#2157: Ron Riffe, David Bay & Cutting Edge Ministries

Cutting Edge Ministries (CEM) is a South-Carolina-based fundamentalist group of deranged conspiracy theorists, famous (to some limited extent) for instance for various 9/11 truther conspiracy theories based on pareidolia and numerology: 9/11 was, according to the website’s contributors, a ploy orchestrated by the Illuminati, and this is shown by the appearance of the Illuminati “signature” in connection to the event, as CEM has demonstrated in “a series of articles detailing this use of the number ‘11’, proving that the Illuminati was the planning, active agent behind these attacks”. For instance, the number eleven occurs in the date of the attack, the number of the first aeroplane to hit the World Trade Center, the number of the plane which hit the Pentagon (77, which gives 11 if you divide it by 7), the number of floors in the towers, the fact that the buildings resembled an 11, that one of the planes had a crew of 11, etc. They are apparently dead serious. The group is perhaps even better known, however, for their collection of “Harry Potter is of Satan” articles. It is, shall we say, unclear whether any of the article writers actually read any the books.

Though David Bay is (or used to be) the director of CEM, Pastor Ron Riffe used to be perhaps been the main contributor to CEM’s online rantings (it is not entirely clear), and has made his mark in particular on their promotion of one of the most inane pieces of conspiracy theorizing on the entire Internet: Six school shootings committed over a space of two years in the US, when marked on a map, form two rough lines, which shows that “they were planned events, not isolated, sporadic horrors:” Riffe then suggests that the lines are actually part of a hexagram, which he promptly drew onto a map of the world to go hunting for other disasters that occur in the vicinity of any of the lines, like Venezuelan floods, the Waco incident, the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey and the crashing of John F. Kennedy Jr’s plane (“While his plane apparently did not go down right on the line, it went down close enough to it to raise one's eyebrows”). And at the center of the hexagram? The Galapagos Islands, “at which Darwin conceived his Satanic idea we now call Evolution.”

“[I]t is highly conceivable [interesting choice of words] that the Illuminati would create such a symbol, believing it would reverberate with Satanic power to aid them in achieving their global objectives.” The author does understandably not go into details about the magic properties by which it is supposed to aid them. Things are prone to get a bit murky at this level of conspiracy theorizing, but it involves the UN, the Clintons and “the exercise of powerful Black Magick Witchcraft” by the government in attempts to confiscate your guns.

Somewhat refreshingly, Riffe is a fierce critic of the King James Bible; all English Bibles, in fact: “The fact of the matter is that 100% of all English Bibles bear the imprint of Rosicrucian/Freemason tampering! ... The tampering took place primarily in the chapter and verse divisions, artwork, etc. of the early English translations as signs to ‘those in the know’ that the publications were done under Rosicrucian supervision.” It seems like disagreement over the inerrancy of the King James Bible made Riffe and CEM part ways at some point around 2006. 

Riffe is also a fierce critic of anti-semitism … though “we need to understand there is a trait among the Jews as a race of people that contributes greatly to anti-Semitism. For reasons known only unto God He continues to give many of them an uncanny ability to make money and prosper […] And over time they have become some of the most powerful and wealthy individuals among the world’s bankers and financiers. But that tremendous wealth is being misused by some extremely wicked individuals among them – in some cases involving entire families that go back for generations – as they operate financial empires having no national allegiance or recognizing any borders. Their insatiable lust for power has played a major role in most (if not all) of the wars that have been fought over the last two hundred years.” It’s not all of them, though. Some are nice.

Cutting Edge Ministries has produced a number of books and DVDs, mostly on how the hidden Powers That Be are covertly working to bring about the End Times.

Diagnosis: As unhinged as they come: dimwitted, bigoted, angry and evil. Probably relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things, however.

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki