Within hours of publishing our Christmas article, over a dozen paid subscribers cancelled and nearly 200 free subscribers walked away. My inbox flooded with complaints. Too negative. Too harsh. Too much darkness. Why can’t you be more positive? Why can’t you be more like Joel Osteen?
Let me be absolutely clear about something. If you came to The Wise Wolf looking for Joel Osteen, you walked into the wrong room.
Joel Osteen lives in a ten million dollar mansion and drives a Ferrari and preaches a prosperity gospel that tickles ears and fills arenas and sends people to Hell with a smile on their face. That is not what we do here. That has never been what we do here. And if that is what you want, there are ten thousand ministries out there ready to tell you exactly what you want to hear while you sleepwalk your way to damnation.
Ephesians 5:11 says “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” That single verse is the mission statement of this entire ministry. We expose darkness. We drag the hidden things into the light. We talk about evil and witches and demons and the enemies of God because someone has to, and apparently the mainstream church decided a long time ago that those topics were bad for attendance numbers.
You can walk into any church in America this Sunday and hear the same generic sermon that some pastor had AI write for him on Saturday night. You can sit in a comfortable pew and listen to comfortable words and sing comfortable songs and go home feeling like you did your religious duty for the week. You can find a thousand ministries online that will post cat memes and inspirational quotes and never once make you feel uncomfortable about anything.
That is not The Wise Wolf and it never will be.
We talk about the things no one else is willing to talk about because those things need to be talked about. We dig into the dark corners that polite Christianity pretends do not exist. We ask the questions that get you sideways looks at Bible study. We do this because we believe the church has become so terrified of offending anyone that it has stopped telling the truth, and a church that stops telling the truth is no church at all.
To everyone who unsubscribed because our Christmas article made you uncomfortable, I have a question for you. Did it make you uncomfortable because it was wrong, or did it make you uncomfortable because it was right? Because discomfort is not the same as error. Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes the light burns when you have been sitting in darkness for too long. The fact that something makes you feel bad does not mean it is bad. It might mean you needed to hear it.
Revelation 3:15-16 records Christ’s words to the church at Laodicea: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
Lukewarm Christianity is not Christianity at all.
It is a costume. It is a social club membership. It is fire insurance purchased by people who want the benefits of salvation without any of the demands of discipleship. Lukewarm Christians follow Jesus the same way they follow celebrities on Instagram. They hit the subscribe button and expect the content to make them feel good without requiring anything from them in return.
That is not how this works. That has never been how this works.
You do not get into Heaven by pretending to be a decent person. You do not get into Heaven by showing up to church on Christmas and Easter. You do not get into Heaven through some transactional relationship where you say the right words and check the right boxes and God owes you eternal life in return. James 2:19 says “You believe that there is one God. Good. Even the demons believe that, and shudder.” Belief without transformation is worthless. Faith without works is dead. If you talk the talk without walking the walk, you are going to end up in the same place as the witches and pagans you think you are better than.
This is a war. That is not a metaphor. That is not dramatic language for effect. Ephesians 6:12 says “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” There is a war being fought for human souls and the good guys are losing. The enemy has infiltrated everything. He has corrupted the holidays. He has compromised the churches. He has convinced Christians that being nice is the same thing as being good and that avoiding conflict is the same thing as keeping the peace.
Meanwhile, Lily and I have been doing this work for three years. Three years of research. Three years of writing. Three years of exposing the things that needed exposing. We finally hit bestseller ranking on Substack and within weeks watched Instagram influencers with PR teams and ghostwriters rocket past us to the top of the charts by posting pictures of themselves in bikinis with Bible verses attached. That is what we are up against. That is what passes for Christian content in 2024. A million followers for a woman showing her body, and a hundred unsubscribes for a ministry telling the truth.
The algorithm is burying us.
Substack has become a celebrity dumping ground where famous people with marketing teams push out AI-generated content across a dozen platforms and drown out the voices of small ministries like ours that are actually doing the work. We are being censored and suppressed and outcompeted by people who do not care about truth, who do not care about souls, who care about engagement metrics and monetization strategies.
We need your help. Not because we want your money, although we do need to survive. Lily needs to finish college without drowning in student loans. I do not want to go back to the corporate world, back to building websites and analyzing spreadsheets for people who do not care about anything that matters. We started this ministry because we believed God called us to it, and we would like to keep doing it. But we cannot do it alone.
Restack our articles. Share them with people who need to read them. Tell others about this ministry. Subscribe if you have not already. Support us financially if you are able. We are offering 50% off all through December for anyone who wants to help keep this fire burning.
Matthew 10:34 records Jesus saying “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Christ was not a comfortable Savior preaching comfortable sermons to comfortable people. He flipped tables. He called religious leaders whitewashed tombs full of dead bones. He told the truth even when the truth got Him killed.
We are trying to follow that example. Not perfectly. Not without mistakes. But with everything we have.
To those who stayed, who read our Christmas article and felt something crack open inside them, who understand that this ministry exists to shine light into dark places even when the darkness pushes back, thank you. You are the reason we keep going. You are in our hearts and in our prayers.
To those who left because we were not positive enough, because we talked about hard things, because we made you uncomfortable, I hope one day you wake up. I hope one day you realize that the wide road is crowded for a reason and the narrow road is narrow for a reason. I hope you find your way back before it is too late.
God has a heavy hand. The day evil is declared the winner is the day He returns with fire and brimstone. And on that day, the fake Christians are going to burn right alongside the pagans they thought they were better than.
Mark my word on that.
Help us fight evil, or evil wins. That is what Scripture says. That is what we believe. And that is why The Wise Wolf will keep howling into the darkness whether you like it or not.
