually what makes hell,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says, before playing a clip of the pastor.

“Who had the nerve to tell you, or any of us, or this world for that matter, that being queer makes for an awful person?” Preacher asked during a sermon.

“[What] was he thinking when he told you this?” he asked again. “And I assume that it was a man because in most cases it always is. Why has Christianity — the religion of a humble, brown-skinned immigrant from Nazareth — become the religion of bigotry? Who had the nerve to tell any of us that we would be going to hell for the way God created us to be?”


“Here’s the answer,” Stuckey comments.

“Jesus did.”

“And it’s not just people who are gay. As Romans 3:23 tells us, 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,'” she says, before honing in on his claim that Christianity is “the religion of bigotry.”

“He says, ‘Why has Christianity — the religion of a humble, brown-skinned immigrant from Nazareth — become the religion of bigotry?’ So here we see the intersectionality. If someone is brown-skinned, if someone is an immigrant, that they must also be accepting of homosexuality and transgenderism and all of these things,” Stuckey says.

“This is critical theory, queer theory being projected onto the Bible. This is not Christianity. This is not someone who loves God and His authority and wants to read the Bible asking, ‘How can I glorify God?’ This is someone who wants to use a religious text to justify sin, to justify and to downplay what God calls an abomination,” she continues, adding, “That is blasphemy.”

The pastor also claimed that “queer is God’s design.”

He said, “Who had the nerve to tell any of you that you’re too queer, that you’re too masculine, too gay, too feminine, or simply too much? Don’t they know? Look at your bulletin cover. Queer is God’s design.”

“God’s design from the beginning was marriage as a union between a man and a woman,” Stuckey comments.

“Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,’” she reads from Matthew 19:4-6.

Stuckey explains that like this preacher, “Satan tries to twist God’s word the way that this pastor does.”

But that doesn’t change the true word of God.

“Homosexuality is by definition against God’s design. Scripture describes it as an abomination, unnatural, explains the penalty for persisting in this sin just as persisting in other sins in rebellion to God is hell,” she says, adding, “That is the result.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

M.I.A. called herself a 'brown Republican voter' — then Kid Cudi kicked her off the tour



An English musician was kicked off a U.S. tour just hours after videos surfaced of her saying she supports Republicans.

Rapper M.I.A., whose real name Mathangi Arulpragasam, is of Sri Lankan descent but was born in London in 1975. Aside from having hit records, the artist has generated headlines in recent years for calling out the music industry as a bastion of Satanism that pushes degeneracy.

'I won't have someone on my tour making offensive remarks.'

Now, the "Paper Planes" artist has found herself booted off the American tour of five-time platinum rapper Kid Cudi. M.I.A. was taken off the Rebel Ragers Tour this week — with more than two dozen stops remaining — after she was recorded making remarks that allegedly offended the headliner's fans.

Cudi's cowardice

"I've been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter," she told one audience. The rapper also said she "can't do 'Illegal,'" referring to one of her songs, but added, "though some of you could be in the audience."

Apparent backlash from the remarks was enough to garner a response from Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi.

Mescudi responded on his Instagram page on Monday, writing that he was kicking the 50-year-old Brit off his tour.

"TOUR UPDATE: M.I.A is no longer on this tour," he wrote, per Variety. "I told my management to send a notice to her team before we started tour that I didn't want anything offensive at my shows, cuz I already knew what time it was, and I was assured things were understood."

RELATED: Fighting the darkness: M.I.A. on music, spirit, and breaking free from industry chains

- YouTube

The 42-year-old then claimed he had been "flooded with messages from fans" that were upset by M.I.A.'s on-stage remarks.

"This, to me, is very disappointing," Cudi went on, "and I won't have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase. Thank you for understanding. Rager."

Devil music

M.I.A. did not mince words in her reply, saying that her commentary had been misconstrued and that Cudi was, in effect, doing Satan's work.

"I wrote 'illygal' on the Maya LP a song from 2010. I started this intro to the song with the statement saying I'm illygal, and I said my team hasn't gotten visas yet. Then played a song that had lyrics saying 'Fu&% the law', which I still believe, if the law is unjust f@%& it," the rapper wrote on X.

She continued, "Do not gas light my words. That is the work of Satan."

The Londoner added that she wrote her hit songs before Kid Cudi "thought immigrant rights were cool."

"I've had [these] battles by myself without the help of millions of fans backing me. I don't need this virtue signal era to all of a sudden erase an entire life I've led. Jesus was an immigrant and a rebel."

RETURN: M.I.A. explains why artists like Cardi B are destroying the music industry: 'What is cool is Satan’s playground'

I WROTE ILLYGAL ON THE MAYA LP A SONG FROM 2010.
I STARTED THIS INTRO TO THE SONG WITH THE STATEMENT SAYING I'M ILLYGAL, AND I SAID MY TEAM HASN'T GOTTEN VISAS YET. THEN PLAYED A SONG THAT HAD LYRICS SAYING "FU&% THE LAW", WHICH I STILL BELIEVE, IF THE LAW IS UNJUST F@%& IT.

DO… https://t.co/3xZk2OTBMb
— M.I.A. ⊕ II II II (@MIAuniverse) May 4, 2026

Blushing bride

Cudi is no stranger to controversy, in part because of his close relationship with Kanye West. In 2020, he disavowed his friend's association with Donald Trump.

"We just don't talk about it. I totally disagree with it," Cudi said.

In 2021, Cudi attempted to make a statement by wearing a wedding dress to a fashion awards show. The Cleveland native walked hand in hand on the red carpet with designer Eli Russell Linnetz, who told People he texted the artist ahead of the show, "Will you be my bride?"

Cudi has also been open about his battle with depression, even allegedly checking into rehab in 2016 over "suicidal urges."

M.I.A. said on Monday that she believes Jesus has returned to "lead the world justly because there is injustice in this world."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Glenn Beck’s mind blown: What if aliens are really disembodied Nephilim?



As UFOs, aliens, and disclosure become increasingly popular topics of discussion, a theory is gaining traction among certain Christian circles: that aliens do not exist, and any contact with one is actually an encounter with a demon masquerading as an extraterrestrial.

Glenn Beck has mixed feelings about this theory. While he rejects the notion that any being that comes from another planet is not part of God’s design and is evil, he also believes that many alien and UFO encounters have demonic explanations.

To dive into this subject, Glenn invites Faithwire journalist and supernatural podcast host Billy Hallowell to “The Glenn Beck Program” for a fascinating conversation about several possible explanations.

Hallowell explains that the general consensus, “even among a lot of scientists,” is that “people are seeing something” that is very real. The crux of the alien debate today lies more in what people are seeing: beings from outer space or beings from a spiritual dimension.

The theory that they’re all spiritual beings isn’t without merit, he explains. The Bible “doesn’t just say there’s Satan and demons. It talks about principalities and powers, and there’s some mystery here in what is going on,” he tells Glenn.

Further, it’s plausible to believe that demons can take an alien form when you consider that throughout Scripture, angels “show up in different forms.”

However, the debate gets even more complicated in that not everybody agrees on what demons are.

“Now, the common belief is that demons are fallen angels. ... The other theory is that demons are actually the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim,” Hallowell says.

The latter theory, he explains, draws from both Scripture and the book of Enoch and posits that the Nephilim (the giant offspring of human women and fallen angels) whose physical bodies were wiped in the flood went “looking for bodies, and that’s what demons are.”

Glenn is fascinated by this idea. “You’re saying that they didn’t go away, that this might be the explanation for what we’re seeing?” he asks.

Hallowell notes that according to the theories discussed, these entities — whether fallen angels or disembodied Nephilim spirits — can physically manifest, and some believe this explains why people report encountering beings that look like aliens.

This idea, he says, then leads to another question: “Why would they do that? Is there a deception here?”

Glenn isn’t sure what to believe about aliens, but he is certain that where demons are at work, deception is sure to be at play.

“The whole point of the dark side is deception,” he says.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Satan is real — whether his depraved fashion-world followers believe it or not



Last week I made the case for you that Paris Fashion Week, which just wrapped up on March 10, is yet another example of elitist satanic worship — the same brand of wickedness we see festering all throughout Hollywood and among other elite circles.

Now I’m going to prove it to you.

Official descriptions boast that Inferno is 'not just a party' but a 'ritual.'

In my previous article, I awarded the gold medal for the most in-your-face demonic collection to French fashion label Matières Fécales — translation: Fecal Matter. Its Canadian founders, Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, paraded a sequence of grotesque looks down the runway that included models distorted by nightmarish prosthetics and grisly surgical wounds; ensembles one would expect to see in a film about ghouls and grim reapers; and overtly satanic elements, like devil horns, fake blood, and cult-like theatrics.

The nonconforming, alien-esque duo attempted to justify their freak show by slapping a satire label on it. All the nauseating pageantry and horror were nothing more than a critique of elitist power and privilege, they said.

It’s a recycled narrative we have heard countless times from stars and public figures questioned about their dark spectacles. If the staleness of their defense wasn’t cause enough to reject it as a lie, then Matières Fécales’ partnership with Lewis G. Burton — the obese, transgender, intersex “Mother” of London’s queer underworld — certainly is.

He was one of the “models” chosen to don a look from the label’s Fall 2026 “Ready-to-Wear” collection — a hooded black floor-length robe resembling that of a satanic priest.

Victor Virgile/Getty Images

A far cry from the skeletal catwalkers we’re accustomed to seeing on high-fashion runways, Burton’s large figure, which he proudly uses to fight “fatphobia” and push “fat liberation,” is a core piece of his identity.

It is his stated intention not only to normalize but to glorify obesity and objective ugliness. In a 2019 interview with i-D magazine, Burton, a trained performance artist, said, “When I was first on stage being garish and grotesque, I was shoving my ugliness in people’s faces. I was saying: I feel repulsive because you made me feel repulsive, so now you have to look at it. Now I see it differently because I think I’m f**king beautiful! It’s a new extreme now. It’s about showing that beauty to the world.”

Joe Hale/Getty Images

Beyond the body: Burton’s activism and influence

But fatness is the least interesting layer of the onion that is Burton.

As a founding member of London Trans+ Pride — which he helped grow from just 1,500 people in 2019 to over 100,000 in 2025 — he remains one of the most visible faces of London’s trans activism.

He advocates radical positions for a number of LGBTQ+ issues, including faster and fully funded gender-affirming “care” for transgenders, access to puberty blockers for children, mandatory inclusion of trans people in single-sex spaces, and a ban on all nonconsensual surgeries on intersex children.

Like the majority of left-wing activists, however, Burton’s cries of oppression echo throughout multiple grievance movements. He has steered London Trans+ Pride toward aggressive intersectionality, most notably marching in solidarity with Palestine, which predictably (and paradoxically) includes condemnation of Islamophobia.

Marches, “visibility” events, and left-wing activism are almost unremarkable, though, when compared to Burton’s prominent role in London’s underground queer scene.

His traveling queer techno rave and performance art platform “Inferno” — inspired by Dante Alighieri’s epic poem about the nine levels of hell — is described as “seven layers” of “queer heaven,” where each circle explores new depths of perversion, varying in intensity from “gentle” rituals of chosen-family bonding to the darkest, most depraved circles of sweat-soaked techno, body horror performance, and explicit queer pornography.

Devoted to its hell theme, Inferno events are notorious for their red-drenched lighting, thick smoke, dark and shocking costumes, grotesque performances, and hedonistic indulgences.

One Inferno attendee described an event like this: “A dark warehouse illuminated by a sea of red textiles and clouds of smoke. … Inferno is a space where everyone can express themselves, whether it be through extravagant, tentacle-like costumes or full body paint.”

RELATED: Satan struts at Paris Fashion Week — here are the 3 most demonic designers

Victor Virgile/Getty Images

From hedonism to ritual: The spiritual dimension

But Inferno’s unmitigated paganism doesn’t stop with carnal pleasures. It embraces the spiritual, too.

Witchcraft language is woven into its DNA. Official descriptions boast that Inferno is “not just a party” but a “ritual.”

Additionally, Burton, who styles himself as the “mother” of the matriarchal “Inferno family,” appears to occupy a spiritual role in which he uses his music to cast what he calls spells.

“MOTHERS MILK is more than a music video — it’s a spell,” reads the YouTube description for his most recent song, which he regularly performs live before the dark, gyrating Inferno masses.

Burton’s spiritualism, however, extends beyond the dance floor. In addition to the grotesque, hellish aesthetics that dominate his Instagram account (view at your own risk), he regularly posts new moon rituals, guiding his followers through candle ceremonies and “cosmic resets” that he frames around themes of divine femininity and personal transformation.

In doing so, he positions himself not merely as a DJ or party host, but as a spiritual guide for the community that gathers under his influence.

This fusion of radical progressivism, New Age spirituality, and unapologetic darkness that Burton embodies is not merely a new pagan religion — it's proof that evil operates in interconnected webs.

Webs of alignment and influence

I write this not to stir up hatred for Burton. I actually deeply pity him. When I see people this spiritually lost and psychologically ill, my first thought is always to wonder about where the original break occurred — what trauma, indoctrination, or misfortune sent them down such a dark path.

I write this to illustrate that when elites and public figures shove objective evil down our throats — like Matières Fécales’ demonic Paris Fashion Week collection — they are not being ironic or critical. They are showing us what team they play for.

Choosing Burton as a model was no gesture of inclusivity. It is alignment of values. And in fact, in 2019, Matières Fécales directed the music video for Burton’s song “Hermaphrodite.” They are embedded in the same sick circle.

And that alignment of values extends upward: from the governing bodies of Paris Fashion Week, which embrace the grotesqueness of the Matières Fécales label; to high-profile celebrities who attend the shows and wear the designs — Chappell Roan and Lady Gaga among those who have prominently supported the brand — and who publicly align with the broader community Burton represents; and ultimately to the influential figures and institutions that promote radical progressivism, deliberately unraveling society through the erosion of morality and the poisoning of institutions.

Normalizing the dark: An upside-down world

This is a dark web, and at the center is a worship of evil and the intention to normalize it and sell it to the masses as something that is actually good. Fatness is fabulous. Ugliness is beauty. Perversion is uniqueness. Depravity is liberation. Hedonism is self-expression. Darkness is an aesthetic. Witchcraft is misunderstood. Truth is subjective. Opposition is violence.

Satan is symbolic.

I do believe that many of these people, likely Burton himself, genuinely think that Satan is nothing more than a way to anger the cisgender white conservative oppressors — just a red-tinged aura to throw one’s rage behind.

I wish that were true. It would make the stakes a lot lower. But the truth is that the Satan they flirt with is not a symbol, a muse, or a vibe. He’s the very real and active root that feeds every dark idea, movement, and deed. He is also the mastermind behind the careful framing and packaging that makes objective evil palatable for the masses.

But what does it say about society when something as universally revolting as Fecal Matter or “Mother” Lewis G. Burton are hoisted up as trophies of progress on an elite stage? No one who retains control over his own mind can behold these things and genuinely approve.

To me it means that the primordial plan to engulf the world in darkness is reaching later phases. It reminds me of the scene in “The Fellowship of the Ring” where the trolls and other fell creatures have begun leaving their shadowed lands and are encroaching on peaceful borders. This breach is interpreted as a sign that the Enemy is growing strong and foreshadows the great battle to come.

Our great battle is drawing nearer, too. The signs are everywhere. You don’t even have to search for them. Just look to the streets, the classrooms, the halls of power — or the runways.

My hope, however, is that we don’t make the same mistake as Matières Fécales, Burton, and other embracers of darkness and reduce Satan to a symbol by directing our fury at people who are merely pawns in this cosmic game — forgetting that this has never been, and will never be, a battle of flesh and blood.

James Talarico found a verse — and twisted the meaning



Democrats can learn. Political survival demands adaptation, and lately some on the left have started studying their Republican opponents with something like anthropological curiosity. They watch Republicans work a crowd and ask a practical question: What works?

One answer keeps recurring. Republicans like to quote the Bible.

Christians should stay alert. Not everyone who borrows the language of faith speaks truth.

You can picture the light-bulb moment. A candidate cites Scripture. The audience nods. Somewhere, a strategist thinks: Let’s find a guy who can do that for us.

Enter James Talarico, the Texas Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate who quotes Scripture all day long.

That tactic may sway voters who enjoy hearing a verse, even when it gets pulled out of context to bless ideas Scripture condemns. Christians who know their Bibles will spot the move fast.

Jesus warned about this exact type: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.”

A Bible verse proves nothing by itself. Wolves can quote Scripture, too. So can the devil.

The question is what the verse is being used to defend.

The abortion argument

Talarico claims Genesis 2:7 teaches that a human being becomes alive, and worthy of legal protection, only at first breath.

Wrong. The verse describes Adam’s creation. God formed the first man from dust and then breathed life into him. That account does not describe ordinary human development in the womb. It describes a singular act of creation.

Every other human life begins at conception. A distinct organism exists from that point, with its own DNA and its own trajectory of development. Scripture treats unborn children as living persons. Psalm 139:13-16 speaks of God knitting a child together in the womb.

Even if someone granted Talarico’s “first breath” premise for argument’s sake, the logic collapses quickly into moral absurdity. It pushes abortion right up to delivery. Some activists embrace that conclusion. Most Americans recoil, however, because they sense the truth: Killing a fully formed child moments before birth differs only in location from killing the same child moments after birth.

The ‘nonbinary God’ argument

Talarico also claims God is “nonbinary,” as if that settles the modern LGBTQ agenda.

God has no biological sex. God is spirit. That does not erase the created order for human beings.

Scripture speaks plainly: God created humanity male and female. Genesis 1:27 teaches it. Jesus repeats it when he addresses marriage: “From the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’”

Christian teaching on marriage does not float as an arbitrary rule. It rests on creation itself, and Jesus affirms it.

RELATED: Talarico self-owns when he warns fascism will ‘be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross’

Photo by Gabriel V. Cardenas/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The rainbow vs. the Ten Commandments

Talarico asks why a rainbow flag in a classroom counts as indoctrination while posting the Ten Commandments does not.

The answer isn’t complicated. The Ten Commandments summarize foundational moral truths about God, human life, and justice. They shaped the moral vocabulary of Western civilization for centuries.

The rainbow flag represents a moral program that rejects the biblical account of sex, marriage, and human nature. The two messages do not belong in the same moral category.

Fruit tells the truth

Jesus gave a practical test for identifying false teachers: Look at the fruit.

When someone uses Scripture to justify abortion or to deny the created order of male and female, the fruit shows itself. The apostle Peter warned about this kind of manipulation: “Untaught and unstable people twist [the Scriptures] to their own destruction.”

Christians should not get impressed because a politician can quote a verse. Even Satan did.

The question is whether the Bible is being handled faithfully or weaponized to sanctify fashionable sins.

Stay awake

Christians should stay alert. Not everyone who borrows the language of faith speaks truth.

Know the word of God. Test what you hear against it. Teach your children to do the same.

That’s how you recognize wolves, even when they show up in sheep’s clothing with a Bible in hand.