Welcome to Apostolic Life in the 21st Century, a podcast dedicated to helping modern day believers live out the teachings of the First Century Church.

This podcast is part of the teaching ministry of Dr. David K. Bernard.

Dr. Bernard has dedicated his life to studying the Bible and helping believers apply its message to their daily lives.

In Apostolic Life in the 21st century,

Dr. Bernard answers your questions about what the Bible teaches and how those teachings apply to everyday life. Thank you for joining us for this broadcast. So I've been looking on the internet and I found out that the moon landing was faked,

the earth is flat, 9-11 was an inside job, COVID-19 was a hoax, and there's a secret organization

called the Illuminati that is actually running the world from behind the scenes. Of course,

I'm referring to popular conspiracy theories that seem like that they've

gained a lot of traction online. Conspiracy theories have been around for a long time. It does seem

like, at least from many people's point of view, that since the internet came into widespread use,

they've just spread faster and faster. Now, obviously, we're not going to ask you today to

respond to all of those conspiracy theories, but in general, how do you think Christians should respond to conspiracy theories?

Are they harmless?

Or is there something more that Christians should think about with all this?

You know, I read an interesting article that really helped me understand what was going on.

And here's what it said.

The origin of a lot of conspiracy theories is this. When people feel like their life is out of control, usually because of a world event, such as a pandemic or a war, or something that threatens their life that they can't control, then they grasp for something that will help explain it because then that makes them feel like

they're in control again and it helps them manage their fears so i really believe a lot of conspiracy

theories originate with this desire to make sense of something that is horrifying or out of control so that we can somehow feel like

we're back in control. We know what's really going on. So we can pigeonhole it, we can label it,

we can put it in a box, and maybe we can take some steps that, you know, and most people are

ignorant, but we know. So that gives us a sense of power, a sense of control,

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