Mother Jones
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Ben Carson warned Christians on Wednesday to beware Ted Cruz as a false prophet.
Well, Carson never quite said those words. But in an extraordinarily passive-aggressive press conference in Washington, DC, this afternoon, called “in response to deceptive Iowa caucus tactics,” Carson told reporters that voters should judge all candidates by the words of Jesus in the Book of Matthew, implicitly calling Cruz out for his involvement in an effort to mislead Iowa caucus voters into thinking Carson had dropped out of the race.
“I make no bones about the fact that I am a person of faith, and I believe it what it says in Matthew 7:20: ‘By their fruit you will know them,'” Carson told reporters. “You know people not by what they say, but by what they do.”
That line is actually the culmination of a longer verse about false prophets who turn out to be wolves:
“15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”
But Carson also refused to say he was talking about Cruz.
“I didn’t say a word about Ted Cruz,” Carson told reporters, when asked if he was talking about Cruz. “What I said is what we need to be able to do is look at a person’s life, look at the way a person does things and the way a person treats other people, and make a judgment.”
Continued:
