Submitted by William Finck on Sat, 05/28/2016 - 22:57


https://christogenea.org/system/files/resources/CJCC%20-%20Swift%20Blackshirt.jpg
A Critique of Wesley Swift, and why we must preserve his work: so first we explain our motives and methods at Christogenea.

I want to give people the opportunity to understand some of the logic behind Christogenea and how it evolved, so I have to sort of start from the beginning. Everything we do is carefully considered, whether we succeed or we fail. I remember telling Clifton Emahiser in a phone conversation, perhaps as early as 2005 or 2006, that one day I would put all of his material on a website of his own. At that time I wanted to call it john844.org. Of course, I was still in prison. There is currently a john844.org website which I created, but I did not use it for the purposes I had originally intended and in its current state it is still not complete. Then a short time later I thought of what I thought was a better term, and, so far as I remember, I kept it to myself.

When I was released from prison in December of 2008, I had a concept for a website for my own writing that I was going to call either Christogenea or Christogenos. I eventually settled on the former because I thought it better resembled its meaning in English, but I still like Christogenos a little more. I continue to retain ownership of both domain names.

I really thought that Christogenea would just be a small blog and a place for my essays and translations, and that I would keep my promise to Clifton. I never had any idea that it would grow into a collection of websites with over 12,000 pages, not counting the forum. I never imagined there would be a forum. By the end of April of 2009, I accomplished those things which I originally set out to do.

But things were moving very quickly. I had begun doing twice-weekly podcasts with Eli James, and quickly expanded those to four times a week, one alone and one with Sword Brethren, as well as a European fellowship forum every other week. So I had a lot of new things that I wanted to share each week, that I never imagined having. I had to rebuild my first websites from old-fashioned static sites into dynamic content management systems, to make it easier to post new material. That was done by September of 2009. In the meantime, I had made a completely new site for Eli James, even if I did not like a lot of his material, such as things like the Why 2012? article which he still has posted.

At that time, I had the understanding that Christians should tolerate one another, even if they don’t necessarily agree with one another. I had already decided that the grounds for Christian fellowship were the recognition of Jesus Christ as God, the acceptance that only people of our White race were within the covenants of God, the rejection of all Jews as evil, and the exclusion of Jews and of all other races from fellowship and communion. If we can agree on those things, then we can disagree on anything else, and we should still be able to get along with one another. So on those grounds, I tolerated Eli James, in spite of his reluctance on some points, and worked with him in spite of whatever we had disagreed on at that time.

In July of 2009 I started a forum, and my forum management philosophy has been based on those same principles, even though many former forum members are butt-hurt because I or others would not accept some of their silly ideas. By then I was beginning to realize, after being isolated for so long, that Christian Identity also attracted every form of disaffected quack, and all sorts of people with underlying agendas, for various reasons which are beyond the scope of this current discussion.

My interest in more recent history, and especially the plight of Germany and how it has suffered over the past few centuries by the treachery of Jewry, began to surface in weekly podcasts with Sword Brethren, and I created the Mein Kampf Project, in September 2009, because the material had to have a home separate from my Bible and ancient history studies. Many supposed Identity Christians, especially in England, began to despise me for that website. Even Eli James admitted behind my back that he hated my “Hitler site”, as he called it.

Then in 2010, I got around to considering a collection of Bertrand Comparet’s work which Clifton had put together, and we decided that it really needed a separate home from Clifton’s own work. So at that time I established the Comparet archive, and the owner of israelect.com, which had digitized tapes of Comparet’s sermons which Clifton provided him, encouraged me to include them in the archive. One of our listeners, a very kind woman in Ohio, posted the documents for us.

Early that same year (or perhaps late in 2009), I obtained a CD containing all of the writings of Wesley Swift which, so far as I know, had been digitized by Ella Rose Mast. Of course, the CD also contained many of her writings as well, which mostly consisted of notes which she took from Swift. The CD came to me through a mutual friend who had spent much time with Lorraine in the last year of her life, and I felt a responsibility to preserve it and make it publicly available on another archive website. Having Lorraine Swift as a friend and correspondent for five years, I know she would have wanted that, and I felt that it was my obligation because I had the ability to do it. So a good friend, a woman in California, volunteered to post the documents, I did the technical work, and the Wesley Swift archive at Christogenea was created the same year as the Comparet archive, in 2010.

Also that year, I made another new website for Eli James, based on the same content management software I was using at Christogenea. Since then, someone else has updated that to his current site. We split in early 2011 because Eli began openly teaching things which violated those grounds for Christian fellowship which have been my philosophy from the beginning. When Eli and I split, in spite of all the drama he caused, I could have pressed a button and deleted his entire, in a single minute. Instead, I quietly handed control of his site over to a mutual friend. I am not a spiteful man, regardless of many ridiculous slanders which are made against me.

With the addition of a half dozen other sites which are hosted at Christogenea, of which I will spare us an explanation here, in 2012 the control of israelect.com fell into my hands, and I possess it to this day. At israelect.com one may find a lot of the work of Swift, Comparet and Emahiser, and even myself, but most of that I now redirect to Christogenea because the user interface is far superior to the old technology.

However at israelect.com there is also much of the work of Sheldon Emry, Jack Mohr, Arnold Kennedy, W. G. Finlay, Roger Hathaway and other Identity writers. All of these men were early Christian Identity teachers of one sort or another. But with all of these men, I have some degree or another of disagreement. I believe that I can point out at least some faults with all of their teachings. Whether it be something really serious, such as the Paul-bashing of W. G. Finlay, or some error that is found much more commonly, such as the lack of a clear understanding of Satan found in some of the work of Sheldon Emry, or the dominion theology which was espoused by most early Identity writers.

To put things in perspective, this month all of the Christogenea websites combined are getting on average nearly 2000 visitors each day. The Swift and Comparet sites combined only get about 10 percent of that traffic, and the forum accounts for another 15 percent. Israelect.com is getting about 500 visitors each day. So I host Christian Identity websites which get about 650 visits each day, but which also have a lot of material that I myself do not entirely agree with. In fact, a small percentage of that material I actually despise.

Right now, I can press a proverbial button, and make everything that I have posted but don’t agree with disappear in just a few minutes. Perhaps someone else may be able to recover some of it and post it elsewhere, and perhaps not. But to me, that would be an abrogation of responsibility, so I could never voluntarily do such a thing. I sincerely feel that these things have come into my possession for a reason, and that since I have the ability to maintain them, there must be a purpose which is greater than my own personal feelings or my own ego.

I say all this tonight, because over the past few years there are people, both friendly and unfriendly, with both good intentions and evil contentions, who ask me why I host a Swift archive, or a Comparet archive, if I do not agree with everything that they taught. There are several reasons why I do this. Firstly, I have been blessed with the friendships, the connections, the material, and the ability. Secondly, I have learned from these men, and even though now I can identify mistakes that they have made, their work is worth preserving for what we have all learned from them. Thirdly, if I did not use the ability I have been blessed with to share what I have learned, and not merely what I think I know, then I am fruitless, because I would only be exalting myself and diminishing the men I have learned from. True Christians should want to exalt their brethren, and not themselves. True Christians should not tear their brethren down simply because they made a mistake, or did not properly understand something. So I endeavor to practice my Christian beliefs, rather than simply give them lip service. And my fourth reason is this: that we as Identity Christians should seek to maintain our history: the record of how we got to where we are. How we became awakened to the wonderful truths of our history and the revelations of Scripture.

So to me, the Swift and Comparet archives, among some of the other things at Christogenea, are an important part of that record, and are also the fulfillment of my own obligations to help edify my brethren and to honor my predecessors, the men that I learned from when I first started down this path. Even where I no longer agree with them. The maintenance of the israelect.com website also falls under that obligation. Yahweh did not put it into my hands in order to destroy it. So not only will I continue to maintain these works, but, Yahweh willing, I also have plans to improve all of them.

And this is where I differ from many of my critics. I do not fear scrutiny, and I am willing to talk about any of my work with anyone else who desires an honest discussion. I am confident that the people that have met me in person all know that, except that one clown that I used to work with who has an agenda that has to be exposed. And many fools still give him a credibility which he does not deserve.

But I do not fear scrutiny, and neither will I fail to scrutinize others. As Paul of Tarsus said in his first epistle to the Thessalonians, as the King James Version has it, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Perhaps the meaning is clearer in the Christogenea New Testament, and I will read the prior verse as well: “Do not despise expounding of scripture, but scrutinize all things. Hold fast that which is right.”

This is how we must treat the work of all of our teachers, not to mention our own work as well, So we must seek to preserve the records of where we came from and how we got to where we are, but we must also correct the errors of our teachers and build upon what they have left us. That is how I look at Swift, Comparet, and those others whose works I also endeavor to preserve. And if we have to preserve some things which are bad along with what is good, we can only pray that our own work will help others make the same determinations which we ourselves have made.

My position is one of humility. Can I go through all of Wesley Swift’s work and delete everything that I think might be wrong? Doing so, I myself may make a mistake and delete something that is actually correct. But even if I made no mistakes, I would be destroying that record of our history which I seek to preserve. So what we do instead, is preserve the original and attempt to improve on it in our own work. “Do not despise expounding of scripture, but scrutinize all things. Hold fast that which is right.”

So that is a brief and partial history of the development of Christogenea, most of which is extraneous to my own work. And with this I am going to offer a general criticism of the work of Wesley Swift, because while Swift blazed a trail and left us many good things, he also made many mistakes.

First let me say this, to the best of my knowledge, neither Wesley Swift nor Bertrand Comparet are cited in any of the essays, articles, Bible studies which I have produced, except for where I have criticized them on occasion, or in Comparet’s case, have offered critical presentations of some of his papers. This is not because I despise these men. I have worked closely with Clifton Emahiser for many years, and I do not remember more than a couple of occasions where I have cited him. Rather, this is because I have a different approach to my studies than most other Identity writers. Early on, I decided to lay aside the work of all others, and only read, study and cite original sources in my own work. So I very rarely even cite any Bible commentaries or recently-written histories, and because I want to prove the truth of Christian Identity independently, I do not quote from other Identity writers. While I proofread for Clifton, I only read any of the work of friends such as Mark Downey or Sven Longshanks when I want to publish an article in the Saxon Messenger, because that is all that I honestly have time to read. But this too is a digression.

As Christians, we do not need teachers in the sense that teachers should be our masters and that we should put them on pedestals. It is in that sense that Christ used the Hebrew term of respect for their teachers and He said “But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” So in like manner, we do not put any man on a pedestal, since no man is above criticism. Those who criticize me most vocally for my critiques of Swift and Comparet are doing that very thing. And as teachers, we do not seek students or subordinates. Rather, we seek fellow-workers and we seek to help our brethren rather than to rule over them. In that sense, Christ had said “Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.”

These are my methods and my motives, as candidly as I can express them, and if I have omitted anything of significance, I apologize for the oversight, but I have omitted nothing by design. So with that understanding here I will offer a general critique of some of the work of Wesley Swift. I do this, because not only do I receive frequent inquiries as to why I preserve Wesley Swift’s work, but also as to whether or not I agree with certain things that Wesley Swift taught. So while Wesley Swift taught many things that I have learned from, and many things that I can agree with, here I will discuss only those things which I cannot agree with.

But first I must make another admission. Before I was released from prison in December of 2008, I was only familiar with Wesley Swift through five years of correspondence with his wife, Lorraine, who first wrote to me after she received my address from another mutual friend, some time in late 1999 or early 2000, and through the three or four dozen booklets of his sermons which I had obtained during those years, either from Lorraine or from others. Since creating the Wesley Swift archive at Christogenea, I have only had time to read a portion of what is posted there, and there are over 1200 pages of material.

But before I begin, let me say this. Wesley Swift did not really give many sermons. Neither was he a proper lecturer. In my opinion, a lecturer should at least give his sources where information not expected to be generally known by his audience is being transmitted. But Wesley Swift very rarely gave his sources. So neither was he a true scholar. What Wesley Swift was, though, is a storyteller, and he did that very well. He was a storyteller not necessarily because the stories were not true, most of them were. But he was a storyteller because he would move on from one element to the next without taking the time to explain how he arrived at many of his conclusions, or from where he got much of his information.

One example is his frequent assertion that Negros were brought to this planet by Satan from some place in outer space, when Satan lost a great spaceship battle in space against the archangel Michael. Here is an example of this aspect of Swift’s story telling, from a sermon called From Horizons Beyond, which he had given on July 3rd, 1960:

Daniel the prophet was told concerning your nation ahead of time [an arguable claim], and he was told that Michael would come in with his fleet [Swift conjectures the part about the fleet]. Do you know when Michael the Prince fought for you the last time? I can give you proof that you were with the Father in the heavens before the world was framed. [We do not believe Swift proves his claims of pre-existence, which are refuted by Scripture.] Because Michael the Prince has not fought for you before on earth. [Daniel 10:13 says otherwise, so Swift is not doing well here.] Then this must have been while you were in the spirit. [Paul says the fleshly comes first, then the spiritual.] But when Lucifer took one third of the planets, and the peoples of the Milky Way and tried to make a tremendous army, using the technology of God which he had been using for years in the heavens, when Lucifer tried then to take over the throne of God, the whole dimensions of the creations of the Universe, then Michael the Prince of heaven, distributed his army and broke the power of Lucifer and most of his broken space craft landed in the earth. [Here Swift is weaving an elaborate tale out of the simple and poetic allegory of the Revelation. The Revelation is true, but Swift’s tale is not true, because he made it all up. How can we teach conjecture in place of Scripture?] And this is where Lucifer has been ever since - right here. [This part is true, depending on how we define “Lucifer”.] This is what upset the ancient civilization in South America. [Conjecture.] This is what upset the nation of Africa and turned it into darkness, for some of the warriors of Lucifer’s fleet were now in earth. [Conjecture.] This is what started Voodooism and the degeneration of the Negroes. [Conjecture.] It is what started the great battles of the Matavaras of history, with the ancient people of India and China. [Conjecture.] And in the panorama of those events, it effected whole continents and they sank beneath the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific. [Absolute conjecture.] The mighty battles in the sky are now a matter of history. [Conjecture.] And the Matavaras of India and the battle of the gods in the sky, and the dragon god of Asia, now come to earth, to try to stop His Kingdom. [Conjecture.] It is all there. And what has transpired in the ancient past is thus told. [Conjecture.]

Aside from his tendency to weave tales, Swift was also a syncretist, which is fully evident here, meaning that he borrowed ideas from many different sources found among the traditions of many different peoples, and he gave them all credibility, attempting to interpret them so that they compliment one another and thereby he wove together tales from sources such as Chinese, Negro and Hindu mythology and presented them as a historical narrative. Swifts narrative is like a cloth woven from diverse threads, which the Scripture and the Laws of Yahweh prohibits.

Almost everything which Wesley Swift said in this paragraph should not be repeated. Rather, it should all be taken with a grain of salt, and less. The Word of Yahweh God in our Bibles tells us not to respect the gods of the heathen. As it says in Exodus chapter 23: “Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.” When we adopt the myths of the heathen and attempt to incorporate them into our own worldview, how are we not accepting their gods? We can take note of what the heathen believe, and we can even understand why they believe what they do, but we cannot weave their narratives into our own worldview. That is stepping over the barrier into idolatry.

The Vedic literature, which many Identity Christians and especially many Christ-rejecting White Nationalists love to promote, is another example. There are claims that the Vedas are at least three thousand, and perhaps as much as nearly four thousand years old. For that I say “Bull****”. All of the supposed proof is only conjecture on the part of certain linguists with fanciful imaginations. The oldest written records of the Vedas are not even a thousand years old, and no one can confidently attest to the development of either the language or the literature up until that time. So we have little knowledge of the true origins of the Vedas, and even less knowledge about the circumstances or motivations behind their creation. Therefore, while they certainly may arouse our curiosity, we cannot accept them as any historical or religious authority whatsoever.

Yet Wesley Swift made this error with remarkable consistency. I too could have followed down this path. I also read at least many of the things which Swift had read. But I made a conscious decision to disregard them, because either their provenance and antiquity was unknown, or it was known to be from an uninspired and uncorroborated source. When I say uncorroborated in this context, I mean that there is no firm scriptural support, and no reliable historical or archaeological support. We should accept things only by the mouth of two or three dependable witnesses.

And I say that not only in reference to the Vedas, but also to a lot of Western apocryphal literature (by which I also mean to include Biblical apocryphal literature).

complete article can be found along with audio at: https://christogenea.org/podcasts/critique-wesley-swift

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