The Second Coming of Christ, Episode DCCVII

And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there;

believe him not: For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things

Mark 13:21-23

Is this dramatic picture a depiction of great religious fervor and piety? An inspiring glimpse into a reenactment of the earthly ministry of Christ somewhere in some religious theme park in Florida? Is it a photo snapped at some church pageant playing in Peoria? Could it be part of some Christian passion play in which a long haired actor portrays Jesus Christ before a modern audience before he takes the robes and sandals off and goes home to eat pizza and help his kids do their homework?

Nope. The reality is considerably different, yet hardly unique.

It's a picture taken of a Russian man calling himself Vissarion, a former KGB agent and traffic cop who, since 1989, openly claims to be Jesus Christ Himself, denying that he is God incarnate and preaching to his spellbound flocks a gospel tinged with New Age universalism as well as a stringent call for retreat from a fallen world not of their sect, the "Church Of The Last Testament". His followers embrace a discipline of simple, communal life among other believers where the "Word of Vissarion," several volumes of his personal teaching, become their focus for spiritual life. And thousands have flocked to his Siberian stronghold mostly from Russia but from Europe and Asia as well to assume his discipline and worship him daily. According to many reports, between 4 to 5,000 followers live in 40 small villages within a few hours drive of his mountain home where he lives in simplicity, preaches, receives visitors and paints. He's started to travel around the world in preaching tours to spread his Word and his sect grows daily.

It is at once obvious that Vissarion's great draw lies in his public persona as a robed, long haired and bearded sage whose beatific smile, calm personal magnetism and inspirational oratory play to the Christ ideal firmly entrenched in popular Russian society for centuries thanks to the Russian Orthodox Church and more recently, Western and home grown Evangelical influences. For many of the millions who have been sensitized to these concepts of a Savior named Jesus who came to deliver the suffering from their sins and the madness of the world, this vision is compellingly embodied in Vissarion's self-representation and preaching that exhorts love for all, virtuous life of restraint and renunciation of the outer world. With their spiritual sensitivities aroused, they readily become the itinerant support systems for preachers and prophets of all philosophical and spiritual stripes.

But what seems to become the inevitable hook for Vissarion's followers that goes way beyond his Bible costume persona is his teaching that prophecies a soon coming transformation of mankind that resonates with the spiritual ideals many of them held that were nurtured by global mysticism and New Age evolutionary theory that has arisen in these postchristian times. He teaches that salvation for mankind can only begin with "the emergence of a single field of conscience in the whole human society on earth. This is an important condition for full-scale development. The task now is to immediately articulate a new doctrine for all people." (This quote is taken from the first link in this paragraph to an interview held with Vissarion)

This is precisely the kind of nebulous metaphysical singsong that has echoed throughout pop spirituality since the advent of an occult revival in the West. It plays in the Peorias of personal longing for a world free of war, hatred, pain, fear and want .. and it has become a smash hit for many a weary man and woman with spiritual sensitivities seeking a Savior, however they defined "him" .. which Vissarion readily does for them. After redefining His "first incarnation" without any reference to an atoning death for the world, Vissarion says he's now returned to begin the next phase of divine revelation, one that involves the creation of a "a micro-community .. that will be able to become the foundation of a bigger society, a new civilization of the future." In short, Vissarion preaches the development of a Utopian society similar to the Oneida, Shaker, Bruderhof and Moravian Herrnhut communities that will spiritually transform the darkened world around them by spiritual osmosis.

And those same thousands think this is just swell, flocking to his spiritual communities in Siberia to live off the land in shacks, giving all of their earthly wealth and possessions up to Vissarion's ever receptive hand, and praising him as the second incarnation of Christ, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that the Christ of the Bible is a unique incarnation of God as the Son, not another fleshly creation he set up shop within. Reports of extremism in the movement have surfaced that suggest that the usage of all too well known tools of social control in new religious movements could be employed and yet cannot be substantiated. Only investigation and monitoring of the movement, as well as interviews with members who do leave, could provide any clues and frankly, it would not be a surprise if it was going on. Human nature is the same everywhere.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary, posits that the kind of unfeigned fervor expressed by Vissarion's flocks was to be expected. In the midst of a materialistic and hardscrabble post-Soviet society impoverished of spiritual and moral foundations, people seeking meaning and hope for otherwise empty lives will gravitate towards those who exhibit the irresistable "works of the spirit." For those sickened by the hypocrisy, cruelty and dehumanizing conditions of modern society, the convicting argument for their truth claims seen in their chaste, sober and simple lives become what she calls "a sturdy guideline" that they swallow wholeheartedly. The old saying that a man with an experience will confound the man with an argument everytime holds true here. And Biblical illiteracy doesn't help either. With no other objective source of truth, the dynamic power of personal charisma will seize the masses every time.

Oh, and it helps when all time in the Vissarion communities is measured from Vissarion's birthday to keep your sense of reality where he thinks it should be - meaning that it is actually the year 48, since he turned 47 in January.

Click here to watch and read an ABC report on Vissarion .. most fascinating .. and sobering.

Such overweaning megalomania doesn't bode well for the Church of the Last Testament. I fear that, hidden behind the rustic simplicity of naked, child like faith that propels the talents and destinies of thousands into community building, the potential for the creation of a spiritual hothouse answerable to no one is off the charts. The most scrupulous and observable morality and chastity has a tendency of becoming the most inpenetrable and inscrutable cloak to unspeakable evil before the eyes of those who don't want to see it (see "Germany, Nazi" in your history books). Prayer that the power of God's Word and Spirit will somehow find its way into the obsessive attentions of Vissarion's followers to turn them back to Him is certainly needed by all who care about these misguided people.

But remember, as Jesus Himself said .. false Christs will arise in the last days. He said they would arise and deceive many. And remember also that I said that Vissarion is hardly a unique character. There's no shortage of messiahs, prophets and cranks today who have created their own cults of personality or full blown religions that have targetted the Christian church and the idealist for their own ends. Sun Myung Moon, the octogenerian founder of the Unification Church cult is one such character who is known as the "Lord Of The Second Advent" but there's always been room for one too many of these frauds: click here to see a photo gallery of recent pretenders to the crown of the true King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The unimaginably vast multiplication of these spiritual deceivers is a frightening fulfillment that what the real Jesus Christ prophecied in Mark 13 would happen IS happening. Those who gaze upon these developments and don't feel even one touch of icy conviction that we now live in some of the most perilous spiritual times in history are either spiritually naive, wilfully ignorant or someone who needs to repent and do their first works of submission to Christ all over again.

Remember, Jesus said it would be like this ..

Rob Bowman's Done It Again: Read His Study On The Doctrine Of The Trinity

Twenty years ago, Christian researcher Robert Bowman put together one of the finest study outlines I think I've ever seen that helps illuminate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity from a purely Biblical stand point. It is - quite probably - one of the finest Christian resources to trace the revelation of God in Three Persons you'll ever find. Robert's now updated and streamlined it and you are just a mouseclick away from one of the most valuable study resources I think you can find today outside the Bible itself.

Between all of his travel, ministry, research and labor in apologetics, one wonders when this man sleeps! Our congratulations to Rob's promotion to executive directorship of the Institute for Religious Research, one of the finest Christian countercult ministries on the planet. We expect IRR's already vast accomplishments in Christian apologetics to excel even further, bringing greater light upon the Christian faith when contrasted against the heretical and divisive work of the cults!

To read Rob's magnum opus, a newly revised version, click HERE and bring an open Bible, an open mind and the Holy Spirit into your study!

Down But Never Out: The Latest From The Church of $cientology

The Church of Scientology is one of the most ruthless and vicious cults on the planet even as it calls itself a church, enjoys charitable tax-exempt status from the IRS and fields "clergy" who extol the virtues of its dogma. It has more than abundantly proven over and over that far from being the benevolent brotherhood of the only truly sane people on the planet that it's authoritarian control over the lives of its followers is without question perhaps one of the most onerous examples of human authoritarianism concealed under a mask of self-assured virtue.

Based upon the Co$'s late founder L. Ron Hubbard's worldview that mental purification and embracing the rule of Scientology's "applied religious philosophy" would better mankind, the organization has morphed into many forms over the years since its incorporation and has tried hard to come off as an exciting international movement aimed at bettering the human condition and bringing spiritual and social wholeness to a world awash in tragedy and oppresssion. No slouches in using mass media from its start in the early 1950's, the Co$ has poured millions upon millions of dollars in promoting itself, Hubbard's "Dianetics" book that set forth his belief system and a self-improvement cottage industry it fostered. Hubbard's persona was exalted by his followers in all the typical ways one might expect adulation of a saintly sage or anointed adept who had come to save the world from itself.

Yet the truth behind Hubbard's operations couldn't stay under wraps forever. Many have been the testimonials of former members who have seen the dark side of the Church (click to read a disjointed yet factual online text of ex-member Bent Corydon's book "L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah Or Madman?" - be warned, it has an 800 KB download size). The organization Hubbard created throughout the years attracted scores of people whose idealistic longings for personal fulfillment and the betterment of mankind became fuel that fired the boilers of his megalomanical ship that set a course for domination and coopting of Western culture in the most Machiavellian way possible. Hubbard's misanthropic spirit of feral confrontation with critics and those he marked as enemies aimed at completely destroying them eventually began to become public record, as well as the bizarre concepts of his religion which were more like flights of surreal science fiction that were viewed as cutting edge truth he was restoring to a world lost in darkness. The Church's well known habit of assigning astronomically expensive price tags to the self-improvement "auditing" one had to go through to become "clear" from their personal demons is also on record, which is why $cientology can be described with a dollar sign up in its' own name. Hubbard's open rumination that the best way to make money was to start a religion is also on public record, as well as the Church's targetting of the wealthy as well as the celebrities of the land. Keeping thousands of not so well known or prosperous Scientologists in virtual slavery as toiling laborers throughout the organization under the thumbs of tight hierarchies of manipulative leader helped to keep costs down as well and keep the bottom line well stocked.

Slowly but surely, resistence to $cientology's and critics began to arise, unite and speak out to expose the almost innumerable deceptions Hubbard committed as he developed his Church "vision." This occurred even as the IRS and the FBI, who initially were involved in investigating some of the criminal activities that the Church engaged in throughout the 1970's and 1980's, lost their resolve and withdrew from the arenas. These individuals ranged from Hubbard's own son to former high level members who'd seen enough of the brutality and hypocrisy that reigned in $cientology circles. Several prominent lawsuits and dramatic incidences took place that began to show the public that there was more to $cientology than just the public delight that John Travolta, Isaac Hayes and Kirstie Alley took when talking about L.Ron - "the Commodore" - who'd become the captain of their destinies.

For years, Hubbard's "church organization" spawned various auxiliaries who operated as Hubbard's private army of spies and storm troopers, seeking to lash back, discredit and intimidate any one seeking to speak out against their doings. The ferocity of this goon squad has become one of $cientology's greatest weapons into silencing opposition, using harassing phone calls to litigation to surveillance to worry their prey to defeat and capitulation to them. The destruction of the Cult Awareness Network, at one time one of the finest countercult organizations in the world, and its absorption into the $cientology collective as another agency staffed by Church operatives is but one of these stories.

But the tragedy of the Lisa McPherson case, in which a young and mentally unstable Scientologist died in a $cientology facility under the "care" of other Scientologists, brought even more attention to the Church in the mid 1990's than ever before - along with various European government's clear identification of $cientology as a menace to society, even as it enjoyed a renewed season of growth in the U.S. With the advent of the Internet made it possible for activists to unite, pool their efforts and launch concerted, coordinated responses to the many attempts Scientology, as well as begin to make it's rigid, abusive agenda and history known.

Today, Scientology still goes about seeking audiences from those it believes it has a mandate to deliver from ignorance through Hubbard's spiritual "tech." Looking to the charisma of Hollywood luminaries like Tom Cruise, a $cientology convert, to keep their movement in the public eye in the best possible light, their campaign soldiers on. But it no longer can rely upon its Office of Special Affairs agency to be its attack dogs whose snarls of harassment can cause critics to become meek and silent. A critical mass of resistence ranging from well documented websites and exposes such as Operation Clambake to the grassroots counterculting of the shadowy movement of anti-Scientology activists who call themselves Anonymous has become the bane of $cientology and its' worse nightmare come alive, hosting protests across the world at Scientology centers: click here to watch an Anonymous chapter in action in Australia and watch the video below to view Anonymous' video release that announced its formation and objectives:

$cientology, for it's part, continues to recycle and repackage itself as a source of enlightenment even as world wide dissent against it mounts. It's newest attempt as of late is a new series of PSA's (public service ads) being aired to promote a Hubbard book called "The Way To Happiness," a tome that expounds 21 dictums on the virtues of restraint supposedly written by Hubbard in the 1950's. Representing themselves as prophets crying out in the vast wilderness of a Western moral vacuum, they use edgy humor, probing questions and well crafted filming in their campaigns and general promotion of the book (click here to watch one of their 21 - count em' - 21 separate spots the Church created to do so).

In today's modern Babylon where situational morality and generally postmodern liberalism have undermined moral standards, such ads and preaching will find a choir to bewitch, and $cientology leaders know that they have to augment their aging Hubbard's Dianetics "tech" product line to draw more disciples from a new generation. Watching the video above on CNBC reminds us how far along the end time apostacy has gone and how crucial the need for discernment in the Christian Church really is against wolves in sheep's clothing.

But of course that hasn't stopped some members of the Body of Christ from nibbling on the hook of Scientology anyway. You can't make this up - click HERE to watch a CNN report on how a Pentecostal church has embraced Scientology teaching as cutting edge truth needed to bring new light on their spiritual walk.

Jesus said it would be like this. I guess the pastor at the church we just mentioned didn't read that in his translation of the Bible.

Cult Evangelism: A Question From Evangelism 363

When I was asked by Dr. Bill Effler to help teach a couple sessions on evangelizing those in cult groups in his evangelism class at Lee University, my alma mama, back in 2005, I was sent a few questions to respond to from his students. This was a great one that was direct and to the point in regards to reaching those in cults with the Gospel of Christ:

How do we actually effectively evangelize people who are in cults?

I wrote in response:

Evangelism always is and always will be the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost. The critical point in any evangelistic sharing is whether or not the person you witness to fully understands what you have said – they grasp the truth claims of the Gospel and their personal implications and you’ve used language they understand coming out of a heart and soul passionately concerned for them.

You would share the Gospel of Christ to a cultist with a strong emphasis on the love of God for them, the authority of God’s Word and that faith in Jesus alone is what brings them to God – not any cultic program of busywork and admonish them to reconsider their claims in light of Ephesians 2:8-9, John 3:16-20 and 1 John 1:9.

In any cult evangelism, there are two important points in effective witness of the Gospel of Christ to cults that must be very intentionally focused upon – dealing with the cultist’s personal understanding of their cult’s path to personal salvation as they understand it and dealing with the terminology differences they hold as well that confuse the dialogue.

Knowing what Cultist X believes about their Leader’s orthodoxy about ultimate salvation is crucial to reaching them where they are and being ready to define terms (like “righteousness,” “grace,” “faith,” etc.) to clearly represent the truth of the Gospel when it is confused with cultic redefinitions of that truth is equally important. If evangelism is, at its ultimate core, the sharing of the Gospel, these two crucial issues must be engaged in any sharing with a cult member.

We have contended that cultic mind control is the great cognitive choke hold that hinders a cult members ability to understand and even personally relate to what you say, and that dealing with those aspects of cultic mind control that effectively suspend (in various degrees) their ability to critically think is just as vital to helping them grasp the truth you share. Reliance on the Spirit of God’s piercing of the veil of cultic blindness that this mind control brings is also just as essential.

I wrote two papers describing the problem and our own approaches to it for the class and adapted them for distribution. I greatly expanded upon these brief responses - and included further discussion on what the differences are between evangelizing and restoring. As Dr. Paul Martin so well said years ago, the great need for many of those affiliated with cults today is not so much outright evangelism at first but a need for an intentional shepherding - to supply guidance of deceived, broken people back to the folds of truth, security and objective thought where they can decompress, mourn, grieve, rage and recover from the cult experience they've been hypnotized with.

Too many Christians fail to realize that the need for a person bound by deceptive wiles in the context of authoritarian spirituality to regain freedom of thought is vital for them to make intelligent, personal and authentic choices about what they will believe. This extends to whether the Gospel of Christ, when shared respectfully with them, is something they'll accept. All too often, quite out of the best of intentions, Christian evangelism for the cult member trying to break away from their abusive group can sometimes seem like just another hard sell tool of spiritual oppression they're trying to be freed from - hence the need to be aware of where the person is at in their spiritual journey.

We respect God's work in the lives of those we try to help, their need to heal and integrate back into real life and await their questions about what we believe while also praying fervently that they will turn to the healing and transforming encounter with the real Jesus that they thought they'd been walking in. Our evangelistic ministry objectives are based upon that and we're not changing any time soon

You can find these papers on the Evangelical Ministries To New Religions website here and here as .PDF files you can save and download. I've just been too lazy to upload them to the Spiritwatch site and may adapt them for online articles with hyperlinks and more of our award winning cool pictures. Any questions, feel free to email.

Children And Cults: Some Things Should Never Mix But It Goes On Anyway

Childhood is a time which we are shaped in what we are to become as not only a human being but as a free individual. It's a well known fact that one's essential approach to life is shaped indelibly by the seminal influences of their childhood. You are what you went through as a little boy or a little girl in a big, wide world you took as it came to you, learning things by raw experience mediated by parents, other kids and the culture you lived in.

The writer Robert Fulghum was right when he stated years ago that by the time we've passed through our kindergarten years that the most formative experiences we've encountered are those that took place as young children .. very young ones. Only those in denial or completely out of touch with their childhood due to trauma, abuse or other reasons could possibly disagree. I can't precisely remember the verbiage, but I remember reading as a child a set of proverbs, formed in couplet form that explained it pretty clearly, stating things like:

If a Child grows up with Criticism,She will learn to Criticize.
If a Child grows up with Hate,He will Learn to Fight.
If a Child grows up with Shame,She will Learn to feel Shame.
If a Child grows up with Praising,He will Learn to Appreciate.
If a Child grows up with Encouragement,She will Learn to be Confident. .. etc.

And of course, the foundation for all of this will be the kind of cultural environment you've been raised in. No matter how well meaning the parental or mentoring relationship of a child, the culture of the social setting they live in largely defines reality for them, assigning biases, fears, observations and values that color all of the positive regard they may receive. Obviously, the more darker side of this culture stains their own consciences and value systems in the hues of the social milieux that they are meant to assume. It's all done instantly, effortlessly, definitively. Children are socialized into becoming who they are by whom they are touched by - be it the most solicitous of parents or slimiest of foster parents.

However, in the toxic world of cultism, where sectarian fellowships and authoritarian worldviews effectively seal their members away from the larger world they live in by invisible bonds of relational influence, the impact of abusive cultic influence on children is far more insidious than can be easily described and yet it is also Constitutionally protected. The slippery slope downward into religious abuse is a descent from the high grounds of freedom of religion that tragically haunts the lives of the members of cultic groups and abusive religions. It must be remembered that religious abuse is an equal opportunity human blight - it occurs in all religions, all faiths. The evangelical Christian church is sadly just as subject to harboring this as the local ashram and Hindu temple or the Jewish synagogue. That is because human beings are pretty much the same and all of us suffer under the same twisted side of human nature that lends itself to dysfunctional human relationships. And all of this is governed by the Western ideal of individualism which asserts the right of an individual to follow their own dictates and be governed by their own conscience, as long as none of the "laws of the land" aren't broken.

So the sexual, physical, social and emotional exploitation of children will automatically follow religous abuses, with predatory and/or manipulative adults working within their cultural frameworks to gain access to and dominate, control and abuse children. Whatever cultural mores the group follows may actually empower and embolden the abuser to pursue one kind of abuse while enabling them to opportunistically engage in another. These twisted people (male and female) may be the hidden minority in any group, but in cults and abusive mainline faiths, the same sick group dynamics that enable and conceal these horrid things are firmly entrenched in their culture where the abuser moves freely, taking cues from the authority claims adults can make within that culture to prey upon children and teens.

For example, a mentoring male adult figure will sexually abuse a pliable teenage girl in his given religious setting on the basis of his given right to assert a divine authority over her to monitor and correct any errant behavior. He might approach her as the Religious Authority or the Counselor or the Good Family Friend or any other cloak he can assume, get her someplace quiet and then force her to yield in any number of ways. He then is able to silence her effectively because he shames and guilts her into silence with dire spiritual censure and citing the consequences of truth coming out (no one will believer her, it was all her fault, her parents will disown her, she'll prove she's a "bad girl", she tempted him, she'll burn in hell, etc.).

Or he can use the infinitely more damaging approach by trying to maintain the image that this was part of a divine plan, that someday she'll "understand," that this was something God wanted her to experience as part of a special "time" in her life, playing upon her immature emotional and sexual drives, fears, longings and lusts to firmly embed her in a deceptive snare of the soul. With her own personal sanctity now utterly violated and redefined against the broader moral standards of the group twisted to fit the abuser's fable he creates to silence her, she's now a toy in the hand of the abuser who will likely continue to use the unique group mores about this in a viciously exploitative way to manipulate her .. and others.

And sexual abuse is just the most visible form of abuse .. there is of course physical punishment as well. The adult figure could also easily engage in emotional and psychological badgering as well as battering which leave no physical scars but which profoundly traumatize at many different levels the self-image, self-esteem and worldview of the child in the cult, giving them a skewed view of themselves, reality, other people and their place in the world - which is, of course, to serve and exalt the "pure doctrine" of their group at the expense of their own minds, hearts and consciences.

It is THIS influence that probably is the far more dangerous and insidiously abusive influence of cults on children and is what leaves millions of them as broken people who plod along under the malign influence of their group's exploitative attentions all of their lives. The cost this leaves them - from depression to suicide to broken marriages to the perpetuation of the cycles of abuse - is a social blight no religious leader of ANY faith could possibly view as indicative of their highest spiritual ideals.

And yet, it happens.

Jehovah's Witness children still get sexually abused and their cries smothered to protect the Watchtower (click here to watch by Real Video my talk I did on this a few years ago). Remnant Fellowship teens mature with the shadow of belief that eating outside "God's boundaries" will send them to hell which is setting a lot of them up for serious psychological problems later. Mormon youngsters clam up and self-destruct internally as they struggle with their hormones and the tension set up by their religion's perfectionism bidding them to be "worthy Mormons" who will some day become gods.

It's all done as part of what the adults think is ultimate spiritual truth that governs how we are to live. That's probably the worst spiritual dead end of all .. to see a nice bright morality imparted to a generation of children who find it tied directly into a performance based religion that relegates their individuality into menial personal busywork to keep the image of the Revelation or the Doctrine or the Philosophy squeaky clean, no matter what it costs them.

Don't forget that these are the dominant form of ruthlessly controlling group dynamics in a cult that scars and injures more people than you can ever possibly imagine.

They are lost behind the ad print, the snappy videos, the happy faces of youngsters .. it is the most horrific reality imaginable, to endure terrors inflicted upon the powerless by those they trust most of all.

The recent Texan FLDS case sheds light upon this potent dilemma. This was the case earlier this year in which hundreds of children, raised in what Texas law enforcement and human services officials believed were coercive social conditions that involved sexual and physical abuse of many of them, were forcibly removed from the "Yearning For Zion" ranch to investigate their well being. It once again exposed the grotesquely shadowed and secretive world in certain corners of Mormon fundamentalism.

Having taken the position that patriarchal dominance of several women in polygamous relationships was a religious norm for their lives extended this warped principle (which they have a Constitutional right to believe) to such a degree that underage girls who were far from adults were taken routinely as brides for men with several other wives who were easily the age of their grandparents. An interstate network of these groups exists all across the West to facilitate this literally human trafficking. Reports of underage boys being expelled or driven off from Mormon polygamous communities as well as others to keep the available pool of nubile virgins ripe for the picking also have been common.

And all of this is going on, right now, in America while law enforcement and human services officials wonder how to approach the nightmare to address it since these coerced and criminal couplings of 15 year old girls to men three times their age are inextricably wedded (pardon the pun) to their Constitutional right to practice their religion. The ACLU stands up and cries "foul" and these girls' mothers, who were those 15 year old girls in the past, give press interviews and delicately protest the exposure of their religiously exploitative lives in chillingly Stepford Wife fashion.

This horror is simply just one of the most obvious icebergs of cultic impact in our world, with their far more dangerous bulk hidden in plain sight beneath the seas of humanity, smashing them aside as they drift in the uncharted regions of human society. There are social institutions and settings that are beyond belief in which this kind of cultism routinely, mundanely, shamelessly trods all over the hearts and minds of its young. They going along for the ride - no matter what it costs them.

It's our world and you're welcome to it - whether you want it or not.

Read some more here about how children in cults suffer in silence while the church fiddles about and does little to nothing to reach their parents and help end the nightmares.

More Signs Of The Apostasy Department: When Cults Freely Use The Media To Enslave Souls

Expecting the Fox News Channel to exercise a little bit of discernment would be like asking a teenage boy to respect your daughter if she looked and dressed like Angelina Jolie when they go to the drive in showing an "American Pie" Triple Feature.

You know he'll both swear up and down he will but you're going to be just a wee bit skeptical for some reason.

So when we received another email advising us that cult leader Gwen Shamblin was again going to be on Fox's The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet to contribute what the show's website characterizes as "engaging segments about topics relating to viewers’ lives," we didn't think it was going to be a show in which hosts Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy were going to "lend their dynamic personalities" to a probing exploration of Gwen Shamblin's grotesque and authoritarian theology that has destroyed lives all across America. The Angelina Factor kicked in.

The website said that Mike and Juliet instead would lead "discussions about hot topics in pop culture; family-focused subjects such as women’s health, fashion, parenting and relationships; and general entertainment." And I am sure that the discussion wasn't more different then the last TWO .. not one but TWO .. visits to Fox News to spread Gwen's gospel of dietary purification which would inevitably lead astonied converts to "the truth."

Fox needs to revise their website to include the caveat

".. and general entertainment, including being a media whore for the gratification of cult leaders' lusts to spiritually rape and pillage the lives of potentially millions of people."

That would be a bit more accurate .. and what would be an advance of truth in media.

I just had to drop Mikey and Jules a note on their website which you can do here also if you like:

How does it feel to be a tool of a cult leader who thinks your city was a target of God's judgment on 9/11 and uses your show for her recruitment drive?

What's it like knowing you've been punked by Gwen Shamblin as she tries to turn the world's overweight women into clones of herself who lick salt off potato chips like her and in the process divide families, destroy marriages and put them in psychological, spiritual and emotionally coercive and scarring settings?

It's called Google. Do you know about this strange but unusual perspective on things? Have your interns or production assistants heard about it?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2008-19,GGLG:en&q=Gwen+Shamblin+cult

How does that sit with you, Mike? Do you sleep good at night Juliet? It's always easier after the first time to lose that troubling little flicker of guilt at the edge of your conscience, isn't it?

http://www.spiritwatch.org/RFblingmedia.htm

Do you watch Geraldo, by the way? You guys might mosey down the cubes there and do lunch with the producers there and ask about Gwen Shamblin. Just don't be gnoshing on a Nathan's when you do. I guarantee you'll not feel well afterwards.

Obama Or McCain - The Only Change Coming Is Of The Short Variety

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.

Proverbs 14:34.

This nation is heading for judgment no matter WHO runs it after the next election.

As a collective nation, we've tolerated sin and abomination among us in every sphere of human enterprise -- from Capital Hill to church to the family. We've winked at it, ignored it, and our sense of moral outrage collectively and effectively been anesthetized by the countless little compromises we've yielded throughout the years. The scandalous a few years ago is perfectly passe now .. and all of the debatable history of whether America was or is a "Christian nation" means, to paraphrase Henry Ford, bunk.

There is, IMHO, no prophetic pastiche of divine revelation to prove Obama is the Antichrist or McCain to be the next Revival leader. They are just two ambitious men who delusionally think they'll get "America back on track." The problem is that their individual shticks are no answers to the rot we wallow in and there's not a thing they are going to do that will turn us back. They're going to try to be the ringmaster in the next American circus in Washington - which will address NOTHING that will change the moral climate of this nation.

America is already poised for a spanking of epic proportions. If unpopular wars abroad, diseases claiming those all around us, weather disasters, financial meltdowns and the moral blasphemies of the generally antichristian secular atmospher among us haven't been enough to get our attention, believe you me, God has no shortage of ways to do so. More are on the way. It has been said that if 9/11 was a wakeup call to America, then it's rolled over and gone back to sleep.

And the Christian church is hardly much better. Keith Green's haunting yet prophetic song is still right .. we're asleep in the light, so dead when "we've been well fed."

It's time to get ready to meet God. It's time we realize that taking up the evangelical hobbyhorse that leads us every 4 years and thinking our votes will urge Revival in is a piously fraudulent diversion. It's time we let our prayers be what they should be and not reckon they're a part of a salvo of first strikes on a Strongman. It's time we take heed to ourselves, lest we fall. It's time that we preach the Gospel and when necessary, as has been also well said, use words.

When Jesus comes, He won't be concerned about political activism - He will judge the nations.

Where do WE stand in the midst of that?

The Post-Lakeland "Outpouring" Hand Wringing, Part 357

I don't know about any of you, but I for one am tired of hearing Charisma Magazine J Lee Grady's grandiloquent proclamations about excess in the Charismatic and Pentecostal circuses that we call "church" and "revival" and then his inevitable calls for concern over how it will play in Peoria and in the Wall Street Journal, how it will turn our "movement" into chaos, how we need to pray for God's grace to cover it all and turn it around.

This dramatic kind of editorializing just isn't very convincing any more coming from him. He acts like its Breaking News that "we are gullible" on the basis of what an unnamed Charismatic leader says about Charismatics believing the shtick of the Antichrist if he shows up.

J. Lee Grady is concerned about the recent debacle that occurred in central Florida when the so-called "Lakeland Outpouring", a nightly series of Charismatic revival services that took place in various venues there, suddenly took a tragic dive into ill repute. The lead "revivalist" Todd Bentley's sincere yet frenzied and at times violent ministry involved imbalanced and even bizarre doctrines and practices, coming forth in the midst of high powered praise and worship music ministry nightly.

At the core of it was Bentley's claims of having gifts of healing as well as prophetic authority to "impart" spiritual callings and exhortations that would give divine direction, restoration and renewal to those seeking God's grace. Hundreds of thousands from all over the world flocked to the meetings for a jolting encounter with a God, many hoping Bentley's transferable "anointing" could fill them like human NiCads with spiritual power that could be tapped all over the world to bring "revival" all over the world.

That was the End Time Plan of God, it was shouted from the Florida rooftops, but it all came to a rather abrupt stop when it became known that Bentley had engaged in an incident of "non sexual" marital infidelity with a female member of his ministry staff and that his wife Shonnah, having apparently weathered a similar incident in the past, had come to end of her patience with her husband and left Florida to return back to Canada with their three young children. Apparently, a separation had begun and Bentley knew that the story was about to break .. so there suddenly came a call from God to "turn the revival back" to the Ignited Church in Lakeland, under Stephen Strader's pastoral leadership, from where it started.

And then suddenly, the news broke .. shock turned to bewilderment. Bentley disappeared into the private circles of friends and the meetings he planned to hold around North America and England began to get cancelled. From venues filled with thousands, the "outpouring" now barely pulls seventy or so people a night. And the inevitable confusion, pain, sorrow, anger and disillusion has now cast yet another shadow across the hearts and minds of the "full gospel" segments of the Body of Christ .. and J. Lee Grady's unidentified pastor friend suddenly and tartly observes how gullible Charismatics and Pentecostals might seem to be.

Hello? What? The Spirit-filled Christian is gullible? Whoo, that's a really deep insight. Thanks for the hot tip, J. Lee. Many of the cultists we meet and speak with were former tongue talking church members. Gullible you say? What else don't we know about the Charismatic and Pentecostal galactic cluster?

That we need to be praying for the implosion of this "revival" and what it's done adversely in the spiritual and personal lives of far too many people is definite. That God's grace moved, as He always does, to touch people seeking Him for healing and deliverance quite APART from the lunacy that traipsed across the stages there is undeniable. That the Charismatic and Pentecostal movement just got another black eye because of the confusion, inconsistency, false doctrine and general carnality of this "move of the Spirit" is beyond question.

But for Grady to infer that Christianity itself hangs in the balance because a stout little Canadian Charismatic firecracker revivalist who had the ear of the church as he lost his priorities and is reaping what he's sown, that's just completely out of touch with the reality. To hear him wring his hands over and over about how we "might" have missed something here is eminently laughable. He hangs out with the Christian charismatic celebrity strata too much and believes their self-proclaimed adprint too easily .. plenty of room in Charisma itself was made the past few months for those Gullible Christians to freely imbibe the poison-laced kool aid this revival has been dispensing.

Bentley's delusional belief that revival will come "when all the streams" come together was nothing less than a vaguely magickal, almost pagan belief .. like the assembling of Power Rangers to join together in some spiritual critical mass to sweep the planet clear of sin, sickness and need. This got more play in Charisma and on GodTV then ever before .. and now, J. Lee is concerned?

As mi abuelo would mutter .. "iAy chihuahua!"

It's only become what it's become because J Lee and Charisma seem to defer to media guides, the buzz on the street and the religiosity of the church when they start to report on the Next New Thing - not the Bible (gee, remember that?) They are as bent towards making too much room for the marvelous and the miraculous then it should be in the church. Grady sounds like he sees what's going down but then just refuses to believe that it could become as spiritually toxic as it can get. The rest of Charisma's editorial staff are credulous people who simply refuse to learn from the history of the Pentecostal and Charismatic worlds, nor from the fact that sign-chasing Evangelical culture that likes armchair religion was a Biblically foretold reality Christ and the apostles warned us about again and again.

Every point Grady made in his massive missive has been echoed in Christian circles during the past hot summer months .. as well as in many other quarters in the Body of Christ. None of this was news to us, except perhaps the final failure of Todd to keep his house in order. There's no way that Ignited Church and Pastor Steven Strader could not have known about that fundamental imbalance in this situation. I only saw Shonnah Bentley on stage perhaps one time and she did not appear to be terribly interested in what was going on. There was a pall over her that I noted and said nothing about. Now it seems there was a reason - click here to read a post I did on how Bentley's sorry state has been turned into an apologetic for the spiritual wackiness that his apostolic and prophetic tribe engage in with little concern with Biblical fidelity but an utter passion to cover for each other.

It's hard to believe Strader and company, whose history has never been one of great discernment to begin with, couldn't have known of what was going on. That's a crock. Grady makes a big deal about "where were the Godly leaders" who preached out against error. THEY WERE OUT THERE! They WERE speaking out! J Lee just wasn't listening closely enough. How out of touch can he be?

And I'm not talking about the Reformed and Baptist critics who drive home their cessationist blather on the World Wide Web. The Godly leaders included a whole host of anonymous Charismatic and Pentecostal pastors and ministers who only wanted truth upheld and God's glory in it all, but sadly, many more thousands of their tribe who weren't discerning fanned the flames and hyped the lie. They were on many an online bulletin boards. They blogged. They had news spots. They were in the media. They were challenged by atheists on YouTube and hard questions at the workplace. They had innumerable debates in Bible studies, over cups of coffee at a small group study, in Christian book stores, in the church mother's living room .. etc. Godly leadership DID speak up and immature and/or rebellious members refused to hear!

Why is this news to him? WHY? It's because Grady is out of touch with the discerning church and acts as if his "discovery" of the inconsistencies of these imbalanced ministries were the uncovering of breaking news.

And the Lakeland crowds came out of as much as a desire to be touched by God as they were bored, sign-chasing lemmings who ignored any calls for discernment and actually despised those who raised questions as jealous spiritual losers, hypocrites and Pharisees. They plugged their ears up, spoke loudly in tongues and set their cars on cruise control down I-75. Some of them received from God because He is merciful and gracious to His children. Most, I suspect, did not come away with what they are looking for. Thousands in wheelchairs came and went without being healed. Thousands with terrible personal problems, besetting sins, inner woundings came and had a long hard cry and "the warm thrill" of emotional catharsis with a Bam sticker affixed to it .. and left the way the came.

What really is amazing is how quickly Grady now dismisses the "revival" as past news, as an unpleasantly checkered history you don't want to think about. Thanks to Grady, that's probably pretty much is the death kiss for it now. Only the die hards and those who haven't heard that Todd is elsewhere creating his new cottage revival industry and not in Lakeland are going to be coming. See, Bentley's movement is still moving, though with nowhere near the energy it once had. Grady seems to fail to realize that Bentley's ministry interns still preach and teach and worship back where it all "started," at Ignited Church.

That's makes me want to say "Wait a second? Wasn't this Lakeland thing going to be a new Azusa that would decisively impact the ages to come? Aren't special guests from all over the world going to come? Won't Rodney Howell Browne show up eventually? It's over?" Man, how inconsequential the Move of the Spirit now seems to be .. when we thought it wasn't about Todd .. but that it was all about GOD.

Let's see how much money GodTV spends streaming the services of young Apostle Humptyscrunch from Sheboygan, Wisconsin and see if the Psalmista Heather will be there to prop up the obligatory sacrifice of praise hour with more James Bond Girl moves before he gets under the lights to scream in a mike about the book of Joel and intimacy with God like intimacy with his second wife.

The real drama is ongoing right now and completely off Grady's radar screen. The real dramatics are taking place daily as Christian pastors and church leaders who didn't run away with the madness of Lakeland and who strove to maintain and uphold balance now have to deal with the personal carnage many Christians have been impacted by by this mess. The real challenges come when they have to help those gullible Christians deal with the personal impact of a cancer that remained or a heartache over a sexual abuse they suffered as a child that they still feel which didn't go away after a BAM Session. Or when a Lakeland bewitched board member of their church demands that they start having Friday Night Lights with a Bentleyite and open the community up to the River that THEY will make sure flows there.

I wonder where Grady's concern is about THAT issue and just how much substantial coverage that this will be given .. We already know GodTV isn't going to be airing any special webcast for that painful little reality.

If J Lee really cares about the gullibility of the children of light, he needs to start getting authors and speakers and conventions going about Biblical doctrine and discernment, as well as workshops done to help the victims of "revival" get the help they DESPERATELY need. I will watch Charisma to see if they can help undo the damage they've helped to do but I won't hold my breath.

And the band played on ..

Why Spiritwatch Ministries does what it does ..

It's been a while since I last posted here and for that I'm sorry. Life and ministry beyond web based efforts never stops.

But the endtime apostacy hasn't gotten any better, of course .. and as I restart and hopefully redouble our blog input here, let me just share with you a video that illustrates pretty well why our ministry does what it does ..

There still is a difference between the holy and unholy, the profane and the pure.

The challenge today still remains as it always has - how to tell that difference.

At one time, making such determinations seemed easier, but in the unimaginably vast diversity of modern society, it's far easier to become deceived by any one with a good story and a few testimonials to what seems to be life-changing truth. The endless parade of fringe groups, movements and leaders of a variety of societal ideologies advancing compelling and yet deceptively unorthodox ideas never stops. In a free world, that's to be expected and if anything, it is escalating ..

As has been said so well before, anyone who wants to believe the moon is made of green cheese is welcome to it. But those who unethically, abusively and intentionally deceive others into thinking the moon is made of green cheese should be called out on the carpet and their deeds exposed.

We've seen and continue to hear from too many people whose lives are testimonies to the tender mercies they've encountered at the heavy hands of corrupt spiritual leaders dictating an authoritarian doctrine in the name of God which they've used to control and destroy human life all around the world. And again, that's what at the heart of what we call the endtime apostacy, and I intend to have a post out on that to better explain what we mean when we use this term.

Jesus Christ in Matthew 24 said that there would be false Christs who would arise before His own coming:

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/FaithMatters/story?id=5225539&page=1

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/16/miami.preacher/

http://www.thepost.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3259771

These are just a few of the more obvious blasphemies .. and we'll tackle a few more of these in our next post.

The Fivefold Ministry And Spiritual Abuse - Resources Coming!

We have been inundated through the years with a LOT of requests for help, counsel and teaching on the subject of spiritual abuse as inflicted by those of the "five fold ministry" and have unfortunately have found ourselves really unable to find the time to deliver on it.

That is about to change.

We are working feverishly to provide - at long last, after 10 years of starting and stopping - a webbed version of teaching we've done on how the horrible spectre of spiritual or religious abuse has become a materialized monstrosity that quietly lurks in the shadows of many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. We hope to have the first 3 of 4 articles on it completed in the next week or so, finally uploaded and updated from the present ones still on the site.

In 1998, I did a talk on this at the EMNR Chicago Conference on Biblical Discernment about the same time I started our ministry website. The learning curve and time we spent preparing, designing and uploading a variety of articles and PDF tracts was enormous, as well as research into the now moribund Prophecy Club - not to mention a lot of assistance offered to victims of fivefold ministry-inflicted abuses. And then the rise of the Remnant Fellowship cult pretty much kept us digging deep into the rabbit hole that Gwen Shamblin dug for the church to fall into from 2002 onward (during the post 9/11/2001 days I don't mind telling you that we were stunned for several weeks afterward, which is far better than what many 9/11 victims experienced.

So now, we're finally making the time to get this done. We hope to stream an excerpt of a DVD we're now doing of my teaching there in the next week or so also.

"Expelled: The Movie" - Be A Part Of A Campaign For Truth

Darwinian evolution has far too long held cultural sway and has contributed to the deevolution of Western civilization. You may say your ancestor wasn't a monkey. Or a "missing link." Or the result of random atoms smashing into each other acted upon by cosmic radiation. The arrogance of the secular elite's control over hearts and minds doesn't care. They'll teach it anyway and demand your silence at the cost of being labelled intolerant fundy theocrats .. or an anti-intellectual zealot.

And they control the video editing suites, the budgets, the programming, the air time, the staffing and the curricula behind two of the most influential institutions of our day - the academia and mass media. Don't want your kids or others to hear about the thorougly credible science that non Darwinian scientists have amassed about the possibility that God might have been behind creation? Too bad. They sit on school boards and reign from production offices. You haven't got a chance ..

Or do you ...?

The film "Expelled" helps shed light on this flatulent underbelly of godless secular humanism with the owl visaged Ben Stein leading us through a narrative of expose as well as hope. It will be released on April 18 nationwide. It isn't surprising that the media are allegedly refusing to offer much air time for advertising on this.

Check out the trailer at

Be that as it may, the filmmakers are hoping that the concerned public who are following the evidence of science that exposes the fallacies of Darwinian evolution will mobilize by grassroots and word of mouth a publicity campaign to get folks out to watch the movie. A worthy cause, I think. Here's my own small contribution. Spread the news. Post on a blog. Tell your youth group. Tell your Sunday School class. Send some emails. Tell your Baptist brother's pastoral staff. Stand for truth - and academic freedom.

Go the website for more information. If The Blasphemy Network could mobilize thousands of tongue talking Christians to hype Matt Crouch's screwy "Omega Code" that advanced some really BAD end times fantasy with lame acting, it's about time they go to the movies again to learn about a reality far more down home and dangerous then any "bible code."

agape

rafael

A Recommitment ..

8:05 a.m. .. Mount St. Mary's Cemetary in Kansas City, MO .. 3.9.08

I drove by once again after having spent an hour or so there trying to help make it possible to fulfill my mom's final wishes concerning this place speaking to various people who oversee it. She wants to be buried there, in this old cemetary in the middle of Kansas City, next to her beloved abuelo, my great grandfather Mattias Adriano. He was the only father figure she ever really knew in her childhood and she lost him when she was 12 years old. There's so much sad history and painful narrative I could fill this with, but I fully understand why she wants to do this. So, as Joy, myself and fellow countercult minister Lora Burton were leaving town after the EMNR convention we'd been at that weekend, I simply could not drive past it without a final look at the place my mom wants to be left behind at as she awaits a better resurrection.

Death lost it's grip and my fear of it years ago when I embraced Christ as my Savior. In fact, I often find myself longing to be absent from the Body to be with Him. But the earthy finality of a literal burial place is ground zero for the reality that I'm not there yet and that there is work to be done to help people realize that such a place can be a beginning for them .. or the entrance into the most horrible of dead ends. As we drove around this old Catholic cemetary, in the silence, the cold and the ever lightening dawn of the new day, musing over the eternal tensions of my assurance of eternal life with that of the harsh reality that millions die daily and face eternal death, the grave stones seemed to become witnesses to me of a dire need I simply have to address ..

I need to see, as my mom so passionately cries about in her prayers, "souls saved." I need to be about the Father's business in defending and proclaiming the Faith that saves souls. From here on out, I'm going to be a lot more vocal here on this blog then ever before as I try to document what it means to seek and save that which is lost. And cultists are very lost people .. Mormons are lost. Jehovah's Witnesses are lost. Moonies are lost. The disciples of self-proclaimed religious avatars, mystics, and prophets are lost. And it is the power of the Gospel that will save them.

Pray for us. We want to be on target, on mission .. speaking the truth in love and taking heed that no man deceive any one into missing out on the Way, the Truth and the Life.

agape

rafael

Quite Possibly The Best Video On Cults Ever Made

Tired of trying to be a prophet, avatar or visionary but can't get anyone to blindly follow you? Have you always wanted to know how to manipulate people in the name of any deity, religion or philosophy you want to hide behind with your own agenda of naked abuse of power? Look no further! Independent film maker Corey Burtt's outstanding bit of cautionary cinema will open your eyes and help you see where you've been missing the boat! Soon, you too can organize mass movements based on deception where manipulation, spiritual abuse and damnable heresy that will destroy lives and doom souls .. just like Gwen Shamblin, Sun Myung Moon, Joseph Smith, Judge Rutherford and sooooo many others!

Themsis' fightin' words

Well, it didn't take long for the brickbats to follow our articles on Joel Osteen's unbiblical gospel.

I was rather surprised when Joy forwarded to me this vapid letter of rebuke from one Bob Ross, a fellow I'd never heard of before. A couple net searches turns up that this Mr. Ross runs Pilgrim Publications, a publishing firm that publishes the sermons and writings of the legendary Charles Spurgeon's, the so-called "prince of preachers." Had he stayed there, he'd probably sleep better at nights. It also seems that he has become a shrill critic of those who hold to doctrines he believes should be piddled upon in the name of the purity of whatever concept of Christian faith he holds to be true and dear, Calvinism and "pedobaptism" being the particular targets of his online screeds in which he addresses himself as "Brother Bob".

What's even weirder is that this gentleman has become one of the more incendiary apologistas for - you guessed it - none other then the irrepressible Joel Osteen himself. Incredible, but true. I wondered to myself .. could this be another sign of the endtime apostasy? I sat and mulled on this a second, wondering how a Spurgeon fanatic and self-anointed swatter of what he calls "Calvinistic theological errors/flies" - depending on where you read on his blog - could become so completely mush-minded as to accept Osteen's Christless preaching as Biblical. Still, stranger things have happened when seemingly grounded Christian figures go off the deep end and wander their star into quagmires of their own creation, leading too many there with them

(cue video of John Shelby Spong, Hobart Freeman, Gwen Shamblin, Carlton Pearson, Jay Bakker, ad nauseum)

Between smearing the Tulip confession and deciding which of the works of the good reverend Spurgeon to again reprint, Mr. Ross apparently feels that His Best Life Now involves being a gadfly across the Internet, savaging those who criticize Osteen. Apparently, I'm just another one of those who've enjoyed the company of a Pilgrim passing through. So when he decided to address my fellow apologist homeys Jeff Downs and Lance King in an apologetics forum I do not
subscribe to (but at one time did several years ago) I decided that I'd need to respond to it here on this blog. I trust Mr. Ross won't mind me doing this for the sake of clarity and in the spirit of rejoinder he obviously likes to "engage" with. And I'm endeavoring in this since no one is here to stop me, and this is my blog, and I am what it says I am and I will never, never, never be the
same again ..

oops .. excuse me, I've been watching too much of Joel lately.

Anyway, I'm sure Brother Bob you won't mind me sharing my own thoughts here ..

Dear Rafel, Lance, and Jeff Downs:

I always "consider the source" when I read the type of critical materials you
present against Joel Osteen, as sent to me via email.

It never fails to amaze me at how many ways people continue to misspell my name. Never. At least Mr. Ross was positive enough to start his excoriation with the kinder and gentler
approbation of "Dear ..." That's better then how I've started .. anyway, on to Bob's consideration:

Your religious affiliation (Church of God, Cleveland) and organizational
affilliations and recommendations do not gain my respect for you as
competent critics.

Hmmm. Now that's a new angle, there Bob! I've been called a lot of thing in the past. Arminian moron, anti-this, holy roller cultist, the usual blackening of character. My Pentecostal perspective on Christian life has figured prominently in them. One guy once said I sounded too balanced to be Pentecostal. Themsis fightin' words, the good ol' boys on the Maytag assembly line I used to work on here a few years ago might say. So hearing my movement, the Church of God (Cleveland) missing muster with Mister Mustard - er, Ross isn't too far off the mark from other digs in the past (sorry, the alliterative temptation was too good to pass up). It was an easy cheap shot though - you diss the Church of God and never say one reason why.

What happened, did a Church of God preacher lay heavy hands on you at an old fashioned altar in the past? Did you get an atomic wedgie at a Church of God youth camp in your tender past? I mean, come on, what is it about my movement you don't like?

This strange criticism begs the question - what is it in Mr. Ross's estimation makes one a "competent critic"? .. According toMr. Ross wrote of himself that

“I was baptized in the Methodist Church at any early myself, but I later heard the simple Gospel such as preached by Joel Osteen, and the Lord granted me repentance and faith in Christ. That simple Gosple works, and I am still rejoicing in it after nearly 53 years of professing it. NOTE TO JOEL CRITICS:
There’s no need sending me trash talk about Joel. I listen to him every Sunday,
and until I hear something worthy of my changing my attitude about him, you can save your breath. I AM PRO-JOEL.”

So, Bob, let's review a working hypothesis here .. I think it's fair to assume that you say that

1) Being involved in a "working simple Gosple" found only after departing your church
roots

and

2) Only hearing something you arbitrarily decide is "worthy" will lead you to open your mind about Joel Osteen

are the criterion you establish for your status as a "competent critic." This is a rather curious choice of discernment there. It works well for all kinds of people who find the truth to be too troublesome to bother with and who dig this hill to die upon for the "Truth" they want to live by.

Do you watch a lot of movies, Bob? I really don't, but your petulant little outburst here reminded me of a hilarious scene in "Fever Pitch." It's when the Red Sox fanatic Ben, dining with his new girlfriend Lindsay, warbles like a six year old and claps his hands over his ears when trying to avoid hearing someone in the next table over discussing the ongoing Red Sox game he wasn't watching at that moment. It's a scream of a scene.

Only this isn't funny. You show how seemingly bereft of discernment you are. Cultists of all stripes do the exact same thing you apparently commend yourself with: express utter surrender to the preaching of a man who stands for nothing except establishing God as an indulgent Daddy ready to pimp your ride through life AND shutting your brain off from any objective thought about it unless it's "worthy." Feh.

You are spot on, Bob, about one thing: Joel Osteen's gospel IS simple ..

It is so simple that if you breathe on it, it will crumble into a billion bits, just the point that our articles make. Osteen's brand of "far and away favor" will never prepare people for real life in a real world. If that is the kind of religion you want to cling to, go right ahead. Just don't dignify it with the term Christianity. You mock Christ anytime you foolishly assert that Joel Osteen stands for Him.

Jeff Downs, for example, who sent me your link,is a pedobaptist, committed to a theology which alleges that little babies born to believers get "born
again" in their infancy, and that adults get "born again before faith." The
fact that he likes your material does not commend it to me.

Whatever difference, Mr. Ross, you may have with Jeff's theology, here's something to think about: at least Jeff HAS a theology and a position to stand upon that can be cogently argued, discussed, disagreed or agreed with. Jeff stands for a whole lot more than "pedobaptism" and is one of the most solidly and doctrinally anchored young Christian men I've ever known. Ditto for Lance King whose passion for theology is beyond question. Those are foundations they enjoy that the sandy shoals of Lakewood's "podium" never have had - and which you apparently flounder upon.

I seem to remember a verse in the old book about building upon sand ..

For another example, you are affiliated with EMNR, and based on my knowledge of that group over the years, this tends to discredit you rather than commend you.

Glad to hear you're such an astute observer of EMNR. Oh wait, I don't recall seeing you at any EMNR conventions lately. I don't recall hearing of your courageous attempts to swat the flies there. Come to the next one in Kansas City in a couple months. Be man enough to come face those who you feel "discredit" me, Jeff or Lance and see what manner of Christian servants they are. Your swatter won't reach that far, I assure you.

Also, some of the authors and books you recommend tend to discredit your
competency with me.

Ah yes, more of the critierion of "competency" ..

Walter Martin, for example, who help popularize so-called "apologetics," will "eduip" no one on the Eternal Sonship of Christ, which he rejected. In a TV debate with two prominent Oneness ministers (Urshan and Sabin), Martin denied Eternal Sonship, as he does in his book on cults.

Themsis' fightin' words, brother Bob. You need to document this high sounding charge, which sounds terribly THEOLOGICAL to me. How dare you resort to anything but the "simple" Gospel!

No, seriously .. I'd really like to see you produce your evidence of such a scurrilious charge. I don't think you have a leg to stand upon, but I'm willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. The TV debate you refer to is in my collection of videotapes. Document, please, at what point in this discussion that Dr. Martin "denied Eternal Sonship." I'll pull it out and watch it to find it.

When confronted by me, the current CRI headed by Hank Hanegraaff, said in a letter to me that the current CRI differS with Martin, and rejects his position. Joel Osteen is sounder on the Person of Christ than was Walter Martin whom you recommend!

As to what the current CRI stands for is less a concern for me since I do not support CRI nor Hank Hanegraaf's ministry whatsoever due to issues I don't have time to get into. I'm just glad you're there to confront everyone to help bring the light of truth on things. So therefore, if there's a letter you can send or post to the internet that shows that Mr. Hanegraaf rejects Dr. Martin's position because of an allegation that he denies the eternal Sonship of Jesus, let me lapse into good old fashioined polemic: I dares ya .. I double DOG dares ya .. to do so. Go for it. I would LOVE to see it.

As to what Joel Osteen thinks about the Eternal Sonship of Christ is largely a subject of speculation. Remember, Bob, this is your pastor speaking:

"I mean, there’s a lot better people qualified to say, 'Here’s a book that going to explain the scriptures to you.' I don’t think that’s my gifting," Osteen says.

Bobby, son, I seem to recall a verse or two to back up what I say about pastors being competent teachers who reprove, rebuke and correct with longsuffering and doctrine in the old Book. That hasn't apparently occurred to your pastor -apparently.

I suggest you put your proofs down for your next Spurgeon anthology and search those verses out. By the way, how do you make one of those funny pointy hats that press workers used to wear in those old movies where the newspaper presses were being stopped? Maybe you can make one and wear it while you read the Bible. Remember that scene in "Signs" when the kids were trying to keep the aliens from reading their minds? In some way, I think that might help you out here.

But more -- much more -- than these obvious elements which reflect upon your attributes to be competent as critics of Joel Osteen (or anyone else), I find your material utterly extraneous, nit-picking, ridiculous, and phantasmagorical.

Gee, Bob, that really cuts deep. It never dawned on me as to how incompetent I could be. I never knew my elements were so obvious and my deficit of attributes so plain. How I wish I'd seen one of your ads when I was a young Christian many yarrons ago that could have directed me to the Bob Ross Institute For Competent Criticism, how much more farther along I might be in life!

Be that as it may, I think by the grace of God and the light of the Scriptures and the Spirit of Christ, I've come along pretty well. Since you haven't the fortitude nor intellectual honesty to document what it is about the articles that you find so warped, there's no way to gauge how delusional or truthful you might be here. Again, unlike you, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But not for real long, though. Once more, you remind me of Jimmy Fallon freaking everyone out at dinner. That is really some of the strangest flights of rhetorical fancy that I've ever heard about my writing!

I will not elaborate, as there's simply too much palabber to mention, but I will cite one major instance which clearly demonstrates your utter incompetence as critics of Joel: "The situation is as it is: Joel Osteen's teaching has little to nothing to do with the person and work of Jesus Christ. Osteen's total lack of understanding of the exclusivity of Christ . . . " etc. My advice to you is that you prayerfully consider getting into a more positive work in contrast to your current incompetent "ministry" of selling merchandise on the pretext of "equipping" naive Christians.

Your work is example of why I have so little use for the appalling entrepreneurs (apologists) who more appropriately could be called "Appallingists."

Boy that one really hurt, didn't it Bob?

I bet you and others of the Joel Osteen Experience had a lot of egg to lick off his face when Joel hit Fox News with his inane patter on the LDS Church on the eve of the remembrance of the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God. Sorry to rain on your parade, but when your pastor goes on national television to commend Mormonism as the equivalency of Christianity, your whining about my incompetence simply becomes nothing but hot air.

If there was any doubt that Joel Osteen is absent of any sound understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ, and that He alone is the way to God the Father, then Joel thunderously silenced it with his plaintive Texas lilt affirming for millions just the opposite.

Your folly will follow you, Bobby. Be careful now ..

Perhaps you might consider a new vocation yourself: why don't you join the Committee Of Interfaith Dialogue that meets at the Starbucks outside the Lakewood Church to help unify the Jehovah's Witnesses and Moonies with your outreach to penetrate Houston. Why don't you get them involved in helping everyone find the champion within themselves? While you are at it, have Yisrael Hawkins channel Marshal Appelwhite while Kenneth Copeland does a holding pattern at 35,000 feet above Waco so as to bring peace to the midlands?

I think I've said all I care to say to you about it Bobby. I'll be waiting to hear from you on your baseless charges. FYI .. you might want find more peace of mind and freedom from those mean and nasty appallingists by unsubbing from the APPALLINGETICS email list you sent this silly letter of yours out own.

Oh hey, don't get me wrong, I think Spurgeon is certainly one of the finest Christian
expositors to have ever lived, but that canonizing title "prince of preachers" sounds like something coming out of a marketing focus group at Destiny Image then from the starry eyed 19th century fans of his.

I surely hope, Bob, that you're above that kind of hero worship.

But thanks for making me the target of your venom. I'm part of the club now. First, the Internet Monk, then James White. And now me! I am sure Lance, Jeff and I all have the same big lumps in our throats knowing we've been targetted along with some really cool Christian expositors. I can die now, knowing my life was not a total waste.

Ciao, Roberto!

The Joel Osteen articles .. FINALLY online!

I have been busier then a cat with two tails at a rocking chair convention with a whole lot of projects. Helping families battle back to save their children from the clutches of the tea party cult of Remnant Fellowship is one such front. There's a lot we can't say much about what we do there and in other areas, but we are still committed to watching God humble that cult and get it to where He wants it to be.

Veangeance is the Lord's, says the Word of God, and if He wants it, I don't mind offering His Spirit all the help He can get here. Nor do a LOT of people across the nation who help out.

Thank you, folks. You all know who you are. By God's grace, we shall overcome and the Zion Curtain will fall someday. The false prophet Gwen Shamblin would do well to learn that she can rise with the Son of God, Jesus as God Incarnate .. or fall with the night that the shadow of God's judgment will send upon her for her heresies, destruction of families and control of lives.

Anyway, I digress. Preaching and teaching engagements (HINT HINT PASTORS!) are another pursuit and working with the Evangelical Ministries to New Religions coalition as a publication committee member is yet another. Need I say that our website continues to get a ton of email requesting we finish the article series we started on mind control, religious abuse, Wicca and the never ending three ring circus of Pentecostal and Charismatic extremism? It just goes on and on, and it's a calling we all pursue as diligently as possible - Steve and Kathy Hogel in Memphis and Lance and Heather King in Knoxville - according to the gifts and opportunities God gives us.

It never fails to amaze me at how many people read our article on Jimmy Swaggart's need to repent. The article is routinely, every month, the most viewed article after our tribute page to my favorite baseball team of all time - the Chicago Cubs. But the firestorm of emails we get from these and other ministry ventures keep us on our toes - and our attempts to help those burned by bad religion and false teachers don't allow us to sit around nights at home either. We stay as engaged as we feel led to be.

But as you know, no self-respecting End Time Apostacy would be complete without a couple of trademark poster children for falsehood, heresy, unreality or manipulation coming to the forefront. Joel Osteen, the megachurch "pastor" of the Lakewood Church seems to fit that bill well all by himself, actually. His star has increasingly splashed all across civilization everywhere like a fusillade of lightning bolts forged from Jell-O. Osteen's influence is beyond belief and his delivery of humanistic motivational oratory is being accepted as cutting edge preaching as arresting and transformational as that of George Whitfield or Martin Luther King.

So, with all of that going on in Spiritwatch Ministries, there was no better way for our ministry to have been tasked to analyze Joel Osteen's questionable doctrine and example unless we were asked to create a talk on Osteen's first best seller "Your Best Life Now" and do it within 90 days for the 2006 EMNR conference in Birmingham. Remember the old saying about how the best way to get something done is to give it to an overworked and busy person? LOL. Thanks, Bob Waldrop .. if hadn't been for you, we'd have never given an Osteen discerning a second thought because his toweringly shallow preaching speaks for itself. But we've come to see millions of people think otherwise ..

So by the grace of God, Lance and I managed to pull it off and deliver it to a good crowd of folks. Here's a link to listen to it in Real Audio if you want to hear it. A long standing project to adapt the talk Lance and I did there seemed relegated to a long delay and we never quite got it together until we finally realized that Osteen's influence has been exponentially spreading all over the world. This year seemed particularly marked, so we plunged ahead to adapt our talk into website articles.

Sola Deo Gloria, we have finally completed these. They are in 4 parts .. and in case you think there's no need to get at what's behind the smile of Joel Osteen watch this clip below .. and tell me if this is What Would Jesus Do ..

I seem to remember a verse somewhere in the Bible about this kind of unimaginable waffling that Joel Osteen seems to be engaged in here: this is What Would Jesus Say about it, we think ..

For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words,
of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.

To read the Osteen articles, click here. We hope they be the balanced resource Lance and I have striven to make them.

When God's Voice Is Common And The Still Small Voice Is Mundane

We've been doing some long overdue review of our research library we've built about the Word of Faith movement and have watched a lot of some of the most looney stuff you can ever imagine. As a Pentecostal, it turns my stomach .. as a Christian, it breaks my heart .. to see and hear other professing Christian "anointed" teaching so much error, bad doctrine and living such carnal lives filled with any kind of spirit but the Holy One.

Over and over, we'd listen to people like Jesse DuPlantis, Kenneth Copeland and a host of others blab out in the middle of their typically manic-driven deliveries that they'd had a conversation with God at least as familiar as a conversation you might have with the mailman at Denny's. DuPlantis, in one sermon in our video library, was told by God that He had his own favorite verse in the Bible the same way everyone else does. And the crowd in the TBN soundstage lapped it up like it was manna from on High. Eck. Gag me with angel dust.

The notion that God speaks to us isn't a problem. Unlike the scoffing and/or skepticism of those who don't believe in a vocal Divinity who does speak to us, Christians can and should seek to hear God speaking to them as they seek direction, guidance and encouragement. It's where the conversations lead and how they're supposedly held that becomes the BIG problem. Here's a great article I also dug out while researching on the net that highlights the issue of a voice from heaven that becomes as ordinary as the voice of your BP clerk .. Below is a sample:

When God's Voice Is Common

“God told me ...”

The Bible says God speaks in a “still, small voice,” but that voice no longer seems to be still or small if you listen to contemporary pastors. The phrase “God told me” is becoming one of their favorite expressions. So many seem to be on speaking terms with God.

Turn on the TV or the radio, and one will inevitably encounter a preacher flashing what one pastor calls the “God trump card.” It signals that the holder is the recipient of a steady stream of revelations from God on matters big and small.

It's invoked so often that few question it, but two recent examples stand out.

In May, the Rev. O'Neal Dozier, pastor of Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, Fla., told an audience that Jesus had appeared to him in a dream and told him that the next governor of that state would be a Republican.

In March, spiritual guru Neale Donald Walsch published “Home With God” and announced that it would be the final chapter in his best-selling “Conversations With God” trilogy, in which he claims to talk to the Almighty.

Last November, J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, wrote a column complaining about pastors taking their revelations too far. He cited one charismatic pastor who told his congregation that a new revelation from the Bible allowed him to have more than one wife. Another said his “anointing” allowed him to have more than one sexual partner.

Ruth Tucker, author of “God Talk,” says pastors - and ordinary people - often confuse God's voice with their own.

“The voice of God often corresponds with something they very much want to hear,” Tucker says. “Biblically, God speaks, but God breaks through in a monumental way that's far beyond giving comfort or advice to any person's plan or agenda.”

Claims of personal encounters with God are nothing new. Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions are filled with inspiring stories about God communicating with people. People of faith often talk about hearing God's voice in a dramatic situation or being led by an inner voice or a divine sign.

But what happens when revelation becomes routine? What happens when some preachers talk about God as if they have his cellphone number?

Click the link above to read the entire absorbing article. There's much to be said here about it, but I will confine myself to a few ruminations here ..
I believe in a God who speaks and wants to be heard. I am certainly NOT posting this to squelch trust and faith in a Father whose voice wants to be heard. However, I think there is MUCH to be said about our Christian culture (especially the Evangelical/Pentecostal ones) when it comes to thinking about - as has been well described - a glib, vociferous God always penetrating the sonic landscape of our overstimulated, plugged in lives with a divine voice pouring into our consciousness every moment of the day.

Cults and false religions surely have a field day with this, citing routine earthshaking encounters with God that they claim end up in their anointing by Him to become His exclusive mouthpiece by being equipped with a special divine empowerment that enables them to hear God exclusively. False prophets and teachers from time immemorial routinely claim to hear from God regularly to authorize their own peculiar polity or practice, from Baalam to the Watchtower's Governing Body to Gwen Shamblin.

I came from a Roman Catholic religious culture in which silence and contemplation of the mystery of God's presence was a thing worthy of aspiration but was so couched in Roman tradition that it was seen as the province only of mystics and those in religious orders. I have never lost that contemplative side which my early upbringing gave me, but have joyously received a revelation of a God who does speak to His children when I became a believer. But along the way, I've seen God's voice cited so often and so frequently in Christian circles that it is very difficult to not become confused, let alone cynical, about all of those claiming to hear Him speak to him in all things. Look at the dueling tongues of opposing "messages from the Spirit" in which "thus saith the Lord" is cited by warring factions over some matter in our churches.

Over the 26 years since that happened, I have come to see how we can barely abide a concept of a God who sometimes IS silent and who sometimes doesn't ALWAYS speak when we long and demand that He should. It's sad to see how Pentecostals fidget when we think we're not "hearing" from God regularly and think we are at some horrible deficit if we don't. Back in the 1990's, when Charisma Magazine had a TV show, I remember their interviewers always asking as a central point of their featured interview of some Pentecostal or Charismatic luminary one big question: "What do you hear God saying to the church?" .. as if to suggest there was a divine message bearing His will and prerogative each week for us to follow from the person involved.

Silence is not golden for Pentecostals. It is a source of irritation, fear and panic. That is what gets me about my beloved tongue talking brethren, of whom I am a part. Preachers and music ministers and prayer warriors have to fill every living moment in Christian meetings with our ubiquitous and cliched utterances.

"Say amen somebody"
"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus .. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus .."
"Are you with me?"
"Oh, come on, now let's hear you really sing like you believe that!"
"I know I'm preaching better than some of you are letting on."
"Can I get a witness?"
"It's getting quiet in here."

I think personally that this is more an expression of insecurity by these folks more than the exhortations to attention we like to think it is, because they've GOT to hear if we are "with them." It's a DEAD service if worship doesn't have sacrifices of praise and choirs/orchestras who didn't lift the roof off the church building. We seem to always end up filling that silence with our own noise, spake into those awkward moments of fearful concern that we don't HEAR Him and are somehow losing out with Him if His Voice is not "heard" as a direct quote we then "speak into" our lives.
And then we cover it with the full gospel language that sanctifies what we say, in our belief it was God who indeed speak, but end up saying "God told me."

I am reminded of Michael Card's elegantly blunt song "The Final Word" here:

You and me we use so very many clumsy words

The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard

When the Father's wisdom wanted to communicate His Love

He spoke it in one final perfect Word ...

Surely I believe God speaks today. I have no problem with anyone else citing what you've heard of God at all. IF you've heard from God, you must bear witness to it. I've done this myself in the pulpit or in the prayer line. When I pray with people at the altar call that may be given in a church as a visiting minister or an elder in my home church, God will sometimes give me a word of exhortation, wisdom or knowledge to the person I am ministering to that I trust ministers grace, comfort, admonition and encouragement to them. But anything spake in the name of God will never contradict the written Word of God, and isn't to be some new source of divine revelation that supersedes the Bible. That's one of the greatest digs of cessationists against those who hold that there's a God in Heaven who speaks to His people yet today. Christians who understand the balance don't make that mistake - it's the immature, spiritually warped and the ignorant who do.

New Testament examples abound where the early church recognized and welcomed such intimate and immediate communion with God as being exhortational, edifying and encouraging in nature and not the source of doctrine. So I will prophecy as God grants .. not this kid in Himself

And I think that there's a lot to be said about the God who is THERE, the Lamb upon the Throne, who sometimes is just THERE to be worshipped and praised and adored .. despite His silence. The trials I am facing right now and in my past life - and I expect in the future - will be teaching that anew. I'd hope Christians out there would know the difference between such a Lord and the tragically unnecessary FEAR that drives us to put words in His mouth He never spake.

agape
rafael