The Deranging Of The Guard: How Cults Find The Times They Are A Changing

Things increasingly are not what they seem any more when it comes to the world of Christian countercult and discernment ministry.
 
It is sobering when you realize that a co-belligerant in the war between the truth of Scripturally based Christian faith and life and the error of unscripturally founded antichristian spirituality that you thought stood with you turns out to have their own agenda. They have become the new guard for the new advance of cultic flanking that still targets the Christian church, having chosen to selectively abandon discernment and countercult work.
 
In case you're not aware of what this word means, in our admittedly humble yet firm calling to ministry, Spiritwatch Ministries is fully engaged in what is known as countercult ministry.Allow me to define it a bit more from our perspective (this is taken from our FAQ page on the site)

The Scriptures have made it crystal clear that the prophecies about the end of all things and Christ's Second Coming would be foreshadowed by a tidal wave onslaught of deception. The explosive proliferation of unorthodox and aberrant religious activity in the past thirty years is , we feel, the fulfillment of this stark and sobering prophetic warning by Christ. Therein lies the critical need for a never ending vigilance against the onslaught of heresy and a never ending readiness to provide a reasoned response to its seductive advances - through upholding Christian orthodoxy and engaging in countercult work.

Countercult ministry is a militant response to this challenge of Satan. Dr. Gordon Lewis' remarks on this are sobering and to the point as he sought to highlight the high stakes involved:

" .. we are led to specialize in delivering people from counterfeit religions. .. we seek to expose (1) deceptive teachings, (2) immoral ways of life, and (3) oppressive ministerial, missiological tactics, like heavy-handed shepherding of every detail of life in religions, cults and the occult. But these are two-edged swords that have a way of cutting against aberrant Christians as well as cultists. Our battle is not only against the religious oppressors of this dark world, but also against 'the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms' (Eph. 6:12) .. Among the evils we deplore in the cults are abuses of human rights, destructive violence, institutionalized violence, and the undermining of the family and the inhuman exploitation of people in the cults. We must deplore those evils even more if they occur among missionaries to the cults or aberrant Christian groups."

That's why we do what we do. The kind of ministry we offer to our fallen world is sorely needed everywhere, especially when churches and pastors seem so clueless about the issues at hand. We counselled a woman recently whose husband's involvement in a cult compelled her to seek a counselling session with their pastor. He'd already stopped going to church, reckoning their parish to be a lair of demonic darkness. After two hours, the pastor concluded that nothing he'd said penetrated her husband's confident veneer and that he would march out flush with pride over his martyr's stance, which is just what his cult leader had already programmed him to adopt as the godly perspective on the matter.

And the band plays on, even as certain researchers sniff over footnotes and imagined slights against "true understanding." Such situations highlight how ill prepared Christian churches largely are to handle the spiritual, let alone social challenges of cultism. We offer a source of objective and purposeful truth as well as counsel to assist the victims of cultic totalitarianism, along with a Biblical Christian and pastoral perspective to them. We research and do what we can to spread the world about the unique and aberrant spirit of each cult group's deceptive operation and we've been able to help many over the years.

However, as the endtime apostacy lurches on, the undercutting of countercult work goes on like a steady water boarding on the body politic of the Christian Church that actually seeks it out. Increasingly, it seems that the hour of compromise has arrived and is even now at the doors of the Christian countercult community.

Things, Jesus said, that would happen .. From the Religious Researcher blog .. a worthy blog worth visiting

According to an article posted online two days ago at Christianity Today, “Two notable critics have changed their minds on the controversial ‘local churches’ movement that follow the teachings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.” The two critics are Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute (CRI), and Gretchen Passantino Coburn, director of Answers in Action (AIA). The article refers to a booklet to which Hanegraaff and Passantino Coburn contributed and that the Defense and Confirmation Project, a pro-Local Churches group, published in November 2007. Entitled The Local Churches: “Genuine Believers and Fellow Members of the Body of Christ”, the booklet includes “Testimonies” (as the title page quite correctly calls them) from Hanegraaff, Passantino Coburn, and Fuller Theological Seminary. Fuller’s contribution is a statement representing the assessment of Richard Mouw, the school’s president, and two other Fuller professors.

I have been quite reluctant to enter the fray of this debate, which has actually been going on for several years, but have decided now to say something.

This blog entry, written by Robert Bowman, the director of the Institute for Religious Research can read in full here. It raises once again this very issue, one which the Christian countercult community ignores at it's ultimate peril.

The history in recent years of lone ranger countercult researchers is depressing. We've beheld entirely too many instances coming up in which personal zeal and conviction have spilled over into divisive and polarizing contentions waged more for market share of self-accreditation then Christian apologia. For too long, academics and iconoclasts have assailed the countercult enterprise as one fraught with sloppy research, bad presuppositions and just outright meanspirited and sectarian myopia more concerned with "border maintenance" then with "missional" outreach to cults. Click here to read one cult's apologist's dismissive comments on their abortive efforts to bridge the wide divide between them and orthodox Christianity. And read how a seminary professor, in the height of a presumption difficult to understate, decided to apologize to the LDS Church on behalf of the Evangelical church for what he said were Evangelical misrepresentations of Mormon errors - a man who superintends the development of Evangelical ministers and church leaders.

Now we're finding this perplexingly unwarranted position becoming more and more the norm by the countercult community. And now, with Rob Bowman's post, in response to that Christianity Today article, a few things come to mind here that I think need to be said as a director of Spiritwatch Ministries.

Hank Hanegraaf is an intelligent Christian man who feels called to speak to issues concerning apologetical and theological controversy. He's been doing this at CRI since the death of Dr. Walter Martin. However, he is as equally polarizing a figure in countercult and apologetic circles as he is in the public eye. I know many fellow EMNR members, for example, who have had major problems with his ministry for many years. Many other apologetical and countercult researchers and writers who at one time were all on staff at CRI have long ago bolted and started their own ministries elsewhere (from Robert Bowman to Paul Carden) due to Hank's rather autocratic manner and for many other questionable things too numerous to get into here. That should say something.

Why he decided to leave California for North Carolina isn't clear to me, but there were an awful lot of controversies he left in the dust there. He now lives pretty comfortably in North Carolina - at least as cushily as he did in Southern California.

Personally, I have nothing against him. But Hank is one of the most abrasive people I've ever heard when it comes to speaking apologetically and defending the Gospel. It sticks out like a sore thumb when he gets on the radio and when he makes his teaching tapes. His brilliance is probably equalled by his apparent disregard for civility. There's a lot of what he says in his Christianity In Crisis and Counterfeit Revival books that is true but that's because he rides shotgun on the research labors of CRI staffers who do most of the collection and analysis of the materials he reviews to make his case. He may be true many times, but even then, HOW he says it makes him sound divisive, arrogant and puffed up with superiority.

Listen to the audiobook version of Christianity In Crisis as he reads his material and you can see how absolutely vicious he sounds. I think he has real and personal issues that lie behind the spleen venting he uses this on air and on the soundstage. I suspected this years ago and was taken to task by a countercult leader for sounding so subjective about telling him that I felt something wasn't quite right with Hank's approach. However, there's just a bit of the Bible about the fruit of the Spirit that Hanegraaf needs to review which my associate might agree with at this point.
For this and other reasons (like his lavish lifestyle, treatment of other Christian researchers at one time under his direction, and questionable fund raising -- as well as his siding with the cultic Local Church at a time when this antichristian cult was suing a Christian publisher and the Christian apologist whose book they hated), we long ago decided that we will not endorse Hank's work or CRI. You will not find a link to CRI on the Spiritwatch website.

And now, since Gretchen Passentino Coburn is persisting in lining up behind Hanegraaf's profoundly inexplicable and flawed defense of the Local Church, our lamentable response is to have to remove her Answers In Action website link off our site as well. We deeply regret having to come to this conclusion.

What all of these religious muddlers fail to realize is how much of a part of the Trojan Horse of error they've become part and parcel of. They've become by default accomplices to the cultism and end time deception that is being wheeled into the last remaining strongholds of discernment that remain in the church today. They have become the block for the end run of apostacy in our latter times. In their concerted efforts to advance objectivity, they have become the friend of error on the grounds of a quixotic position in which to win those in error, they advance compromises of Biblical truth.

It's a sad day, I fear, but one which guarantees the need for even greater effort to sound the alarm.

That's life in the End Times for you.

Too Late At Night Department: Enjoy A Cheezy Christian Video From The 1980's With A Great Message

After finishing a long and grueling reedit of some pages on the website, after 10 numbing hours of work helping Mr. Whirlpool support our ministry, I wanted to try to start getting a post up about a lot of the troubling things of the End that daily confront us which we all pretty much ignore as we slouch to Gommorrah. However, in lieu of sobering commentary about our apostate age which my tapped out intellect refuses to assemble, thought I just would let a video do some talking.

Yeah, it's the Seventy Sevens. With a pretty silly Christian video from the mid 1980's. This was featured on our YouTube channel and I'm grasping at straws as my brain misfires here. But I gotta get something out there .. and I hope this gives someone visiting the blog who sees "the light" pouring in from blacklit holes of spiritual corruption a chuckle .. or a cuff of the ears.

"Join Us": Quite Possibly Another Best Video On Cultism Of All Time

December was a tough time for me. Some personal struggles contributed to an inability to do any further blogging since November. But, by the sheerest grace of God in Christ by the Spirit, I hope to blog more regularly this new year. I hope that aside from reporting on the end time apostacy that continues to march across the land, that more of the grace that much more abounds where sin runs rampant will shine through here.

Starting with my shamelessly whole hearted endorsement of what I think is quite possibly "another" best video on cultism of all time.

I've heard about this movie for a year or so, but finally stumbled across a promotional clip for it on the Vision TV network, a Canadian cable system, as they were remembering the 30 year anniversary of the Jonestown horror, something that for all too many is ancient history about "those people" on the fringe, wackos they'd NEVER get involved with.

Once I viewed this harrowing and haunting clip, I was absolutely owned. When I saw Liz Shaw of Wellspring involved and saw what had to be the long, winding almost endless back country roads leading to Wellspring (we know because Joy and I have been there), I knew immediately this was going to be a powerful work. That word doesn't come close to describing how profoundly, utterly absorbing this film became for us.

The DVD cover for the film, which you can buy, says

"There are thousands of cults in America. This is the story of one of them."

The story is actually far from over ..

For more information on the film and the people whose haunted lives are so vividly captured in it, visit the official website for "Join Us" and catch even more clips of the movie.

We are hoping to secure permission for a showing of "Join Us" in Cleveland within the next couple of months. Stay tuned!

God Still Runs The Show: Post Election Ennui & Truth Telling

From what I've read, seen and heard over the past two years on both sides of the political snakepit, one would have assumed that either the Antichrist or his False Prophet were coming to power. This was a pretty feral time of political warfare.

The heated discussions in the mall and in the workplace, the emails my Christian friends flooded my inbox with, as well as the posts here on this forum - if they were to be believed - asserted an arrival of the Dark Ages one way or the other and demanded we get out and vote it all away.

Well as the clean up in Grant Park in Chicago continued, I woke up this morning and was able to get out of bed myself. My beautiful wife was snuggled next to me.

I discovered that the electricity is still on.

The sun is right now beginning to rise over the Chilhowee mountains with the promise of a beautiful fall day in East Tennessee.

Last night the moon didn't turn blood red and fall into the sea.

And now we see when American democracy works once again and our nation chose who it wanted as its next president. The millions of man hours and billions of dollars spent by an American electorate displayed our country at its best and at its worst.

Certain elements of the Christian Church were hysterical in defending one side or the other, ordaining fasting and prayer to head off the Great Apostacy or introduce a blue colored Change Train to take us into a new human Millenium.

Through it all, indeed, above it all, an old song rings in my head ..

Our God reigns .. Our God reigns ..

In the end, American political tradition has determined who will become the lead ringmaster of the political circus in Washington. A whole new administration filled with its agendas, paybacks, idealism and naked grabs for power will rotate into the Big Top. He will become an anointed cherub or a tool of Satan to one side or the other. It would not have mattered whether it was Democrat or Republican. The end remained the same since human hearts and America's march into the end times continues ..

While the triumph of one party goes on and another bows out in defeat and the people of America shout, blog, curse and scream over the perceived direction we're supposedly going to go, once more, I see, we're doing it entirely with the belief that one side or the other is going to run the show. Churches filled with Christians who thought Change would come with a new face on the throne in the White House are among them.

Let the Word of God stand and remind us of a couple things ..

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. They are brought down and fallen: but we are risen, and stand upright. For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness. Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him. I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly: and to the wicked, Lift not up the horn: Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck. For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another

Newsflash: God wasn't surprised last night. One wonders, the way some spoke, that He was nervously sweating out watching the polls close, squirming on the edge of the Throne. Things are going as they were going to go. Regardless who you voted for, what your convictions, or whatever any of the legions of political pundits, late night talking heads, and oracle spouting prophets may fulminate, let's not forget what the living Word of God says here.

Let's rejoice and praise God for what He's been doing, is doing and will CONTINUE to do, quite without our help .. and that's rule and reign from heaven above, with wisdom, power and love. Our God is STILL an awesome God. Things are moving along to the final consummation of the ages .. to the Day of the Lord just ahead ..

No matter what Bill Maher or Newt Gingrich says.

Political Pietism: An article ahead of its' time ..

I normally don't tackle politics here but there's a point to this brief commentary:

With the headlong collision of presidential elections on the way, one wonders if America might be best served by considering the third party candidates who will be on ballots nationally but who will be largely invisible and off the radar of American voters this year as in most all other Presidential election years. That's because the American electorate are all largely lemmings and they aren't going to act a whole lot more differently this year then in 2000 when third party candidates had their best shot at becoming a real voice in American political change.


There aren't deep enough wells of political consciousness (spelled critical thinking) among Americans to vote anything but Democrat or Republican. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns demonstrate a ruthless energy in spinning the facts about one another and their own policies even as we speak through the mass media. Both demonstrate an inordinate ability in evading any real answers to the challenges an American President will need to deal with in the next four years. So therefore, we're stuck with them. There's no sufficient depth of mass outrage and real taste for change to look beyond both parties. No one wants to gamble on the unknown and the third parties have utterly failed to attract attention to their platforms since most Americans are too disinterested enough to engage in real reflection, let alone political passion, that might fire a new third part alternative.

And any third party, regardless who they are, are going to have insurmountable odds in cracking the liberal bias of the mass media and gain sufficient respect to garnish the kind of attention they'll lavish on things Republican or Democratic. So it's a wrap as far as I see it. Unless the third parties consistently master and then sustain an eye catching campaign that engages those voters who look beyond the obvious and encourages them to critical political thought, it ain't going to happen and I'm not going to waste an ounce more of my own taps of idealism on a battle that won't be won.

But that surely won't ever stop the continued Red vs Blue state antagonism from rearing it's head anyway. The inevitable obliteration between the circles of secular civic duty and spiritual Christian influence in American politics gets particularly noticeable every four years when the more outspoken and activistic circles of evangelicalism get involved. This hasn't been lost on Christian observers as well as less reverent ones like Bill Maher and the producers of "Jesus Camp" who see this ugly diffusion. They raise a stink over religion being visible in the secular seats of American political discourse ... and an equally loud rhubarb has been sounded by Christians who refuse to allow encroaching and antichristian secularism to dominate the debate.

In so doing, however, Christians can certainly seem as dense as their secular counterparts.

One such Christian observer, pastor Joseph McAuliffe of a Tampa, Florida congregation penned the following essay in the June 1993 issue of Charisma, barely four months after Bill Clinton first became president of the United States in November, 1992: it bears out what we've observed:

POLITICAL PIETISM by Pastor Joseph R. McAuliffe, Tampa, FL (Charisma, June 1993)

Considering his political leanings, it's not surprising that President Clinton would be endorsed by homosexuals, radical feminists, ultraliberals and MTV rockers. What does surprise me is the widespread support Clinton is enjoying from the Christian community, particularly the charismatic group some refer to as "the prophetic movement."

A recent copy of The Morning Star Prophetic Bulletin featured an article titled, "The Clinton Administration: Its Meaning and Our Future," which was discussed in the Editorial column of the March Charisma. The Morning Star article is based on a dream that well-known prophet Paul Cain received prior to the election - a dream that predicted Clinton's win.

Cain's interpretations of why God wanted Clinton to win is, in my opinion, dubious, if not altogether amiss. Paul Cain's revelation contains several salient admonitions such as the importance of humility and prayer. But overall, I believe it is misguided political pietism.

Cain claims that he "saw the Lord putting His Spirit upon Bill Clinton and changing him into another man just as he did King Saul." Cain says God is going to give Clinton "the power of the Holy Spirit to lead this country. What some people in the church regarded as a defeat is actually a blessing from the Lord. "If the church will pray for this, it will come to pass" (emphasis mine).

That last phrase is most telling. If Clinton turns out to be in the future what he's been in the past - a tax-and-spend statist of questionable morals who espouses abortion and homosexual rights - then it's the church's fault for not praying. That seems lame to me. I know God works through prayer, but doesn't the Bible teach that He distributes His Spirit principally in terms of His initiative and calling?

Sounding like the chairman of the Democratic party, Cain says the Lord showed him that Clinton's "waffling on the issues" was "really a genuine openness...to do what is right and fair." The Lord said that Clinton "was a listener" and that listening "is a demonstration of humility."

Since the inauguration and Paul Cain's prophetic dream, we have witnessed the "humble listener" appoint a cabinet comprised of all pro-abortion leftist Democrats with no track record of upholding biblical values. Listening is an important social skill, but God admonishes us to "take care what you listen to" (Mark 4:24, NASB).

The Morning Star article makes a statement typical of' the latent anti-doctrinal disposition of the prophetic movement: "In many ways it is better to have wrong doctrines with humility than to have right doctrines with pride."

That's the kind of aphorism you might find in a Kahlil Gibran greeting card. Innumerable blunders have been inflicted upon humanity by humble bumbles. The unorthodox Gandhi, Sun Myung Moon, Mary Baker Eddy and Albert Schweitzer were all theologically misguided despite their reputed humble bearings. Sometimes it's better to have right doctrines with a little arrogance like Athanasius, Martin Luther, John Calvin and even the apostle Paul, who once declared that the apostolic pillars "added nothing" to him (see Gal. 2:6).

Cain correctly predicts that, like Solomon, Clinton's first test would be "the issue of life" - but he contends that if the church would repent and pray, the outcome would be different.

Well, on January 22, (1993) with more than 100,000 God-fearing citizens gathered in Washington, D.C., to pray for the unborn and millions more praying in their home churches, Clinton swiftly issued five executive orders making it easier to obtain an abortion. In April, he proposed revoking the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits funding abortions with tax dollars. The following week he recommended the federal health insurance policies include funding abortions.

Are we supposed to believe this happened because Christians didn't repent or pray enough?

In Cain's dream, God reportedly blames the church for the moral degeneration in America. So corrupt politicians, porn-peddlers, leftist educators and criminals are all absolved from blame for the moral woes of our nation. Certainly the Church needs reformation, but should it be the scapegoat for America's sins?

Cain's dream ends with a call for the church to be humble and pray accompanied by the promise that, if we do, the Lord will "give us great cause for rejoicing." That would be swell. I pray that Bill Clinton does experience a Nebuchadnezzar-type conversion, but it's more likely that he and Hillary will be a repeat of Ahab and Jezebel.

I believe God gave us Bill Clinton not to bless this country, but to judge us for our rebellion. Perhaps the damage that Clinton will inflict upon America will humble this nation and turn us to God. But I fear the effect of Cain's prophecy will be to turn Christians away from the public square and back to the monastery.


Joseph R. McAuliffe pastors Tampa Covenant Church in Tampa, Florida.

The Deconstruction Of An Atheist: Following Evidence Can Be Enlightening

Reasons To Believe is one of the wonderful group of Christians in the Body of Christ who are devoted to the noble task of defending the faith from a more classical apologetics stance that grapples head on with the challenges posed by skeptical question and secular attack. These are the kinds of issues raised by agnostics, atheists and those raised in the postchristian era we live in that is becoming as pagan and devoid of the Judeo-Christian frame or theistic reference to reality that we've taken for granted. This is the kind of worldview that our secular age on this side of the Enlightenment has come to increasingly prefer, one in which Christianity is just one of many choices in the metaphysical marketplaces that's been tasted and found wanting.

So when one of atheism's most erudite spokesmen, British philosopher and author Anthony Flew announced that he was abandoning atheism for a theistic worldview that posited the existence of a Creator a few years ago, there was no little fanfare in those corners of the world where secular atheism has reigned as its own religion of reason.

You can read how Mr. Flew arrived at his conclusion by clicking HERE.

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.