Andrew Wommack, founder of Charis Bible College and the religious-right political organization The Truth & Liberty Coalition, held a Gospel Truth conference in Phoenix, Arizona, last week, where he delivered a sermon on the importance of truth.
Building off the “what is truth” statement made by Pontius Pilate during his interrogation of Jesus in the book of John, Wommack declared that “all lies originate with the devil” and then attacked the media for blaming former President Donald Trump for the insurrection that took place on Jan. 6, 2020, when MAGA activists stormed the U.S. Capitol in order to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory.
“Did you know every lie that is ever told, Satan is the father of it?” Wommack said. “All lies originate with the devil. In the scripture—in Exodus, chapter 20—one of the 10 Commandments, it didn’t just say, ‘Thou shalt not lie.’ It says, ‘You shall not bear false witness.’ There wasn’t a command against lying, there was a command against false witness. You could actually say true statements but present it in the wrong context, and you could bear false witness.”
“This is done constantly,” he continued. “Politicians today will take a statistic and just blow it totally out of proportion. I saw something today on one of the news feeds that I got, and they said, ‘Today is the anniversary—Jan. 6—of the Trump riots and his terrorists.’ Well, they took a truth that a year ago, on Jan. 6, people breached the Capitol and stuff—and we could spend a lot of time talking about that—but they took some truth, and they totally misrepresented the thing and blamed it like Trump’s the one that caused all of that. That’s false witness. And guess who is the father of that? Every falsehood is birthed by the devil.”
For all his supposed concerns about the sanctity of truth, Wommack, of course, remains an ardent supporter of Trump, who is an inexorable liar. And Wommack himself has a history of repeatedly making demonstrably false statements.
Such as when he claimed that billionaire philanthropist George Soros was paying Black men $50 an hour to riot and was also covering their legal fees.
Right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack claims that George Soros is paying Black men $50 an hour to riot and is also covering all of their legal fees. pic.twitter.com/UCmQ7eFyFw
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) October 15, 2020
And when he complained that the response to the COVID-19 pandemic was an overreaction because the flu had already killed 20 million people in America during the 2019-2020 flu season and asserted that 95 percent of those who got the flu during the 1918 pandemic died. Neither of those claims were true.
Now Andrew Wommack is telling viewers not to fear the coronavirus because 95% of those who got the flu during the 1918 pandemic died. Perhaps people should stop listening to him since he obviously has no idea what he’s talking about. https://t.co/Ev4uoksHdH pic.twitter.com/xpSAefMJZl
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) April 29, 2020
Or when be declared that anyone who had had a cold or received a flu shot would test positive for COVID-19 because “COVID-19 is the 19th different COVID virus.” In reality, COVID-19 got its name not because it was the 19th version of the virus but because it was discovered in 2019.
Nothing that right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack says here about COVID-19 testing is true. pic.twitter.com/xdOkiUuCLf
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 15, 2020
Who, we might ask, is the father of these falsehoods that Wommack has been spreading?
