"Diaprax and the Church: Manipulating the Church into Globalism"
Reviewed by Dr. Bill Crump
For anyone who's ever wondered what exactly constitutes the "Hegelian dialectic," how it operates with the concept of "praxis" to create "diaprax," and how diaprax has been utilized to brainwash people and restructure the modern Church, then this is the video to study.
Dr. Robert Klenck, a Christian and fairly young orthopedic surgeon from southern California, presents a most exhaustive review of atheistic and humanistic influences that drive the so-called Church Growth Movement (CGM) in this two-part seminar. Part I is entitled "How the Church Is Incorporating the Diaprax and Why"; Part II is entitled "Manipulating the Church into Globalism." The video runs approximately 2 hours 13 minutes. Dr. Klenck has researched these topics for several years, after this philosophy infiltrated his own church. He abundantly counters this man-made philosophy with the Word of God using the KJV, and he boldly reveals the single, driving force that is truly behind the whole CGM: Satan himself, who is using the movement to destroy the New Testament Church.
CGM has many aliases, including "Seeker-Sensitive Church,"
"User-Friendly Church," "Purpose-Driven Church," "Cell or Meta Church,"
"Mission-Driven Church," "Disciple-Making Church," and "The 21st-Century Church."
CGM defined: CGM is the utilization of modern, secular marketing techniques by the Church in order to draw and hold large numbers of people by meeting their "felt needs." The Church then "converts" and "disciples" these people through the use of modern, organizational management ("total quality management-style") techniques, so that they can effect "change" in the community and the world.
CGM accomplishes this through diaprax, which involves practicing ("praxis") the Hegelian dialectic ("dia") process repeatedly, in order to achieve gradual, incremental, and continual CHANGE (aka innovation).
The Hegelian dialectic, then, is developmental and evolutionary, with the end point being complete perfection; i.e., man can become God apart from God. The Hegelian dialectic principle is "synthesis" + "antithesis" = "consensus." The Church uses diaprax by purposefully bringing believers (synthesis) together with unbelievers (antithesis) to discuss moral and social issues through seeker services, "Bible study," and small groups. Such meetings always utilize a "facilitator" (aka change agent, group leader) to achieve a predetermined outcome among the group (consensus). With each meeting, the believer is gradually moved away from his/her original position of moral absolutism in order to get along with the group as a whole (consensus - "go along to get along"). The facilitators/change agents utilize peer pressure (fear of not belonging to the group) to achieve their goals. The modern Church believes that only through such techniques can we all attain world peace. In reality, diaprax is brainwashing.
The "church" setting and message presented are all designed to be as inoffensive to unbelievers as possible: religious objects like crosses are absent or inconspicuous; the building resembles a theatre without pews; dress is informal and casual; contemporary music, drama, dance, and entertainment reign with high-tech innovations like wide video screens; predominant use of NIV or other New Age Bible translations - avoid KJV; messages are motivational, positive, "feel-good," appeal to "felt needs" and self-esteem, present half-truths, and avoid or gloss over hard-core topics like sin, homosexuality, feminism, hell, etc. The CGM severely compromises God's Word ever so gradually to the point that "believers" eventually sacrifice their Bible-based theology without realizing it.
A highly detailed discussion focuses upon those whom Satan has principally used to orchestrate the CGM, their unbiblical philosophies touted through their various publications, and how they manage to twist Scripture to fit their own agenda: Dr. Rick Warren (pastor of Saddleback Church), Rev. Bill Hybels (pastor of Willow Creek Church), Dr. Robert Schuller (pastor of the Crystal Cathedral), and others like Anthony Robbins, Tom Patterson, Peter Drucker, and Bob Buford. These and others like them defy Ephesians 4:11-13, which states that the purpose of the Church is for perfecting the saints, edifying the body of Christ, and coming together in the unity of faith. The Church is not designed to cater to unbelievers.
The purpose of the CGM is to create a one-world religion and world peace through tolerating and accepting all faiths and creeds (Christian as well as non-Christian) as of equal merit. This is accomplished by nullifying the judgment of Christ and preaching only God's love. This further leads to a paradigm shift, whereby the Patriarch (Father God) shifts to Matriarch (Mother Earth), hierarchal leadership shifts to decentralized leadership (everybody is a "leader," except in crisis situations, when leadership becomes totalitarian), and accountability to God shifts to accountability to our fellow man and the Earth itself.
The video below does an excellent job of exposing the deception of the dialectic process.
December 26, 2008
December 24, 2008
Who is Maitreya?
Maitreya the Betrayer
There's always a Christ wanna be in every age. History shows that No one had claimed to be Christ before Jesus’ time. There were warrior messiahs who tried to liberate the Jewish people before Jesus that were executed by the Romans, But none claimed to be the Christ. Christ is an exclusive Jewish term found in the Holy Scriptures, not in other religions. But many have adopted its terminology ignoring its exclusive meaning of being the Messiah "only one of a kind." God's "only begotten Son" is the only Christ, who is Jesus.
Gamaliel recalls in Acts 5:34-40 of Theudas who gathered 400 people who proclaimed him as the Messiah, he was killed and his followers scattered. At the time of the census, during Jesus birth, Judas of Galilee had much the same result. In 130 AD. It was Bar Cochba who led a revolt in Rome at the time of Hadrian and was killed. Rabbi Akiba was proclaimed as Messiah and his revolt was filled with blood and failed. Then there was Moses of Crete who was to part the waters like the red sea, he jumped in and drowned along with the rest of his followers who could not swim. In 720 AD Their was Abu Isa from Baghdad who became famous for being the only messianic coward on record. The list grows more sordid as history progresses. In 1750 Jacob Frank announced his Messiahship and had Leib Krysa a self proclaimed prophet acting as a John the Baptist proclaim Frank as Christ in Poland. Jacob Frank replaced Jesus in the Trinity as the Son of God and was quickly put in chains by the Roman Catholic poles only to be set free by the Greek Orthodox Russians. He later lived his life in extravagance and he and his followers vanished from the scene.
10 years later Baal Shem Tov, meaning master of the name entered his claim to fame. He is attributed to be the founder of early Chasidim. He was the first to actually have miracles accredited to him. Several years ago the Hasidim claimed Rabbi Snearson as Messiah who had no miracles. But their hopes were dashed when they found he was as mortal as they, when death took him at 90 years old.
All of these false Messiahs had one common operation to the people, they duped them and ruined their lives physically and spiritually.
Our time has produced numerous contenders jockeying to position of a master spiritual leader as the Christ. As the song goes ‘everybody wants to rule the world" From Guru Maharaji, Rajneesh, Sai Baba have been only a few of the enlightened contenders for Christ’s office. The one that is making the most impact is Benjamen creme’s new age Christ Maitreya, who has had a coming out party for over 26 years. Yet he’s voted by new Agers and spiritual globalists alike, as most likely to succeed.
According to Benjamen Creme a major American television network has requested an interview with Maitreya, and He has accepted the offer.
What if he does show up? Well I guess we can take this one step at a time, after all he has pulled this coming out number before. He can be the anti Christ if he really wants to be, after all we live in America!
Who is the Maitreya? We are told by Creme, Maitreya’s the one expected by followers of all religions alike.
He has been expected for generations by all of the major religions Christians know Him as the Christ, and expect His imminent return. Jews await Him as the Messiah; Hindus look for the coming of Krishna; Buddhists expect Him as Maitreya Buddha; and Muslims anticipate the Imam Mahdi or Messiah. " He’s everything to everyone.
At least with the Jews and the Christians we are talking about the Messiah who is in the bible, not so with these other religions who expect a new spiritual teacher. Creme says were wrong to expect Jesus, Maitreya is the master of all masters. He says this because Jesus according to Creme carried the Christ principle and that there are many that can be Christ.
Teilhard de Chardin dubbed the father of the New age Movement has the echo of this occult synthesization continue. "After what will soon be two thousand years, Christ must be born again, he must be reincarnated in a world that has become too different from that in which he lived. (Teilhard De Chardin Christianity and Evolution p. 95) "I believe that the Messiah whom we await, whom we all without any doubt await the universal Christ; that is to say, the Christ of evolution. " (ibid. p. 96) In other words this is one who became God, not God who became man.
"A general convergence of religions upon a universal Christ who fundamentally satisfies them all: that seems to me the only possible conversion of the world, and the only form In which a religion of the future can be conceived. "(Teilhard De Chardin Christianity and Evolution p. 130)
So instead of the world coming to God through Christ, he wants to change the way, and the person to accommodate all. The spirit of tolerance at the expense of truth. Making the way broad so everyone can enter, when Jesus stated "the way is narrow and their are few that go therein."
THE TARA CENTER
The Tara Centers are mainly centers for the dissemination of information about Maitreya, the new age "Christ," it’s headquarters for the establishment of transmission groups and a base of operation for Benjamin Creme. Its paper "the emergence"is distributed to over 70 countries available in numerous languages of which files can be found on the world wide web. This is no underground movement .
The Tara center states similar goals of Maitreya "He does not come as a religious leader, or to found a new religion, but as a teacher and guide for people of every religion and those of no religion. " A guide for those with no religion seems perplexing in the least, especially since he supposedly teaches about God.
They are attempting "to increase the energy which comes from Maitreya and other Masters,"("Help the Heiarchy with Transmission Work’ p.6) the Tara Centers have established what they call "transmission groups" these are meetings which involves group meditation and invoking the manifestation the focused as an aid in passing on the energies of the "Hierarchy" the Hierarchy are spiritually perfected beings who rule the world. They are literally preparing the spiritual climate for the reappearance of "the Christ.-(ibid p.5) The idea of transmission groups receiving energy and mental images from these "perfected men" and projecting that energy is obviously occultic in nature. There is definitely spiritual power involved.
They state his program is because… " At this time of great political, economic and social crisis Maitreya will inspire humanity to see itself as one family, and create a civilization based on sharing, economic and social justice, and global cooperation."
Tara center wants to alleviate the problem of world hunger by promoting the concept of sharing, involving themselves closely with Share International. Share International works in cooperation with The Hunger Project, based in San Francisco, and founded in 1977 by Werner Erhard, founder of EST. (Contrary to what many may think, The Hunger Project is not a charitable organization which feeds the poor. It is an organization which works to influence people's thinking toward redistribution of wealth. (Media Spotlight 1982 "is the anti Christ now here"). The good intentions and works of Creme and Maitreya’s followers give credibility to the world of their false teachings of this Christ replacements plan for spiritual communism.
Benjamen Creme has been called by the masters of wisdom to represent them and prepare the way for the unveiling. So he and others, liken him to John the Baptist for the new Christ. I recently watched a video I have on the last public interview he did on TV on late night America about 10 years ago, you can really tell that he believes what he is saying and doing. Yet sincerity does not equate one with the truth and neither does good works nor the numerous people that follow ones teachings.
Peter Lemesurier, in his book The Armageddon Script states, "The new Messiah should himself believe in his identity and mission sufficiently to inspire others with that same belief-just as Jesus and John the Baptist before him ... the leader must have the courage to step forward and play out his role to the full if the greater prophetic plan is to go forward." This is exactly the role Creme has taken up in this end times script to be played.
But Creme is no John the baptizer as he has nothing to do with Judaism and does not believe in sin "John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins" (Mark 1:4).
Who is Benjamin Creme? He is a 75-year old Scot, a former artist. Since his childhood had an interest in "the esoteric", this is the Ageless Wisdom which has been transmitted by spiritual masters to occult initiates throughout time.
Creme is no sophomore to the occult and the masters of wisdom In 1945. As Creme explains, the "...Maitreya's decision to return to the world with the Hierarchy of Masters" was announced. It was not for several years, however, that Creme would personally be made aware of this announcement.
In 1975, he was given the mission of announcing publicly the coming of Maitreya, at the time Creme did not yet know precisely when that would occur and still does not, although he knows its coming close.
Creme says that Maitreya had spent the last 2,000 years in a “body of light” at a retreat in the Himalayas, but has now resurrected in a physical form that he "self-created" and that he lives and works in London. Many of Maitreya's messages are based around the idea of sharing and global cooperation. (((George Noory broadcast Guest interview: Benjamin Creme January 28th, 2003)
On July 7th 1977, Maitreya Himself informed us that His body of manifestation-the Mayavirupawas totally complete, that He had "donned" it, and that His Body of Light (His Ascended Body) was now at rest in His mountain Centre in the Himalayas. On July 8th, we were told, the Descent had begun (The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom p.20).
The incarnation of Maitreya was complete. ‘Leaving his "center in the Himalayas," he "arrived by airplane" in his new home, London ." (Network News, March 1987, p. 2). I guess he didn’t have an available UFO to travel in. Jesus' followers claim he came just as he left, by the air, despite the Bible saying he will come the same way, not by airplane.
Creme says Maitreya emerged from His center in the Himalayas, when least expected, "like a thief in the night". He took up residence in the Indian-Pakistani community of London. He has been living and working there, seemingly as an ordinary man, His true status known to relatively few. He has been emerging gradually into full public view so as not to infringe humanity's free will.
Now a few things to go over: Creme says this master is not a subscriber to any religion, yet his master is from the Himilaya’s well known for its occult roots and Hinduism. He also moved supposedly where he would be least noticed, into an Indian community which again shows a connection of his ethnicity to this belief system of Hinduism. The language and the practices taught by this Tibetan master of the occult are clearly Hinduistic which is the only religion in the world that promulgates a pantheistic system, a belief of God in all things and we are gods. For all their altruism and idealism there’s not much honesty in putting their cards on the table.
When the Christ returns, He will not at first reveal His Presence, nor will the Masters who precede Him; but gradually, steps will be taken which will reveal to men that there lives among them now a man of outstanding, extraordinary, potency, capacity for love and service, and with a breadth of view, far beyond the ordinary. Men and women, all over the world, will find themselves drawn into the awareness of the point in the modern world wherein this man will live; and from that centre of force will flow the True Spirit of the Christ, which will gradually reveal to men that He is with us. (The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom p.20)
What about this so called slow emergence? Well the Bible has a lot to say about the anti Christ in 2 Thess.2. Where the restrainer (the Holy Spirit) is holding back evil as well as the revealing of the false Messiah. Guess who this is according to the Bible?
This teaching of the God within betrays its origins when Maitreya says that "without detachment," which is the "experience of the Self within" and "...without karma there is no salvation," (Share International, December 1988; Network News, Nov./Dec. 1988, p.1). This is essential Hinduism. So how can this have anything to do with the Christ of the Scriptures?
"As awareness grows, it guides the Self which can then use the mind, spirit and body with intelligence. Balancing energy and environment is the key to salvation," (Network News January 1990, p.1).
They are at odds with the real Christ, neither karma, detachment, energy balancing are not the ways to salvation. The person of Jesus Christ and His death on the Cross is. The apostle Peter explained what true salvation is - it is the person and work of Jesus (Acts 4:10-12). Maybe that’s old fashion In our new era of enlightenment but its still the truth. Truth will never change, just as the God who gave it. In the new age truth is relative so it can be whatever one wants.
Who Are "The Masters of Wisdom," that Benjamen Creme and the new age adherents serve?
Creme in his book The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom p.71 writes they are "men who, through thousands of years of evolutionary progress and numerous reincarnations, have advanced to a high degree of stewardship over the cosmos. Says Creme: There is Hierarchy throughout the system, in fact throughout Cosmos. Our Hierarchy was brought into this planet by the Lord of the World, about 17 million years ago, to oversee the development of early man, individualized about one million years earlier.
All the teachings from the bible are purposely ignored and the meanings are put in occult terms. Alice Bailey one of Creme's mentors gives her interpretation of "followers of the Christ- " refer to all those who love their fellowmen, irrespective of creed or religion. (Externalisation, p. 468) While this may be true in a general sense, it does not mean we toss out the teachings of Christ, the one true God who alone became man. If this meant acceptability to all then Jesus would not have rigorously contended with the Pharisees nor teach that he alone was the way.
According to esoteric teaching, Maitreya manifested Himself 2,000 years ago in Palestine by overshadowing His disciple Jesus — now the Master Jesus. This time Maitreya has come Himself.
The information about Maitreya's emergence has been presented to the public since 1974 by Benjamin Creme, who is the chief editor of the magazine Share International.
The Tara Center, on April 25, 1982, ran a full-page ad in twenty major newspapers around the world, which included New York City, Washington, D.C. London, and Paris. The full page ad boldly proclaimed that the New Age Messiah, identified as the Lord Maitreya, was now alive and ready to assume his rightful place on the throne of world power. The ad bluntly admitted that this goal was at the very essence of The Plan: What is The Plan? It includes the installation of a new world government and new world religion under Maitreya.
Nearly five years later, on January 12, 1987, the Tara Center published a similar full-page ad in USA Today; promoting the lie that "THE CHRIST IS IN THE WORLD." The ad described the Lord Maitreya as "A great World Teacher for people of every religion and no religion."
Did Maitreya Appear, well once again, almost… 11 years later Cremes Maitreya’s time has finally come to make himself public, again . Maitreya has been waiting for a major event which, we may expect to see in the near future and which he announced as early as 1988: an international stock market crash beginning in Japan. Well there have been crashes already and it doesn’t take a economic genius to figure out this will probably occur especially since 10 years have already passed.
According to Creme A major American television network has requested an interview with Maitreya, and He has accepted the offer. The interview will take place at a time of Maitreya's choosing, as yet unannounced. This is the very reason I’m doing writing this as a forewarning of the coming deception, if this comes about as Creme states. Am I saying the Maitreya is the anti Christ, No, although he is already an antichrist among many. Can he be the one? Could be.
Creme writes "There is no doubt that there will be opposition... but the need for change will become so overwhelmingly obvious, that they will find themselves increasingly powerless to stop the momentum." ('Reappearance of the Christ,' 1980)
The overall attitude of New Age movement adherents is summed up in a popular slogan: "My karma just ran over your dogma."
... I shall send My Disciples to You, and they will show you the way, but you must act and follow our plan. "(Messages from Maitreya the Christ p.30 Tara center) There is an ominous note to all his teachings. "Already the leaders gather and seek to implement this Principle... My Teaching is, as ever, simple indeed. Men must share or die." (No. 135) "Once again, I repeat: without sharing and justice, my brothers and sisters, man will know no peace... Take, then, the only open course and trust in sharing to relieve the agony of the world... Know, then, the joys of brotherhood. The Principle of Sharing will lead you thereto. Commit yourselves to this cause and know the joy of service." (No. 133) This is Spiritual communism…Sharing then becomes our self salvation.
"When you see Us you will know that the New Time, the New Age, has begun, the time of sharing and justice, of love and brotherhood, the time of the Law of God." (No. 136)
Who is the us? The masters of wisdom! We are not dealing with a single individual but an entourage of beings who are going to come on the scene all claiming to be Christ’s or have his consciousness. The law they intend to implement certainly is not the scriptures. In Georgia are stones written in the eight languages are their new set of directives. Here is a portion of what may be deemed as the 10 commandments of the new age.
1.Maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetuated balance with nature.
2.Unite humanity with a living new language.
3.Prize truth, beauty, love seeking harmony with the infinite
4. Be not a cancer on the earth, leave room for nature, leave room for nature.
In other words preserve and unite with nature, Gaia mother earth will be worshiped, not father God.
Interestingly Maitreya claims to bring peace and is the prince of peace "I aim to evoke from you the love in your heart. I am the Prince of Peace... I am in your hearts as love... By pure love man will achieve... By my help all shall be achieved." (Message No. 100)
He is the love In everyone's heart! Jesus said the heart is deceitfully wicked who can know it out of it springs forth sin. Matt 15:19 "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication's, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Marks gospel adds a few more activities in mans heart 7:22-23,covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye,… pride, foolishness. "All these evil things come from within and defile a man."
This is willfully rejected as truth by the new age which says WE ARE GOOD AND HAVE BEEN SOLD A LIE THAT WE ARE NOT.
Jesus stated with what they call the Christ spirit on him Jer. 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?
The heart is deceitful enough to have someone exhibit false spirituality Jer. 23:26 "How long will this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies? Indeed they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart,
By Maitreya's own admission he is a [the] son of perdition, who is the man of Sin Jesus warned of. It is he who is in peoples heart which exhibit the fallen nature of man.
I know we have heard all these scriptures before but consider the timing.
Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, "Take heed that no man deceive you." The deception is here.
Matthew 24:5 "For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many." They are claiming to be Christ and deceiving others."
Mt.24:24 "for false Christ's and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive if possible the elect." The reason is to remove the church from its faith which will be done by the miraculous.
THE DAY OF DECLARATION
We are told, At the earliest possible moment, Maitreya will demonstrate His true identity. On the Day of Declaration, the international television networks will be linked together, and Maitreya will be invited to speak to the world.
We will see His face on television, but each of us will hear His words telepathically in our own language as Maitreya simultaneously impresses the minds of all humanity. Even those who are not watching Him on television will have this experience. On this Day, humanity's shared experience of His profound love will cause hundreds of thousands of spontaneous healings to take place throughout the world.
"He has been invited by one of the major networks in this country, one of the big 4 and he will appear they have an arrangement that when he gives the time he can appear within a few days. And he has simply been waiting for an even the predicted in 1988 with a whole series of predictions one by one which have come true and this one is of a world stock market crash which he said would begin in Japan. "
"He is waiting for that same collapse in the east takes place in the west and when it obvious that its going to do so he will take the invitation to speak on this nature. (so he is involved in finances and commerce) Then first in this country then in Japan to come forward to help to mitigate the effects of this crises." (Art Bell July 10, 1998).
A major American television network has requested an interview with Maitreya, and He has accepted the offer. The interview will take place a time of Maitreya's choosing, as yet unannounced. Its time to be prepared, for anything can occur as we are now deep in the time of deception. He’s at the door, look up our redemption is coming, the tribulation comes for those who reject the Christian message of Christ, but the hope of the true Jesus is there for the Christian.
Not to fearful- be hopeful
2 Thess.2:3 "let noone deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition," THE MAN OF SIN.
The time of the true Christ’s coming draws ever closer be watchful, get ready, you know not when your master, (the true Jesus CHRIST) may come. But HE is coming again.
(Click on Topic Title for more info)
There's always a Christ wanna be in every age. History shows that No one had claimed to be Christ before Jesus’ time. There were warrior messiahs who tried to liberate the Jewish people before Jesus that were executed by the Romans, But none claimed to be the Christ. Christ is an exclusive Jewish term found in the Holy Scriptures, not in other religions. But many have adopted its terminology ignoring its exclusive meaning of being the Messiah "only one of a kind." God's "only begotten Son" is the only Christ, who is Jesus.
Gamaliel recalls in Acts 5:34-40 of Theudas who gathered 400 people who proclaimed him as the Messiah, he was killed and his followers scattered. At the time of the census, during Jesus birth, Judas of Galilee had much the same result. In 130 AD. It was Bar Cochba who led a revolt in Rome at the time of Hadrian and was killed. Rabbi Akiba was proclaimed as Messiah and his revolt was filled with blood and failed. Then there was Moses of Crete who was to part the waters like the red sea, he jumped in and drowned along with the rest of his followers who could not swim. In 720 AD Their was Abu Isa from Baghdad who became famous for being the only messianic coward on record. The list grows more sordid as history progresses. In 1750 Jacob Frank announced his Messiahship and had Leib Krysa a self proclaimed prophet acting as a John the Baptist proclaim Frank as Christ in Poland. Jacob Frank replaced Jesus in the Trinity as the Son of God and was quickly put in chains by the Roman Catholic poles only to be set free by the Greek Orthodox Russians. He later lived his life in extravagance and he and his followers vanished from the scene.
10 years later Baal Shem Tov, meaning master of the name entered his claim to fame. He is attributed to be the founder of early Chasidim. He was the first to actually have miracles accredited to him. Several years ago the Hasidim claimed Rabbi Snearson as Messiah who had no miracles. But their hopes were dashed when they found he was as mortal as they, when death took him at 90 years old.
All of these false Messiahs had one common operation to the people, they duped them and ruined their lives physically and spiritually.
Our time has produced numerous contenders jockeying to position of a master spiritual leader as the Christ. As the song goes ‘everybody wants to rule the world" From Guru Maharaji, Rajneesh, Sai Baba have been only a few of the enlightened contenders for Christ’s office. The one that is making the most impact is Benjamen creme’s new age Christ Maitreya, who has had a coming out party for over 26 years. Yet he’s voted by new Agers and spiritual globalists alike, as most likely to succeed.
According to Benjamen Creme a major American television network has requested an interview with Maitreya, and He has accepted the offer.
What if he does show up? Well I guess we can take this one step at a time, after all he has pulled this coming out number before. He can be the anti Christ if he really wants to be, after all we live in America!
Who is the Maitreya? We are told by Creme, Maitreya’s the one expected by followers of all religions alike.
He has been expected for generations by all of the major religions Christians know Him as the Christ, and expect His imminent return. Jews await Him as the Messiah; Hindus look for the coming of Krishna; Buddhists expect Him as Maitreya Buddha; and Muslims anticipate the Imam Mahdi or Messiah. " He’s everything to everyone.
At least with the Jews and the Christians we are talking about the Messiah who is in the bible, not so with these other religions who expect a new spiritual teacher. Creme says were wrong to expect Jesus, Maitreya is the master of all masters. He says this because Jesus according to Creme carried the Christ principle and that there are many that can be Christ.
Teilhard de Chardin dubbed the father of the New age Movement has the echo of this occult synthesization continue. "After what will soon be two thousand years, Christ must be born again, he must be reincarnated in a world that has become too different from that in which he lived. (Teilhard De Chardin Christianity and Evolution p. 95) "I believe that the Messiah whom we await, whom we all without any doubt await the universal Christ; that is to say, the Christ of evolution. " (ibid. p. 96) In other words this is one who became God, not God who became man.
"A general convergence of religions upon a universal Christ who fundamentally satisfies them all: that seems to me the only possible conversion of the world, and the only form In which a religion of the future can be conceived. "(Teilhard De Chardin Christianity and Evolution p. 130)
So instead of the world coming to God through Christ, he wants to change the way, and the person to accommodate all. The spirit of tolerance at the expense of truth. Making the way broad so everyone can enter, when Jesus stated "the way is narrow and their are few that go therein."
THE TARA CENTER
The Tara Centers are mainly centers for the dissemination of information about Maitreya, the new age "Christ," it’s headquarters for the establishment of transmission groups and a base of operation for Benjamin Creme. Its paper "the emergence"is distributed to over 70 countries available in numerous languages of which files can be found on the world wide web. This is no underground movement .
The Tara center states similar goals of Maitreya "He does not come as a religious leader, or to found a new religion, but as a teacher and guide for people of every religion and those of no religion. " A guide for those with no religion seems perplexing in the least, especially since he supposedly teaches about God.
They are attempting "to increase the energy which comes from Maitreya and other Masters,"("Help the Heiarchy with Transmission Work’ p.6) the Tara Centers have established what they call "transmission groups" these are meetings which involves group meditation and invoking the manifestation the focused as an aid in passing on the energies of the "Hierarchy" the Hierarchy are spiritually perfected beings who rule the world. They are literally preparing the spiritual climate for the reappearance of "the Christ.-(ibid p.5) The idea of transmission groups receiving energy and mental images from these "perfected men" and projecting that energy is obviously occultic in nature. There is definitely spiritual power involved.
They state his program is because… " At this time of great political, economic and social crisis Maitreya will inspire humanity to see itself as one family, and create a civilization based on sharing, economic and social justice, and global cooperation."
Tara center wants to alleviate the problem of world hunger by promoting the concept of sharing, involving themselves closely with Share International. Share International works in cooperation with The Hunger Project, based in San Francisco, and founded in 1977 by Werner Erhard, founder of EST. (Contrary to what many may think, The Hunger Project is not a charitable organization which feeds the poor. It is an organization which works to influence people's thinking toward redistribution of wealth. (Media Spotlight 1982 "is the anti Christ now here"). The good intentions and works of Creme and Maitreya’s followers give credibility to the world of their false teachings of this Christ replacements plan for spiritual communism.
Benjamen Creme has been called by the masters of wisdom to represent them and prepare the way for the unveiling. So he and others, liken him to John the Baptist for the new Christ. I recently watched a video I have on the last public interview he did on TV on late night America about 10 years ago, you can really tell that he believes what he is saying and doing. Yet sincerity does not equate one with the truth and neither does good works nor the numerous people that follow ones teachings.
Peter Lemesurier, in his book The Armageddon Script states, "The new Messiah should himself believe in his identity and mission sufficiently to inspire others with that same belief-just as Jesus and John the Baptist before him ... the leader must have the courage to step forward and play out his role to the full if the greater prophetic plan is to go forward." This is exactly the role Creme has taken up in this end times script to be played.
But Creme is no John the baptizer as he has nothing to do with Judaism and does not believe in sin "John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins" (Mark 1:4).
Who is Benjamin Creme? He is a 75-year old Scot, a former artist. Since his childhood had an interest in "the esoteric", this is the Ageless Wisdom which has been transmitted by spiritual masters to occult initiates throughout time.
Creme is no sophomore to the occult and the masters of wisdom In 1945. As Creme explains, the "...Maitreya's decision to return to the world with the Hierarchy of Masters" was announced. It was not for several years, however, that Creme would personally be made aware of this announcement.
In 1975, he was given the mission of announcing publicly the coming of Maitreya, at the time Creme did not yet know precisely when that would occur and still does not, although he knows its coming close.
Creme says that Maitreya had spent the last 2,000 years in a “body of light” at a retreat in the Himalayas, but has now resurrected in a physical form that he "self-created" and that he lives and works in London. Many of Maitreya's messages are based around the idea of sharing and global cooperation. (((George Noory broadcast Guest interview: Benjamin Creme January 28th, 2003)
On July 7th 1977, Maitreya Himself informed us that His body of manifestation-the Mayavirupawas totally complete, that He had "donned" it, and that His Body of Light (His Ascended Body) was now at rest in His mountain Centre in the Himalayas. On July 8th, we were told, the Descent had begun (The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom p.20).
The incarnation of Maitreya was complete. ‘Leaving his "center in the Himalayas," he "arrived by airplane" in his new home, London ." (Network News, March 1987, p. 2). I guess he didn’t have an available UFO to travel in. Jesus' followers claim he came just as he left, by the air, despite the Bible saying he will come the same way, not by airplane.
Creme says Maitreya emerged from His center in the Himalayas, when least expected, "like a thief in the night". He took up residence in the Indian-Pakistani community of London. He has been living and working there, seemingly as an ordinary man, His true status known to relatively few. He has been emerging gradually into full public view so as not to infringe humanity's free will.
Now a few things to go over: Creme says this master is not a subscriber to any religion, yet his master is from the Himilaya’s well known for its occult roots and Hinduism. He also moved supposedly where he would be least noticed, into an Indian community which again shows a connection of his ethnicity to this belief system of Hinduism. The language and the practices taught by this Tibetan master of the occult are clearly Hinduistic which is the only religion in the world that promulgates a pantheistic system, a belief of God in all things and we are gods. For all their altruism and idealism there’s not much honesty in putting their cards on the table.
When the Christ returns, He will not at first reveal His Presence, nor will the Masters who precede Him; but gradually, steps will be taken which will reveal to men that there lives among them now a man of outstanding, extraordinary, potency, capacity for love and service, and with a breadth of view, far beyond the ordinary. Men and women, all over the world, will find themselves drawn into the awareness of the point in the modern world wherein this man will live; and from that centre of force will flow the True Spirit of the Christ, which will gradually reveal to men that He is with us. (The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom p.20)
What about this so called slow emergence? Well the Bible has a lot to say about the anti Christ in 2 Thess.2. Where the restrainer (the Holy Spirit) is holding back evil as well as the revealing of the false Messiah. Guess who this is according to the Bible?
This teaching of the God within betrays its origins when Maitreya says that "without detachment," which is the "experience of the Self within" and "...without karma there is no salvation," (Share International, December 1988; Network News, Nov./Dec. 1988, p.1). This is essential Hinduism. So how can this have anything to do with the Christ of the Scriptures?
"As awareness grows, it guides the Self which can then use the mind, spirit and body with intelligence. Balancing energy and environment is the key to salvation," (Network News January 1990, p.1).
They are at odds with the real Christ, neither karma, detachment, energy balancing are not the ways to salvation. The person of Jesus Christ and His death on the Cross is. The apostle Peter explained what true salvation is - it is the person and work of Jesus (Acts 4:10-12). Maybe that’s old fashion In our new era of enlightenment but its still the truth. Truth will never change, just as the God who gave it. In the new age truth is relative so it can be whatever one wants.
Who Are "The Masters of Wisdom," that Benjamen Creme and the new age adherents serve?
Creme in his book The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom p.71 writes they are "men who, through thousands of years of evolutionary progress and numerous reincarnations, have advanced to a high degree of stewardship over the cosmos. Says Creme: There is Hierarchy throughout the system, in fact throughout Cosmos. Our Hierarchy was brought into this planet by the Lord of the World, about 17 million years ago, to oversee the development of early man, individualized about one million years earlier.
All the teachings from the bible are purposely ignored and the meanings are put in occult terms. Alice Bailey one of Creme's mentors gives her interpretation of "followers of the Christ- " refer to all those who love their fellowmen, irrespective of creed or religion. (Externalisation, p. 468) While this may be true in a general sense, it does not mean we toss out the teachings of Christ, the one true God who alone became man. If this meant acceptability to all then Jesus would not have rigorously contended with the Pharisees nor teach that he alone was the way.
According to esoteric teaching, Maitreya manifested Himself 2,000 years ago in Palestine by overshadowing His disciple Jesus — now the Master Jesus. This time Maitreya has come Himself.
The information about Maitreya's emergence has been presented to the public since 1974 by Benjamin Creme, who is the chief editor of the magazine Share International.
The Tara Center, on April 25, 1982, ran a full-page ad in twenty major newspapers around the world, which included New York City, Washington, D.C. London, and Paris. The full page ad boldly proclaimed that the New Age Messiah, identified as the Lord Maitreya, was now alive and ready to assume his rightful place on the throne of world power. The ad bluntly admitted that this goal was at the very essence of The Plan: What is The Plan? It includes the installation of a new world government and new world religion under Maitreya.
Nearly five years later, on January 12, 1987, the Tara Center published a similar full-page ad in USA Today; promoting the lie that "THE CHRIST IS IN THE WORLD." The ad described the Lord Maitreya as "A great World Teacher for people of every religion and no religion."
Did Maitreya Appear, well once again, almost… 11 years later Cremes Maitreya’s time has finally come to make himself public, again . Maitreya has been waiting for a major event which, we may expect to see in the near future and which he announced as early as 1988: an international stock market crash beginning in Japan. Well there have been crashes already and it doesn’t take a economic genius to figure out this will probably occur especially since 10 years have already passed.
According to Creme A major American television network has requested an interview with Maitreya, and He has accepted the offer. The interview will take place at a time of Maitreya's choosing, as yet unannounced. This is the very reason I’m doing writing this as a forewarning of the coming deception, if this comes about as Creme states. Am I saying the Maitreya is the anti Christ, No, although he is already an antichrist among many. Can he be the one? Could be.
Creme writes "There is no doubt that there will be opposition... but the need for change will become so overwhelmingly obvious, that they will find themselves increasingly powerless to stop the momentum." ('Reappearance of the Christ,' 1980)
The overall attitude of New Age movement adherents is summed up in a popular slogan: "My karma just ran over your dogma."
... I shall send My Disciples to You, and they will show you the way, but you must act and follow our plan. "(Messages from Maitreya the Christ p.30 Tara center) There is an ominous note to all his teachings. "Already the leaders gather and seek to implement this Principle... My Teaching is, as ever, simple indeed. Men must share or die." (No. 135) "Once again, I repeat: without sharing and justice, my brothers and sisters, man will know no peace... Take, then, the only open course and trust in sharing to relieve the agony of the world... Know, then, the joys of brotherhood. The Principle of Sharing will lead you thereto. Commit yourselves to this cause and know the joy of service." (No. 133) This is Spiritual communism…Sharing then becomes our self salvation.
"When you see Us you will know that the New Time, the New Age, has begun, the time of sharing and justice, of love and brotherhood, the time of the Law of God." (No. 136)
Who is the us? The masters of wisdom! We are not dealing with a single individual but an entourage of beings who are going to come on the scene all claiming to be Christ’s or have his consciousness. The law they intend to implement certainly is not the scriptures. In Georgia are stones written in the eight languages are their new set of directives. Here is a portion of what may be deemed as the 10 commandments of the new age.
1.Maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetuated balance with nature.
2.Unite humanity with a living new language.
3.Prize truth, beauty, love seeking harmony with the infinite
4. Be not a cancer on the earth, leave room for nature, leave room for nature.
In other words preserve and unite with nature, Gaia mother earth will be worshiped, not father God.
Interestingly Maitreya claims to bring peace and is the prince of peace "I aim to evoke from you the love in your heart. I am the Prince of Peace... I am in your hearts as love... By pure love man will achieve... By my help all shall be achieved." (Message No. 100)
He is the love In everyone's heart! Jesus said the heart is deceitfully wicked who can know it out of it springs forth sin. Matt 15:19 "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication's, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Marks gospel adds a few more activities in mans heart 7:22-23,covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye,… pride, foolishness. "All these evil things come from within and defile a man."
This is willfully rejected as truth by the new age which says WE ARE GOOD AND HAVE BEEN SOLD A LIE THAT WE ARE NOT.
Jesus stated with what they call the Christ spirit on him Jer. 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?
The heart is deceitful enough to have someone exhibit false spirituality Jer. 23:26 "How long will this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies? Indeed they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart,
By Maitreya's own admission he is a [the] son of perdition, who is the man of Sin Jesus warned of. It is he who is in peoples heart which exhibit the fallen nature of man.
I know we have heard all these scriptures before but consider the timing.
Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, "Take heed that no man deceive you." The deception is here.
Matthew 24:5 "For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many." They are claiming to be Christ and deceiving others."
Mt.24:24 "for false Christ's and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive if possible the elect." The reason is to remove the church from its faith which will be done by the miraculous.
THE DAY OF DECLARATION
We are told, At the earliest possible moment, Maitreya will demonstrate His true identity. On the Day of Declaration, the international television networks will be linked together, and Maitreya will be invited to speak to the world.
We will see His face on television, but each of us will hear His words telepathically in our own language as Maitreya simultaneously impresses the minds of all humanity. Even those who are not watching Him on television will have this experience. On this Day, humanity's shared experience of His profound love will cause hundreds of thousands of spontaneous healings to take place throughout the world.
"He has been invited by one of the major networks in this country, one of the big 4 and he will appear they have an arrangement that when he gives the time he can appear within a few days. And he has simply been waiting for an even the predicted in 1988 with a whole series of predictions one by one which have come true and this one is of a world stock market crash which he said would begin in Japan. "
"He is waiting for that same collapse in the east takes place in the west and when it obvious that its going to do so he will take the invitation to speak on this nature. (so he is involved in finances and commerce) Then first in this country then in Japan to come forward to help to mitigate the effects of this crises." (Art Bell July 10, 1998).
A major American television network has requested an interview with Maitreya, and He has accepted the offer. The interview will take place a time of Maitreya's choosing, as yet unannounced. Its time to be prepared, for anything can occur as we are now deep in the time of deception. He’s at the door, look up our redemption is coming, the tribulation comes for those who reject the Christian message of Christ, but the hope of the true Jesus is there for the Christian.
Not to fearful- be hopeful
2 Thess.2:3 "let noone deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition," THE MAN OF SIN.
The time of the true Christ’s coming draws ever closer be watchful, get ready, you know not when your master, (the true Jesus CHRIST) may come. But HE is coming again.
(Click on Topic Title for more info)
December 21, 2008
Mormon Fiction
Mormon Fiction
McMahon, T.A.
Not long after leaving my screenwriting career in Hollywood, I was hired to assist on a documentary produced by a Christian film company. The subject was Mormonism and the company’s initial screenings were not very successful. They hoped that my film experience and input would help improve the project. I was familiar with the theology of Mormonism through my previous work on a documentary addressing multiple cults; so after reviewing the docudrama a couple of times, my solution was to re-edit the film so that it focused primarily on the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—simply what Mormons believe. That hardly seems like a brilliant idea, or even a particularly interesting one. Perhaps—but then you may not be familiar with the teachings of Joseph Smith and LDS’s so-called Apostles and Prophets.
Historians have marveled at how quickly so many people flocked to Joseph Smith’s new theology. Within a decade he had thousands of followers. A principle reason for this rapid rise in popularity was Mormonism’s startling and distinct contrast with what the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and various other Christian denominations believe. To begin with, Smith taught that most of the beliefs of Christianity had become hopelessly corrupted, including the Bible, and that which had been supernaturally revealed to him would restore God’s truth. The main attraction, however, was theological novelty.
Today the LDS Church has taken a different tactic involving new name preferences (play down “Mormonism,” play up “Church of Jesus Christ”) and other strategies (e.g., create an image of being a part of mainstream Christianity through advertising campaigns). It’s working. After Islam, Mormonism is now the fastest growing religion in the world, although little has changed doctrinally from the Church’s novel beginnings.
Mormonism teaches that God has a physical body and lives on a planet near a star called Kolob. He is but one of an infinite number of Gods, each ruling over his own world located somewhere in the universe. Supposedly, each God has untold numbers of goddess wives who produce millions of spirit children. Amazingly, these spiritual offspring of God and his goddesses must then be birthed through physical beings (non-gods) on earth. This obtains for them the physical bodies necessary to become Gods and goddesses, who create and rule over their own worlds. Polygamy was a major part of Mormonism. It met the need for producing bodies for the spirit babies birthed by multiple mother goddesses. It is still practiced among Mormon sects today. The Latter-day Saints’ focus on the family has more to do with the Church’s biblically unorthodox theology than with domestic well-being.
According to LDS teaching, Jesus was one of those spirit babies (as was his spirit brother Lucifer, who became Satan). The conception of Jesus was unique but not virginal; God, who is physical, had intercourse with Mary. Furthermore, since producing children is critical to a Mormon male’s progression to godhood, Jesus had children through the women (the sisters Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, etc.) who accompanied him. Supposedly, he married them at the wedding feast of Cana.
Mormonism’s salvation accommodates nearly everyone in one “heaven” or another. The death of Jesus on the cross was redemptive only in that it provided physical resurrection (bodies) for all. Obeying the commandments and performing Church duties and rituals are necessary in order to reach the Celestial Kingdom. Those who fall short of such requirements may still enter in as Celestial servants, and, if not, they can abide in the Terrestrial Kingdom. Moral non-Mormons may spend eternity in the Telestial Kingdom. Hell is a purgatory-like place and is eternal only for those few who commit the “unpardonable sin,” such as apostasy. Nearly everyone has a chance to improve his eternal status after death.
Although we’ve heard the saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” Mormonism seriously challenges this idea. The most sacred scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is The Book of Mormon, which reads like rather bizarre but poor fiction trying its best to be taken as revealed truth. If that opinion sounds a bit “intolerant,” bear with me.
The Book of Mormon claims to be a record of two migrations of ancient people to the Americas: the family of Jared around 2000 B.C. and, 1,500 years later, the family of Lehi. The first migration supposedly took place when the Tower of Babel was being constructed. A central character, curiously referred to only as the “brother of Jared,” is instructed by God to build eight watertight, rudderless “barges” to carry people and animals (including bees and fish) to the promised land. The brother of Jared realized that breathing and seeing might become a problem aboard the all-wooden, “tight like unto a dish” crafts and asked God for some design modifications. God told him to bore a hole that could be plugged in the top and bottom of the barges for air, and to place a shining stone in the end of each vessel for light. Chapter 2 of Ether states that the barges were tossed about and “buried in the depths of the sea” many times. This rather implausible sea journey (even for a supernaturally guided one) took nearly a year and delivered the people to the uninhabited Americas. There the Jaredites grew from 30 or so to multiple thousands and then perished because of their wickedness.
In the second migration to the promised land, Israelites left Jerusalem around 600 B.C. on a single vessel guided by a supernaturally provided “brass ball.” Soon after their arrival, Lehi’s sons, Laman and Lemuel, rebelled against God; they and their followers were cursed by God, which resulted in “a skin of blackness to come upon them.” They were called Lamanites, and Mormonism claims that these dark-skinned Hebrews are the original ancestors of the Native Americans of the Western Hemisphere. The followers of Nephi remained “white, exceedingly fair and delightsome” and throughout their history these groups were at enmity with each other.
Shortly after his resurrection, the Book of Mormon claims that Jesus came to America, where he taught the Nephites the gospel (of works salvation), ordained disciples and gave instructions concerning the sacraments of communion and baptism.
Around the fifth century A.D., the Lamanites finally destroyed all the Nephites so that only the dark-skinned people remained in the Americas. Following the final battle, the last surviving Nephite, Moroni, finished recording on plates the events of his people and hid them beneath a rock on the Hill Cumorah (located in upstate New York). Approximately 1,400 years later Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith, Jr., giving him the location of the “gold plates” and instructing him to translate them into English.
The process of translation involved Smith’s putting a “seer stone” into a hat and covering the opening with his face. The stone would then glow, Reformed Egyptian symbols would appear, and the English rendering would manifest below them. Smith dictated the translation and the image remained until it was transcribed correctly. Written in the introduction to The Book of Mormon are these words of Joseph Smith: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”
Is this “the most correct” book on earth? The veracity of that statement is critical to the faith of 11 million members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The 10th President of the Mormon Church, Joseph Fielding Smith, made plain what is at stake: “Mormonism…must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground….” Yet when the “ground” of his having been “a prophet of God” is examined reasonably, it begins to look more and more like swampland.
The errors found within the Book of Mormon have filled volumes. Even the LDS Church has made thousands of corrections since the book’s first edition in 1830. Some problems, however, can’t be resolved without expunging major parts of the book. For example, first and second Nephi were supposedly recorded in the fifth century B.C.; yet, astonishingly, these books quote passages from the New Testament, which was written in the first century A.D.! The book recorded by Alma dates between 92 and 53 B.C., yet uses the word “Christians.” Acts (covering the timespan A.D. 33-62) tells us that name was first used in Antioch to refer to the followers of Christ. Moreover, Nephi, supposedly a Hebrew prophet writing from America, used Greek terms such as “Christ” rather than “Messiah.” It’s also more than odd that these transplanted Hebrews knew far more about Jesus prior to his coming (and alleged later visitation to America) than their brethren in Israel did, while at the same time, details in the Book of Mormon regarding the Mosaic and Levitical laws are almost nonexistent. One glaring example: the necessity of keeping the Passover is neither endorsed nor even mentioned. All of this adds up to an obvious New Testament bias on the part of the writer of this Mormon sacred scripture.
There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence that Joseph Smith had more than supernatural assistance in compiling the Book of Mormon. Speculative writings concerning the origins of the Indians were popularized in his day through such works as Ethan Smith’s The View of the Hebrews and the writings of Rev. Solomon Spaulding. These and other relevant works were certainly available to the Mormon prophet. However, his plagiarism of the Bible is the most convincing indication that Joseph Smith fraudulently produced the Latter-day Saints’ holy writ. Jerald and Sandra Tanner’s Joseph Smith’s Plagiarism of the Bible provides exact quotes and parallels found in both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. They write, “…in the Book of Mormon we have Lehi, the father of Nephi, quoting from the New Testament book of Revelation almost seven centuries before it was written!” Thousands of other examples follow. Furthermore, some KJV quotes include italicized words not found in the Hebrew, Greek or Latin manuscripts from which they were translated, but were inserted by the A.D. 1611 translators simply to clarify the text. Did the inspiration process include translating Reformed Egyptian, written by Hebrew-speaking scribes, into the centuries-later King James English (including some Greek and Latin terms) complete with italicized words, or did Joseph Smith simply contrive the Book of Mormon together with ample help from a KJV Bible and other sources?
The Bible has been scrutinized, analyzed and criticized for thousands of years, yet nothing has been exposed which undermines the Book that declares itself to be God’s Word. Moreover, mountains of evidence from diverse fields of study support its claims of supernatural origin.
Nothing of the kind can be said for the Book of Mormon. Archaeologists have found nothing to support the land, cities, monuments, or peoples the book presents. History, anthropology and linguistics are likewise silent. But one field, molecular biology, has had much to say lately, and it’s not good news for defenders of the Mormon faith.
The introduction to the Book of Mormon underscores an important claim made by this alleged sacred text: “After thousands of years, all [i.e., the white Hebrew descendants of Lehi] were destroyed except the [dark-skinned] Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.” When Joseph Smith was young, one of the popular mysteries of his day was the origin of the Native Americans. It made for interesting speculation but seemed far beyond the possibility of proof. Not so today. The science of DNA supplies such proof—which will stand up in a court of law. It is now possible to trace a person’s DNA back through centuries to accurately determine one’s ancestry.
There is a stunning new video now available on this subject titled DNA vs. The Book of Mormon, which is both groundbreaking and powerful in its simplicity. Among the featured scientists is Dr. David Glenn Smith, a molecular anthropologist and researcher from the University of California at Davis who has studied Native Americans for 30 years, and whose lab is this country’s leading test center for Indian genetics. Here is his view, as well as the consensus of scientists in his field: “If you look at genes in Native Americans…they came from their ancestral populations....You can look for those genes in Jewish populations but you don’t find them...they don’t coincide at all. The homeland of Native Americans is East Asia.”
The video includes anthropologist and Mormon scholar, Thomas Murphy, who summarizes the dilemma for the LDS Church: “…we don’t have a single source from ancient America outside the Book of Mormon validating a single place, a single person, a single event....We don’t have any of that, so the problem that DNA poses for the Book of Mormon, in a sense, exemplifies the difficulties that we already have.…There’s never been any evidence that would show us that there had been an Israelite migration to the New World. Not in genetics or for that matter in any other source, historical, archaeological, or linguistic.”
If there was no Israelite migration, then there were no Nephite or Lamanite people; therefore, Joseph Smith was a fraud and the Book of Mormon—“Another Testament of Jesus Christ”—is patently false. Worse yet, it is soul-damning fiction. That’s the grievous plight of millions of Latter-day Saints faithful to Joseph Smith’s teaching.
If the opportunity arises for you to interact with Mormons, please don’t avoid them. Christ died for them. Although most Mormons cling to their false faith in the Book of Mormon based upon feelings (a “burning in the bosom” experience), their irrationality is being confronted more and more by irrefutable evidence from science. Increasing numbers are facing the fact that they were duped by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, et al. Show them the love of the biblical Jesus by being informed about their beliefs and, most importantly, share with them the truth which set you free (Jn 8:31,32). Pray for a mass exodus from the bondage of Mormonism.
McMahon, T.A.
Not long after leaving my screenwriting career in Hollywood, I was hired to assist on a documentary produced by a Christian film company. The subject was Mormonism and the company’s initial screenings were not very successful. They hoped that my film experience and input would help improve the project. I was familiar with the theology of Mormonism through my previous work on a documentary addressing multiple cults; so after reviewing the docudrama a couple of times, my solution was to re-edit the film so that it focused primarily on the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—simply what Mormons believe. That hardly seems like a brilliant idea, or even a particularly interesting one. Perhaps—but then you may not be familiar with the teachings of Joseph Smith and LDS’s so-called Apostles and Prophets.
Historians have marveled at how quickly so many people flocked to Joseph Smith’s new theology. Within a decade he had thousands of followers. A principle reason for this rapid rise in popularity was Mormonism’s startling and distinct contrast with what the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and various other Christian denominations believe. To begin with, Smith taught that most of the beliefs of Christianity had become hopelessly corrupted, including the Bible, and that which had been supernaturally revealed to him would restore God’s truth. The main attraction, however, was theological novelty.
Today the LDS Church has taken a different tactic involving new name preferences (play down “Mormonism,” play up “Church of Jesus Christ”) and other strategies (e.g., create an image of being a part of mainstream Christianity through advertising campaigns). It’s working. After Islam, Mormonism is now the fastest growing religion in the world, although little has changed doctrinally from the Church’s novel beginnings.
Mormonism teaches that God has a physical body and lives on a planet near a star called Kolob. He is but one of an infinite number of Gods, each ruling over his own world located somewhere in the universe. Supposedly, each God has untold numbers of goddess wives who produce millions of spirit children. Amazingly, these spiritual offspring of God and his goddesses must then be birthed through physical beings (non-gods) on earth. This obtains for them the physical bodies necessary to become Gods and goddesses, who create and rule over their own worlds. Polygamy was a major part of Mormonism. It met the need for producing bodies for the spirit babies birthed by multiple mother goddesses. It is still practiced among Mormon sects today. The Latter-day Saints’ focus on the family has more to do with the Church’s biblically unorthodox theology than with domestic well-being.
According to LDS teaching, Jesus was one of those spirit babies (as was his spirit brother Lucifer, who became Satan). The conception of Jesus was unique but not virginal; God, who is physical, had intercourse with Mary. Furthermore, since producing children is critical to a Mormon male’s progression to godhood, Jesus had children through the women (the sisters Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, etc.) who accompanied him. Supposedly, he married them at the wedding feast of Cana.
Mormonism’s salvation accommodates nearly everyone in one “heaven” or another. The death of Jesus on the cross was redemptive only in that it provided physical resurrection (bodies) for all. Obeying the commandments and performing Church duties and rituals are necessary in order to reach the Celestial Kingdom. Those who fall short of such requirements may still enter in as Celestial servants, and, if not, they can abide in the Terrestrial Kingdom. Moral non-Mormons may spend eternity in the Telestial Kingdom. Hell is a purgatory-like place and is eternal only for those few who commit the “unpardonable sin,” such as apostasy. Nearly everyone has a chance to improve his eternal status after death.
Although we’ve heard the saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” Mormonism seriously challenges this idea. The most sacred scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is The Book of Mormon, which reads like rather bizarre but poor fiction trying its best to be taken as revealed truth. If that opinion sounds a bit “intolerant,” bear with me.
The Book of Mormon claims to be a record of two migrations of ancient people to the Americas: the family of Jared around 2000 B.C. and, 1,500 years later, the family of Lehi. The first migration supposedly took place when the Tower of Babel was being constructed. A central character, curiously referred to only as the “brother of Jared,” is instructed by God to build eight watertight, rudderless “barges” to carry people and animals (including bees and fish) to the promised land. The brother of Jared realized that breathing and seeing might become a problem aboard the all-wooden, “tight like unto a dish” crafts and asked God for some design modifications. God told him to bore a hole that could be plugged in the top and bottom of the barges for air, and to place a shining stone in the end of each vessel for light. Chapter 2 of Ether states that the barges were tossed about and “buried in the depths of the sea” many times. This rather implausible sea journey (even for a supernaturally guided one) took nearly a year and delivered the people to the uninhabited Americas. There the Jaredites grew from 30 or so to multiple thousands and then perished because of their wickedness.
In the second migration to the promised land, Israelites left Jerusalem around 600 B.C. on a single vessel guided by a supernaturally provided “brass ball.” Soon after their arrival, Lehi’s sons, Laman and Lemuel, rebelled against God; they and their followers were cursed by God, which resulted in “a skin of blackness to come upon them.” They were called Lamanites, and Mormonism claims that these dark-skinned Hebrews are the original ancestors of the Native Americans of the Western Hemisphere. The followers of Nephi remained “white, exceedingly fair and delightsome” and throughout their history these groups were at enmity with each other.
Shortly after his resurrection, the Book of Mormon claims that Jesus came to America, where he taught the Nephites the gospel (of works salvation), ordained disciples and gave instructions concerning the sacraments of communion and baptism.
Around the fifth century A.D., the Lamanites finally destroyed all the Nephites so that only the dark-skinned people remained in the Americas. Following the final battle, the last surviving Nephite, Moroni, finished recording on plates the events of his people and hid them beneath a rock on the Hill Cumorah (located in upstate New York). Approximately 1,400 years later Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith, Jr., giving him the location of the “gold plates” and instructing him to translate them into English.
The process of translation involved Smith’s putting a “seer stone” into a hat and covering the opening with his face. The stone would then glow, Reformed Egyptian symbols would appear, and the English rendering would manifest below them. Smith dictated the translation and the image remained until it was transcribed correctly. Written in the introduction to The Book of Mormon are these words of Joseph Smith: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”
Is this “the most correct” book on earth? The veracity of that statement is critical to the faith of 11 million members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The 10th President of the Mormon Church, Joseph Fielding Smith, made plain what is at stake: “Mormonism…must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground….” Yet when the “ground” of his having been “a prophet of God” is examined reasonably, it begins to look more and more like swampland.
The errors found within the Book of Mormon have filled volumes. Even the LDS Church has made thousands of corrections since the book’s first edition in 1830. Some problems, however, can’t be resolved without expunging major parts of the book. For example, first and second Nephi were supposedly recorded in the fifth century B.C.; yet, astonishingly, these books quote passages from the New Testament, which was written in the first century A.D.! The book recorded by Alma dates between 92 and 53 B.C., yet uses the word “Christians.” Acts (covering the timespan A.D. 33-62) tells us that name was first used in Antioch to refer to the followers of Christ. Moreover, Nephi, supposedly a Hebrew prophet writing from America, used Greek terms such as “Christ” rather than “Messiah.” It’s also more than odd that these transplanted Hebrews knew far more about Jesus prior to his coming (and alleged later visitation to America) than their brethren in Israel did, while at the same time, details in the Book of Mormon regarding the Mosaic and Levitical laws are almost nonexistent. One glaring example: the necessity of keeping the Passover is neither endorsed nor even mentioned. All of this adds up to an obvious New Testament bias on the part of the writer of this Mormon sacred scripture.
There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence that Joseph Smith had more than supernatural assistance in compiling the Book of Mormon. Speculative writings concerning the origins of the Indians were popularized in his day through such works as Ethan Smith’s The View of the Hebrews and the writings of Rev. Solomon Spaulding. These and other relevant works were certainly available to the Mormon prophet. However, his plagiarism of the Bible is the most convincing indication that Joseph Smith fraudulently produced the Latter-day Saints’ holy writ. Jerald and Sandra Tanner’s Joseph Smith’s Plagiarism of the Bible provides exact quotes and parallels found in both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. They write, “…in the Book of Mormon we have Lehi, the father of Nephi, quoting from the New Testament book of Revelation almost seven centuries before it was written!” Thousands of other examples follow. Furthermore, some KJV quotes include italicized words not found in the Hebrew, Greek or Latin manuscripts from which they were translated, but were inserted by the A.D. 1611 translators simply to clarify the text. Did the inspiration process include translating Reformed Egyptian, written by Hebrew-speaking scribes, into the centuries-later King James English (including some Greek and Latin terms) complete with italicized words, or did Joseph Smith simply contrive the Book of Mormon together with ample help from a KJV Bible and other sources?
The Bible has been scrutinized, analyzed and criticized for thousands of years, yet nothing has been exposed which undermines the Book that declares itself to be God’s Word. Moreover, mountains of evidence from diverse fields of study support its claims of supernatural origin.
Nothing of the kind can be said for the Book of Mormon. Archaeologists have found nothing to support the land, cities, monuments, or peoples the book presents. History, anthropology and linguistics are likewise silent. But one field, molecular biology, has had much to say lately, and it’s not good news for defenders of the Mormon faith.
The introduction to the Book of Mormon underscores an important claim made by this alleged sacred text: “After thousands of years, all [i.e., the white Hebrew descendants of Lehi] were destroyed except the [dark-skinned] Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.” When Joseph Smith was young, one of the popular mysteries of his day was the origin of the Native Americans. It made for interesting speculation but seemed far beyond the possibility of proof. Not so today. The science of DNA supplies such proof—which will stand up in a court of law. It is now possible to trace a person’s DNA back through centuries to accurately determine one’s ancestry.
There is a stunning new video now available on this subject titled DNA vs. The Book of Mormon, which is both groundbreaking and powerful in its simplicity. Among the featured scientists is Dr. David Glenn Smith, a molecular anthropologist and researcher from the University of California at Davis who has studied Native Americans for 30 years, and whose lab is this country’s leading test center for Indian genetics. Here is his view, as well as the consensus of scientists in his field: “If you look at genes in Native Americans…they came from their ancestral populations....You can look for those genes in Jewish populations but you don’t find them...they don’t coincide at all. The homeland of Native Americans is East Asia.”
The video includes anthropologist and Mormon scholar, Thomas Murphy, who summarizes the dilemma for the LDS Church: “…we don’t have a single source from ancient America outside the Book of Mormon validating a single place, a single person, a single event....We don’t have any of that, so the problem that DNA poses for the Book of Mormon, in a sense, exemplifies the difficulties that we already have.…There’s never been any evidence that would show us that there had been an Israelite migration to the New World. Not in genetics or for that matter in any other source, historical, archaeological, or linguistic.”
If there was no Israelite migration, then there were no Nephite or Lamanite people; therefore, Joseph Smith was a fraud and the Book of Mormon—“Another Testament of Jesus Christ”—is patently false. Worse yet, it is soul-damning fiction. That’s the grievous plight of millions of Latter-day Saints faithful to Joseph Smith’s teaching.
If the opportunity arises for you to interact with Mormons, please don’t avoid them. Christ died for them. Although most Mormons cling to their false faith in the Book of Mormon based upon feelings (a “burning in the bosom” experience), their irrationality is being confronted more and more by irrefutable evidence from science. Increasing numbers are facing the fact that they were duped by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, et al. Show them the love of the biblical Jesus by being informed about their beliefs and, most importantly, share with them the truth which set you free (Jn 8:31,32). Pray for a mass exodus from the bondage of Mormonism.
December 17, 2008
Twilight Series - Confusing Evil with Good
Bringing Twilight out into the Son
Blockbuster books and hit movie confuse evil with good
By Eric Barger
By now most of you have heard about the bestselling Twilight saga series written by Stephenie Meyer. Thus far there are over 17 million books in print from the series. However, if you've been hanging around in a cave somewhere just waiting for a reason to flutter, let me sum up the storyline. Vampires are cool. Some may be bad, but in general Vampires are cool and Edward Cullen is the newest heart throb.
High school junior, Bella Swan, moves from Arizona to Forks on the Washington coast (the setting for the majority of the movie) and falls in love with Edward Cullen, who as it turns out, is a member of a family of vampires who have learned to survive from the blood of animals rather than that of humans.
Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
Meyer, a thirty-something Mormon mother of three from Arizona is the author of the four book series (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn), a novel called The Host and the soon-to-be-released book, Midnight Sun which, unlike the Twilight series, chronicles the saga from Edward's viewpoint rather than Bella's.
Last Friday (Nov. 21, 2008) the first movie ("Twilight") debuted in 3419 theaters nationwide. It came in #1 for the weekend, grossing $70 million and crushing the nearest competitor by a three to one margin. The theater that my wife Melanie and I saw it in was a complex of fourteen screens with three of them playing "Twilight."
Make no mistake this is a buzz among millions of teens right now. One fan website sub heading proudly proclaims it is "For the obsessed Twilight saga fan."
There is a whole market industry based on the books. Twilight has induced a multi-million dollar cottage industry spawning everything from t-shirts and clothing to tattoos and pod casts. As we have noted with other such phenomena, books are being written about the books! Four days after the movie's release I went to a local Walmart to find the store sold out of Twilight series books. Same with the Target across the street. It isn't that they didn't plan; it's just that there is no way to keep up with the current demand.
Nikki Kinke of Deadline Hollywood Daily reported:
"Exit polling showed audiences were 75%/25% female to male, and 55%/25% under or over the age of 25. Fangirls -- or should I say fang-girls -- were buying 5 Twilight tickets per second as of early Friday morning, making it online ticket-seller Fandango's fastest-selling film since The Dark Knight last July. Then the tween and teen females in store bought or homemade Twilight clothes (and even Twilight tattoos) flocked to the first Big Screen version of Stephenie Meyer's bestselling series of Romeo & Juliet-style vampire romance books. Yet the movie adaptation by Melissa Rosenberg was made by start-up studio Summit for only $37M. This will be the start of a big new franchise since a sequel is already in the works -- "New Moon," based on Meyer's second book in the series. The first box office records have already been broken by Twilight's girl power. This is the biggest opening for a female director. Catherine Hardwicke is easily beating Mimi Leder's $41.1M for 1998's Deep Impact. (But with an asterisk since these figures aren't adjusted for inflation, ticket prices, etc.) Twilight will have the 2nd best opening day for a November release behind Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, and the 11th best Friday opening of all time, beating the first Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone, and the 15th best opening day ever. It also scored the 4th best November opening weekend of all time, and the 4th best opening weekend of 2008. It's a defining moment for Summit's start-up studio that had really struggled on its first few releases. On Saturday morning, Summit officially announced the greenlight for the New Moon sequel (I'm told to contain costs the studio is considering making sequels #2 and #3 back to back like other successful franchises have done), and Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen) and Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan) formally thanked fans for their support of what is now a movie franchise. Click here for Article
Speaking of Harry Potter, make no mistake: Twilight is the next Harry Potter. In fact, many are saying, "who's Harry Potter?" Many of the same Potter fans are now loyal to Meyer's saga and it's a logical move for a culture craving supernaturalism. From a school of witchcraft to a clan of vampires, readers and movie goers are again proving how broad the thirst is for mystical power whose source is decidedly not God.
Evil vs. Good or Evil vs. more Evil?
The storyline of Twilight is generally two faceted. It is first "boy vampire meets a mortal girl" and secondarily "'good' vampires fight 'bad' vampires." Then there are the werewolves introduced in the second book, New Moon.
Many of the characters in the novel possess supernatural abilities such as:
- Mind reading
- Levitation
- Lycanthropy (shape shifting)
- Pre-cognitive knowledge of future events - mediumship
- Super strength, hearing and speed
- They also don't eat, sleep or need to breath
A quick reading of Deuteronomy 18:9-12 clearly outline God's final word on many of these vampire attributes. I covered these four verses for over 100 pages in my book Entertaining Spirits Unaware: The End-Time Occult Invasion.
Interestingly, Meyer begins Twilight with the words of Genesis 2:17.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Even though Meyer says on her website that the cover of the book (the apple) symbolizes "forbidden fruit" and that the Genesis scripture reference is related to Bella's eventual understanding of the knowledge of good and evil, the inference of this passage is much more. It is about the fall of mankind and about eternal life (something vampires claim to have). Even Mormon theology would be hard pressed to come up with less than this observation.
The Cullen family is led by Edward's "father" (through vampirism) the "best" vampire, Dr. Carlisle Cullen. The elder Cullen was raised centuries ago by a father who, as an Anglican pastor, hunted witches, destroyed werewolves - and vampires. (Speaking of this in the manuscript Meyer throws a direct barb towards supposedly intolerant, orthodox Christian ministers.) Some believe that due to this background, Dr. Cullen's character seeks to rise above the nature of a vampire becoming a doctor in order to do good and save people. However, what is actually evident here are two disturbing points. First, Meyer has incorporated in Dr. Cullen's makeup the Mormon edict that a person must accomplish their own good acts in order to be redeemed. I commonly refer to this as "works salvation" which is a mainstay taught in every Mormon seminary, church and home. In Mormonism the onus for salvation is all about what a person does for the Mormon Church - instead of what Jesus completely finished for us. (Concerning this, it is interesting that more than one Mormon blog entry has complained that Meyer integrates far too much Mormon doctrine into her books.) Second and most disturbing is the notion that the Cullen's seem to view their state as generally hopeless. This shouts loudly against the omnipotent power of Jehovah God to accomplish deliverance. In a subtle and unspoken manner, the books assert that God is unable to rescue one from an incurable eternal ill such as vampirism is presented to be. Whether vampirism is but a mythical malady or not, this thinking may translate to the reader that Jesus' sacrifice was not sufficient or that it is only by one's own righteousness that freedom (or eternal life) can be attained. The truth is that God is indeed able to deliver anyone and everyone and such deliverance is only available through the power of the Cross! One can argue that vampires either do or do not exist. (I know personally of one very credible person whose testimony recounts actually participating in vampirism to gain supernatural satanic power. However, the point here is that no matter how deep the pit of evil and sin one may be trapped in, Jesus' power is greater. Praise the Lord!
The fact is that the entire Twilight series is glamorizing and promoting vampirism. It is fueling the craving for eternal human life and for dominating super human abilities and strength. In the book and movie Bella powerfully begs her vampire love interest to make her one of his like (by biting her neck of course). Edward restrains himself but only for the sake of drawing out the suspense, for she indeed does join him in vampire status in later books (and in a future movie). Though Meyer is to be commended that Bella's unwanted pregnancy later in the series does not end in abortion one has to wonder if the union of two vampires could produce a God-created human in the first place?
Twilight has been defended as a positive book because it contains no sex, seems to preach abstinence and includes only mild swearing. Whose version of morality is that I ask? This is simply a lesser-than-two-evils approach and while I readily admit that this romantic styled chick flick is far less ominous than a large number of the books and movies out there today, how can a biblically minded Christian endorse it as acceptable for a 12 year-old?
To revisit a theme I wrote and spoke of many times during the height of the Harry Potter fad, the heroes of today are much like the villains I grew up watching on TV. Gone are the likes of Roy Rogers, Ward Cleaver and Red Skelton. The people who we're asked to root for at the movies today act more like the thugs portrayed in 1950's Hollywood entertainment. The marker of truth and what is good and right has surely moved and it hasn't been pretty.
I will admit that in comparison, the content of "Twilight" seems lightweight in the overall scheme of today's motion picture industry. The trailers previewing other forthcoming features that were shown before the screening of the "Twilight" film were frankly shocking and full of occultism and gut wrenching violence. However, have we stooped so low as to say "'Twilight,' with its vampire heroes and PG-13 rating is somehow more acceptable than the more gruesome R rated jobs?" Is "not as bad as" somehow a prerequisite making something OK for our kids? Since when did the "lesser-of-two-evils" become a biblical principle? One needs to be aware that there are Satanists who in real life practice drinking the blood of humans. To many occultists, vampirism is not just a fairy tale but something coveted. No matter how dreamy Hollywood may present Edward Cullen to be or how obsessed some junior higher may become with him, Twilight is nothing short of Satan's cloak of evil; appearing good. Remember, the most deceptive evil is not the most obvious. It is the most subtle. It also induces more people who may be repulsed by overt darkness to begin the journey from right to wrong.
Two Scriptures immediately come to mind here.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! - Isaiah 5:20-21
And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. - II Corinthians 11:14
Four Life Principles
A friend of mine, Lia Carlile, who teaches at a solid Christian school in Washington State addressed this very issue last Friday. She knew, as I did, that even in this good and godly environment that the crazed idolatry brought on by the Twilight series and movie was thriving. My two oldest granddaughters heard Lia speak warning them and their classmates and for good reason. Several of my 12 year-old granddaughters friends had been trying to convince her to both read these 500+ page books and to then go to the movie with them. Thankfully, both my kiddos have voluntarily rejected Meyer's books and shunned the movie with parental intervention.
I want to share with you a few of the points Lia brought up to the students last week. They are reminiscent of things I have said over the last two decades concerning what and who we give our time, mind, money and emotions to. More so, the following points speak as a check list to see if we have fallen into making something besides Jehovah our "god" or if we are on the road toward full blown idol worship.
Lia's points here
Question 1 - Me and God
How is this thing building my relationship with the Lord?
How does my interest in this area compare with my time invested in my relationship with the Lord?
Question 2 - Me and the People Around Me
Is this creating conflict in my family or with others?
Does it offend other believers or is it confusing them in their faith?
What am I saying to my non-Christian friends or what example am I setting for others?
Question 3 - The Bible
What does the Bible have to say about this? Who does it glorify-God or Satan? Jesus or the things of the World?
Question 4 - Me and Twilight (or whatever applies)
How is this affecting what I think about; my attitude, heart, and mind?
Does it help me to do what is right according to God? Or, does it promote things of the World?
Does it distract me from the Lord and my relationships with others? Serving, praying, reading Bible, ministry, etc.
Does it cause me to say, think, or do things that are contrary to Jesus and his life?
Lia outlined many Scriptures in her notes. One passage that I have pointed out often is Colossians 2:8 which warns us to guard against being taken captive by the deceptiveness of the world. This is up to us to do or not do. What will your decision be?
Why Blood?
Leviticus 17 tells us that life is in the blood. This Old Testament teaching from The Law finds unfathomable depths of meaning when one thinks of what Christ's blood represents for all who will believe.
Satan is very interested in the mockery of God's Word, His name and His Cross. Lucifer, as with vampires, is blood thirsty. He would love nothing more than to deceive young, impressionable people - whom God loves and Jesus died for - into somehow believing that eternal life can be attained some other way than through Jesus and His once-for-all sacrifice on Calvary.
Until the final battle has been fought and the Lord has come with His everlasting and perfect peace, Satan will attempt to prevail through manipulating those who he may. Stephenie Meyer is just one in a long line of those who, without any understanding of it, the Evil One has paid big money to for their services. Twilight is more than mere entertainment. To some it has become every bit as important and as captivating as a religion.
The most famous line from the book and movie is Edward Cullen's statement to Bella "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb." This is Meyer's crafty, yet sick play upon biblical words. The truth is that when Satan is vanquished and evil is defeated, then and only then will the lion and the lamb live in harmony - not as a hundred year old vampire and his wanna-be girlfriend. While Meyer's character Bella so flippantly decides that nothing is more important than spending eternity with Edward - regardless of the consequences, shouldn't we be focused on our future eternity with God and on introducing as many to Him before it is too late?
Blockbuster books and hit movie confuse evil with good
By Eric Barger
By now most of you have heard about the bestselling Twilight saga series written by Stephenie Meyer. Thus far there are over 17 million books in print from the series. However, if you've been hanging around in a cave somewhere just waiting for a reason to flutter, let me sum up the storyline. Vampires are cool. Some may be bad, but in general Vampires are cool and Edward Cullen is the newest heart throb.
High school junior, Bella Swan, moves from Arizona to Forks on the Washington coast (the setting for the majority of the movie) and falls in love with Edward Cullen, who as it turns out, is a member of a family of vampires who have learned to survive from the blood of animals rather than that of humans.
Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen
Meyer, a thirty-something Mormon mother of three from Arizona is the author of the four book series (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn), a novel called The Host and the soon-to-be-released book, Midnight Sun which, unlike the Twilight series, chronicles the saga from Edward's viewpoint rather than Bella's.
Last Friday (Nov. 21, 2008) the first movie ("Twilight") debuted in 3419 theaters nationwide. It came in #1 for the weekend, grossing $70 million and crushing the nearest competitor by a three to one margin. The theater that my wife Melanie and I saw it in was a complex of fourteen screens with three of them playing "Twilight."
Make no mistake this is a buzz among millions of teens right now. One fan website sub heading proudly proclaims it is "For the obsessed Twilight saga fan."
There is a whole market industry based on the books. Twilight has induced a multi-million dollar cottage industry spawning everything from t-shirts and clothing to tattoos and pod casts. As we have noted with other such phenomena, books are being written about the books! Four days after the movie's release I went to a local Walmart to find the store sold out of Twilight series books. Same with the Target across the street. It isn't that they didn't plan; it's just that there is no way to keep up with the current demand.
Nikki Kinke of Deadline Hollywood Daily reported:
"Exit polling showed audiences were 75%/25% female to male, and 55%/25% under or over the age of 25. Fangirls -- or should I say fang-girls -- were buying 5 Twilight tickets per second as of early Friday morning, making it online ticket-seller Fandango's fastest-selling film since The Dark Knight last July. Then the tween and teen females in store bought or homemade Twilight clothes (and even Twilight tattoos) flocked to the first Big Screen version of Stephenie Meyer's bestselling series of Romeo & Juliet-style vampire romance books. Yet the movie adaptation by Melissa Rosenberg was made by start-up studio Summit for only $37M. This will be the start of a big new franchise since a sequel is already in the works -- "New Moon," based on Meyer's second book in the series. The first box office records have already been broken by Twilight's girl power. This is the biggest opening for a female director. Catherine Hardwicke is easily beating Mimi Leder's $41.1M for 1998's Deep Impact. (But with an asterisk since these figures aren't adjusted for inflation, ticket prices, etc.) Twilight will have the 2nd best opening day for a November release behind Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, and the 11th best Friday opening of all time, beating the first Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone, and the 15th best opening day ever. It also scored the 4th best November opening weekend of all time, and the 4th best opening weekend of 2008. It's a defining moment for Summit's start-up studio that had really struggled on its first few releases. On Saturday morning, Summit officially announced the greenlight for the New Moon sequel (I'm told to contain costs the studio is considering making sequels #2 and #3 back to back like other successful franchises have done), and Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen) and Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan) formally thanked fans for their support of what is now a movie franchise. Click here for Article
Speaking of Harry Potter, make no mistake: Twilight is the next Harry Potter. In fact, many are saying, "who's Harry Potter?" Many of the same Potter fans are now loyal to Meyer's saga and it's a logical move for a culture craving supernaturalism. From a school of witchcraft to a clan of vampires, readers and movie goers are again proving how broad the thirst is for mystical power whose source is decidedly not God.
Evil vs. Good or Evil vs. more Evil?
The storyline of Twilight is generally two faceted. It is first "boy vampire meets a mortal girl" and secondarily "'good' vampires fight 'bad' vampires." Then there are the werewolves introduced in the second book, New Moon.
Many of the characters in the novel possess supernatural abilities such as:
- Mind reading
- Levitation
- Lycanthropy (shape shifting)
- Pre-cognitive knowledge of future events - mediumship
- Super strength, hearing and speed
- They also don't eat, sleep or need to breath
A quick reading of Deuteronomy 18:9-12 clearly outline God's final word on many of these vampire attributes. I covered these four verses for over 100 pages in my book Entertaining Spirits Unaware: The End-Time Occult Invasion.
Interestingly, Meyer begins Twilight with the words of Genesis 2:17.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Even though Meyer says on her website that the cover of the book (the apple) symbolizes "forbidden fruit" and that the Genesis scripture reference is related to Bella's eventual understanding of the knowledge of good and evil, the inference of this passage is much more. It is about the fall of mankind and about eternal life (something vampires claim to have). Even Mormon theology would be hard pressed to come up with less than this observation.
The Cullen family is led by Edward's "father" (through vampirism) the "best" vampire, Dr. Carlisle Cullen. The elder Cullen was raised centuries ago by a father who, as an Anglican pastor, hunted witches, destroyed werewolves - and vampires. (Speaking of this in the manuscript Meyer throws a direct barb towards supposedly intolerant, orthodox Christian ministers.) Some believe that due to this background, Dr. Cullen's character seeks to rise above the nature of a vampire becoming a doctor in order to do good and save people. However, what is actually evident here are two disturbing points. First, Meyer has incorporated in Dr. Cullen's makeup the Mormon edict that a person must accomplish their own good acts in order to be redeemed. I commonly refer to this as "works salvation" which is a mainstay taught in every Mormon seminary, church and home. In Mormonism the onus for salvation is all about what a person does for the Mormon Church - instead of what Jesus completely finished for us. (Concerning this, it is interesting that more than one Mormon blog entry has complained that Meyer integrates far too much Mormon doctrine into her books.) Second and most disturbing is the notion that the Cullen's seem to view their state as generally hopeless. This shouts loudly against the omnipotent power of Jehovah God to accomplish deliverance. In a subtle and unspoken manner, the books assert that God is unable to rescue one from an incurable eternal ill such as vampirism is presented to be. Whether vampirism is but a mythical malady or not, this thinking may translate to the reader that Jesus' sacrifice was not sufficient or that it is only by one's own righteousness that freedom (or eternal life) can be attained. The truth is that God is indeed able to deliver anyone and everyone and such deliverance is only available through the power of the Cross! One can argue that vampires either do or do not exist. (I know personally of one very credible person whose testimony recounts actually participating in vampirism to gain supernatural satanic power. However, the point here is that no matter how deep the pit of evil and sin one may be trapped in, Jesus' power is greater. Praise the Lord!
The fact is that the entire Twilight series is glamorizing and promoting vampirism. It is fueling the craving for eternal human life and for dominating super human abilities and strength. In the book and movie Bella powerfully begs her vampire love interest to make her one of his like (by biting her neck of course). Edward restrains himself but only for the sake of drawing out the suspense, for she indeed does join him in vampire status in later books (and in a future movie). Though Meyer is to be commended that Bella's unwanted pregnancy later in the series does not end in abortion one has to wonder if the union of two vampires could produce a God-created human in the first place?
Twilight has been defended as a positive book because it contains no sex, seems to preach abstinence and includes only mild swearing. Whose version of morality is that I ask? This is simply a lesser-than-two-evils approach and while I readily admit that this romantic styled chick flick is far less ominous than a large number of the books and movies out there today, how can a biblically minded Christian endorse it as acceptable for a 12 year-old?
To revisit a theme I wrote and spoke of many times during the height of the Harry Potter fad, the heroes of today are much like the villains I grew up watching on TV. Gone are the likes of Roy Rogers, Ward Cleaver and Red Skelton. The people who we're asked to root for at the movies today act more like the thugs portrayed in 1950's Hollywood entertainment. The marker of truth and what is good and right has surely moved and it hasn't been pretty.
I will admit that in comparison, the content of "Twilight" seems lightweight in the overall scheme of today's motion picture industry. The trailers previewing other forthcoming features that were shown before the screening of the "Twilight" film were frankly shocking and full of occultism and gut wrenching violence. However, have we stooped so low as to say "'Twilight,' with its vampire heroes and PG-13 rating is somehow more acceptable than the more gruesome R rated jobs?" Is "not as bad as" somehow a prerequisite making something OK for our kids? Since when did the "lesser-of-two-evils" become a biblical principle? One needs to be aware that there are Satanists who in real life practice drinking the blood of humans. To many occultists, vampirism is not just a fairy tale but something coveted. No matter how dreamy Hollywood may present Edward Cullen to be or how obsessed some junior higher may become with him, Twilight is nothing short of Satan's cloak of evil; appearing good. Remember, the most deceptive evil is not the most obvious. It is the most subtle. It also induces more people who may be repulsed by overt darkness to begin the journey from right to wrong.
Two Scriptures immediately come to mind here.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! - Isaiah 5:20-21
And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. - II Corinthians 11:14
Four Life Principles
A friend of mine, Lia Carlile, who teaches at a solid Christian school in Washington State addressed this very issue last Friday. She knew, as I did, that even in this good and godly environment that the crazed idolatry brought on by the Twilight series and movie was thriving. My two oldest granddaughters heard Lia speak warning them and their classmates and for good reason. Several of my 12 year-old granddaughters friends had been trying to convince her to both read these 500+ page books and to then go to the movie with them. Thankfully, both my kiddos have voluntarily rejected Meyer's books and shunned the movie with parental intervention.
I want to share with you a few of the points Lia brought up to the students last week. They are reminiscent of things I have said over the last two decades concerning what and who we give our time, mind, money and emotions to. More so, the following points speak as a check list to see if we have fallen into making something besides Jehovah our "god" or if we are on the road toward full blown idol worship.
Lia's points here
Question 1 - Me and God
How is this thing building my relationship with the Lord?
How does my interest in this area compare with my time invested in my relationship with the Lord?
Question 2 - Me and the People Around Me
Is this creating conflict in my family or with others?
Does it offend other believers or is it confusing them in their faith?
What am I saying to my non-Christian friends or what example am I setting for others?
Question 3 - The Bible
What does the Bible have to say about this? Who does it glorify-God or Satan? Jesus or the things of the World?
Question 4 - Me and Twilight (or whatever applies)
How is this affecting what I think about; my attitude, heart, and mind?
Does it help me to do what is right according to God? Or, does it promote things of the World?
Does it distract me from the Lord and my relationships with others? Serving, praying, reading Bible, ministry, etc.
Does it cause me to say, think, or do things that are contrary to Jesus and his life?
Lia outlined many Scriptures in her notes. One passage that I have pointed out often is Colossians 2:8 which warns us to guard against being taken captive by the deceptiveness of the world. This is up to us to do or not do. What will your decision be?
Why Blood?
Leviticus 17 tells us that life is in the blood. This Old Testament teaching from The Law finds unfathomable depths of meaning when one thinks of what Christ's blood represents for all who will believe.
Satan is very interested in the mockery of God's Word, His name and His Cross. Lucifer, as with vampires, is blood thirsty. He would love nothing more than to deceive young, impressionable people - whom God loves and Jesus died for - into somehow believing that eternal life can be attained some other way than through Jesus and His once-for-all sacrifice on Calvary.
Until the final battle has been fought and the Lord has come with His everlasting and perfect peace, Satan will attempt to prevail through manipulating those who he may. Stephenie Meyer is just one in a long line of those who, without any understanding of it, the Evil One has paid big money to for their services. Twilight is more than mere entertainment. To some it has become every bit as important and as captivating as a religion.
The most famous line from the book and movie is Edward Cullen's statement to Bella "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb." This is Meyer's crafty, yet sick play upon biblical words. The truth is that when Satan is vanquished and evil is defeated, then and only then will the lion and the lamb live in harmony - not as a hundred year old vampire and his wanna-be girlfriend. While Meyer's character Bella so flippantly decides that nothing is more important than spending eternity with Edward - regardless of the consequences, shouldn't we be focused on our future eternity with God and on introducing as many to Him before it is too late?
November 1, 2008
True Christianity or New Spirituality?
CHRISTIANITY TODAY AND RICHARD FOSTER
In "A Life Formed in the Spirit," Christianity Today is once again celebrating Richard Foster's "legacy" -- which is one, unfortunately, of great heresy.
Failing to test the spirits, Foster followed his Quaker training in silence and meditation to reach an altered state of consciousness in which he believes to have met Jesus personally.
Sound bizarre? It should, but Foster taught this same meditative technique, step-by-step, in the first edition of "Celebration of Discipline," with the promise that if you visualize and focus on Jesus, it will be more than an exercise of the mind, and that Christ will literally, actually "come to you":
"[I]n your imagination allow your spiritual body, shining with light, to rise out of your physical body. Look back so that you can see yourself lying in the grass and reassure your body that you will return momentarily ... Go deeper and deeper into outer space until there is nothing except the warm presence of the eternal Creator. Rest in His presence."
In this same volume Foster boldly declared, "let us embrace the New Age with abandon" (paraphrase-need to confirm source). Both of these statements have been carefully excised in later editions in order to disarm objections to these anti-biblical references.
In spite of Foster's wholehearted embrace of shamanism and New Spirituality, he continues to be a celebrated "hero of the faith," championed by such publications as Christianity Today magazine, for which Foster serves as an "Advisory Editor."
What's interesting is that both Foster and Willard cut their teeth in the Quaker Friends Church, whose founder (George Fox) preached New Age Universalism -- and with which Foster and Willard have pollinated (polluted) the entire Body of Christ under the guise of "Spiritual Formation."
The "celebration" of this fact is proof positive of the Word of God, which prophesied, "in latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils" (1 Tim 4:1).
Foster should not be celebrated, nor his writings, but soundly rebuked by CT, and rejected by all who fear God.
But tragically, Christianity Today is simply walking in the footsteps of its founder, who "had nothing but praise for his long-time friend John Paul II and in particular for 'his strong Catholic faith.' Furthermore, [Graham] declared that there were no essential disagreements between them theologically."*
John Paul II was personally acquainted with the Dali Lama and allowed this self-worshiping "god-man" to place a statue of Buddah on the Catholic altar to perform prayer rituals at the church of St. Peter at Assisi.*
If Billy Graham and Foster are really in the TRUE faith (once delivered unto the saints), why have they united with false religions and encouraged the church to follow after other gods?
Again, this is fulfillment of 1 Tim 4:1, indicating that deception and apostasy are in full bloom, just as our Lord warned would be the first and foremost sign of the times before his return (Matthew 24:3-27).
(see "Hello Dalai" by T. A. McMahon for more details) http://www.thebereancall.org/node/6982
In "A Life Formed in the Spirit," Christianity Today is once again celebrating Richard Foster's "legacy" -- which is one, unfortunately, of great heresy.
Failing to test the spirits, Foster followed his Quaker training in silence and meditation to reach an altered state of consciousness in which he believes to have met Jesus personally.
Sound bizarre? It should, but Foster taught this same meditative technique, step-by-step, in the first edition of "Celebration of Discipline," with the promise that if you visualize and focus on Jesus, it will be more than an exercise of the mind, and that Christ will literally, actually "come to you":
"[I]n your imagination allow your spiritual body, shining with light, to rise out of your physical body. Look back so that you can see yourself lying in the grass and reassure your body that you will return momentarily ... Go deeper and deeper into outer space until there is nothing except the warm presence of the eternal Creator. Rest in His presence."
In this same volume Foster boldly declared, "let us embrace the New Age with abandon" (paraphrase-need to confirm source). Both of these statements have been carefully excised in later editions in order to disarm objections to these anti-biblical references.
In spite of Foster's wholehearted embrace of shamanism and New Spirituality, he continues to be a celebrated "hero of the faith," championed by such publications as Christianity Today magazine, for which Foster serves as an "Advisory Editor."
What's interesting is that both Foster and Willard cut their teeth in the Quaker Friends Church, whose founder (George Fox) preached New Age Universalism -- and with which Foster and Willard have pollinated (polluted) the entire Body of Christ under the guise of "Spiritual Formation."
The "celebration" of this fact is proof positive of the Word of God, which prophesied, "in latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils" (1 Tim 4:1).
Foster should not be celebrated, nor his writings, but soundly rebuked by CT, and rejected by all who fear God.
But tragically, Christianity Today is simply walking in the footsteps of its founder, who "had nothing but praise for his long-time friend John Paul II and in particular for 'his strong Catholic faith.' Furthermore, [Graham] declared that there were no essential disagreements between them theologically."*
John Paul II was personally acquainted with the Dali Lama and allowed this self-worshiping "god-man" to place a statue of Buddah on the Catholic altar to perform prayer rituals at the church of St. Peter at Assisi.*
If Billy Graham and Foster are really in the TRUE faith (once delivered unto the saints), why have they united with false religions and encouraged the church to follow after other gods?
Again, this is fulfillment of 1 Tim 4:1, indicating that deception and apostasy are in full bloom, just as our Lord warned would be the first and foremost sign of the times before his return (Matthew 24:3-27).
(see "Hello Dalai" by T. A. McMahon for more details) http://www.thebereancall.org/node/6982
September 8, 2008
Truth is Irrelevant to the Compromising Church
Shameful Ironies!
Dave Hunt
Martin Luther is remembered and widely honored today in much of the world—certainly throughout the West. The recent movie about his life was a Hollywood success that attracted large secular audiences in spite of its religious content. Luther stood up courageously against the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church despite Pope Leo X’s determination to arrest and burn him alive at the stake. He had been disillusioned while visiting the Vatican and seeing the hypocrisy and open immorality among the clergy from priest to pope. The final straw was Rome’s selling of indulgences for supposedly releasing one’s dead relatives from purgatory to enter heaven. The infamous sales pitch that raised millions of dollars promised, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” The proceeds from this shameless scam paid for repairing and enlarging St. Peter’s Basilica. That awesome structure stands today as a monument to the false gospel that Church still regularly preaches!
Disillusioned and furious, Luther wrote his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (known as “The Ninety-five Theses”) and nailed it to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. Copies were widely distributed in several European languages, shaking Europe, inciting heated debate, sparking the Reformation and the exodus of millions from the Roman Catholic Church—and hopefully bringing salvation to many of them.
Although Luther retained some of his Catholicism, his bold declaration before the Imperial Diet at Worms (in stark contrast to the attitude of so many Christians today) has inspired millions: “I am bound by the Scriptures...and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything...here I stand; may God help me.” That he really meant what he said is proved by the fact that it should have cost him his life had not some powerful German princes taken up his cause and protected him in protest against Rome—an event from which we get the designation “Protestant.”
Desperate to maintain the Church’s totalitarian authority, Catholic bishops and cardinals launched a counter-Reformation defining Church doctrines and demanding obedience thereto at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Its Canons and Decrees (see Resources) denounced the sole authority of Scripture affirmed by Luther, denied salvation by faith in Christ without Church sacraments and good works, and basically rejected everything the Reformers asked the Church to accept in submission to God’s Word. Trent pronounced more than 100 anathemas (excommunication/damnation) against all who accepted any Reformation teaching. It was costly to stand for the truth of God’s Word in those days, and many thousands would not compromise their convictions in spite of torture and death.
We are in great need of a revival of such unwavering conviction today. It will not come, however, without an awakening of an individual hunger and thirst after righteousness (Mt 5:6) and deep passion for our Lord and for His Word. Sadly, the truth of God is not only neglected and compromised today but is actually undermined by many whom millions of Christians look up to as evangelical leaders. Tragically, multitudes are being prepared to follow the great delusion that will befall those who “received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thes 2:8-12).
Is the fifteenth-century Reformation and Rome’s opposition to it at that time merely interesting history with little relationship to the church and world today? Hardly! The battle continues and has reached a far deadlier phase. A growing delusion has deceived multitudes into embracing ecumenical compromise while imagining that they are still on the Lord’s side.
In 1962, at the opening of Vatican II in Rome, Pope John XXIII affirmed, “I do accept entirely all that has been decided and declared at the Council of Trent.” Vatican II itself “proposes again the decrees of the Council of Trent.” On 12/31/95, honoring the 450th anniversary of the opening of Trent, Pope John Paul II declared, “Its conclusions maintain all their value.”
Regardless of what a Catholic friend, a liberal priest, or a professor at a Catholic university may say, Trent remains the official teaching of Rome and has been reconfirmed many times since by the highest Church authority. Here are only a few of Trent’s anathemas, all of which were renewed by Vatican II, The Code of Canon Law, and the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, and which remain today as the official teaching of Roman Catholicism, sustaining the inflexible dogmas of that “infallible” Church, regardless of statements by anyone to the contrary:
* If anyone denies that by...baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted [or] denies that...[the] justice, sanctification and redemption...of Jesus Christ is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism...let him be anathema.... (Rome’s emphasis)
* If anyone says that the sacraments of the New Law [i.e., the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church] are not necessary for salvation...and that without them...men obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification...let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that baptism is...not necessary for salvation, let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out...that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass...wherein that life-giving victim by which we are reconciled to the Father is daily immolated on the altar by priests...is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one...offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be anathema.
* No bolder nor clearer rejection of the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ could be declared. This brief sample presents the actual teaching of Roman Catholicism as it is taught to and practiced by hundreds of millions of Catholics today. There is no disputing the fact that this is a false gospel, which, sadly, holds Roman Catholics in bondage on their way to the flames—not of a “purgatory” invented by popes, but to the eternal Lake of Fire. How can those who profess to admire Luther and the Reformation defend Catholicism?
Given these indisputable facts, no evangelical could call Roman Catholics born-again Christians.The shameful irony is that so many evangelical leaders and their followers, while claiming to honor the Reformation and its gospel of salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ, at the same time close their eyes to the truth and act as though the Reformation never occurred and as if Catholics believe the biblical gospel. Have we forgotten that those who do not believe the gospel are eternally lost? Will their endless doom be on our hands?
Shameful ironies abound. Although the Roman Catholic Church no longer burns opponents at the stake (a practice now repugnant even to the secular world), it still maintains every false teaching and practice opposed by Luther and his fellow Reformers, thereby deceiving countless millions. It still teaches salvation through baptism, good works, and the other sacraments mediated by Mary as the “doorway to Christ”; it still offers indulgences at a price for release from purgatory to heaven; and it still rejects the final authority of Scripture! All of the anathemas pronounced by Trent against Protestant beliefs remain in full force and effect. Yet many of Luther’s modern followers now embrace Roman Catholicism as the true gospel!
On 10/31/99, representatives of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed a Joint Declaration (JDDJ) declaring that they had resolved the major differences that caused the Reformation. Not one doctrine or practice had changed in the Catholic Church. While Lutherans were congratulating themselves on this wonderful “agreement,” Pope John Paul II was offering special indulgences unto salvation for the year 2000. Had Martin Luther been alive, he would have denounced the traitors leading the church that bears his name and would have nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” to the door of the Lutheran World Federation headquarters! How can we explain the blindness leading to this unconscionable betrayal of the Reformation, and of Christ and His Word?
Five years earlier, no less shameful, evangelical leaders (Bill Bright, Charles Colson, Os Guinness, Richard Mouw [president of Fuller Theological Seminary], J.I. Packer, Pat Robertson, John White [former president of National Association of Evangelicals], et al.), had endorsed “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (ECT). It calls for evangelicals to join Roman Catholics in evangelizing the world, and states, “We thank God for the discovery of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.”
Nor was ECT anything new, but the culmination of a compromise of truth that had been growing within the evangelical movement for a long time. For at least 40 years prior to ECT, Billy Graham had been declaring that his beliefs were basically the same as those of orthodox Roman Catholics, and that he and the Pope agreed on almost everything, including the way of salvation! The same stance had long been adopted by evangelical universities such as Westmont and Wheaton, publications such as Christianity Today and Charisma, organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth With A Mission, and World Vision, as well as by other evangelical institutions and leaders. Highlighting evangelicalism’s schizophrenia, Wheaton, which has a large Center and Museum honoring Billy Graham and which hires short-term Catholic professors, last year fired a popular professor for “converting to Catholicism,” while calling him "a gifted brother in Christ"!
Martin Luther and the other Reformers would have died at the stake rather than sign such documents as JDDJ and ECT! How do we explain today’s denial of all that the Reformation stood for by those who claim to honor it and to follow in the faith of the Reformers? Attempting to fathom such spiritual schizophrenia, The New York Times, in its March 30, 1994, announcement of ECT, had written:
They toiled together in the movements against abortion and pornography, and now leading Catholics and evangelicals are asking their flocks...to finally accept each other as Christians. In what’s being called a historic declaration, evangelicals...joined with conservative Roman Catholic leaders...[and] urged Catholics and evangelicals to stop aggressive proselytization of each other’s flocks. John White, president of Geneva College and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the statement was a “triumphalistic moment” in American religious life after centuries of distrust....
The gospel of Jesus Christ, by which alone one is born again (1 Pt 1:22-25) is being denied. That is the issue, with the eternal destiny of souls hanging in the balance. While they did not personally sign ECT, Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, like so many other evangelical leaders, give the appearance of full cooperation and agreement with Rome. In violation of the clear command of Scripture to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), neither Hybels nor Warren nor most other evangelical leaders, including Billy Graham, will use their huge influence to bring any warning or correction—to Rome or to anyone else!
Even Islam is defended as a valid “faith” that Rick Warren cooperates with in working (through his P. E.A.C.E Plan) for what he calls a “New Reformation.” In its advancement, he says he “would trust any imam or priest or rabbi....” Do we no longer believe the gospel and that those who reject it are eternally lost?
John Paul II denounced everything the Reformation stood for, yet he, too, is highly honored by those who still praise Luther. How can we honor two diametrically opposed beliefs at the same time? Have “Christians” gone mad?! Words have changed their definitions, contradictory convictions are simultaneously professed, and truth is re-defined to suit anyone’s taste. We are adrift on an ocean of meaninglessness without rudder or compass—yet nearly everyone praises our “progress.” Exactly like the world, the church (“rich, and increased with goods” – Rv 3:17) willingly blurs the essential differences between God’s truth and Satan’s lies. Oh, yes, evangelical leaders still claim to affirm God’s Word, yet who stands up against the false doctrines made popular by today’s “Christian” radio and TV or against the “mother of harlots” (Rv 17:5) as did Luther?
Though lip service is still given to the Reformation, the deep convictions that birthed it have been compromised. The hour grows late and the evangelical church desperately needs to face some honest questions:
1. What was the purpose of the Reformation?
2. Was its uncompromising affirmation of biblical truth appropriate in Luther’s day but not now?
3. What did it stand for at that time, at the cost of so many martyrs and so much suffering, that should now be denied?
4. Have Jesus Christ and His gospel changed?
5. Has any belief or practice changed in the Catholic Church that would justify evangelicals embracing Catholicism as the biblical gospel?
While evangelicals are literally thumbing their noses at the Reformers, a powerful Reformation of Islam is gathering momentum in the Muslim world. Urgent calls go forth to abstain from the fleshly immorality of America, “the Great Satan.” After the stunning defeats by Israel in 1948 and 1967, imams began to preach that Allah was not happy and that Muslims must get back to the Qur’an and true Islam. The result has been a growing awakening of fundamentalist Islam with its accompanying terrorism.
At the same time, the “Christian” West sinks into ever-deepening depravity. As one example, Howard Stern’s foul mouth and glorification of immorality have made him the highest paid radio personality in the U.S. That movies, television, and radio shows continue to grow ever bolder in their mocking of biblical truth and promotion of homosexuality and other shameful perversions only reflects what the vast majority of Westerners, including Catholics and Protestants, want and enjoy.
The Bible hasn’t changed. God hasn’t changed. The gospel hasn’t changed. Has our hope changed? Instead of “looking for that blessed hope...the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Ti 2:13), are we looking instead to “Christian” politicians for salvation? The evangelical church today is in the mood of accommodation, unity, compromise. Are these the “perilous times” (2 Tm 3:1) ominously foretold in Scripture? TBC
Dave Hunt
Martin Luther is remembered and widely honored today in much of the world—certainly throughout the West. The recent movie about his life was a Hollywood success that attracted large secular audiences in spite of its religious content. Luther stood up courageously against the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church despite Pope Leo X’s determination to arrest and burn him alive at the stake. He had been disillusioned while visiting the Vatican and seeing the hypocrisy and open immorality among the clergy from priest to pope. The final straw was Rome’s selling of indulgences for supposedly releasing one’s dead relatives from purgatory to enter heaven. The infamous sales pitch that raised millions of dollars promised, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” The proceeds from this shameless scam paid for repairing and enlarging St. Peter’s Basilica. That awesome structure stands today as a monument to the false gospel that Church still regularly preaches!
Disillusioned and furious, Luther wrote his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (known as “The Ninety-five Theses”) and nailed it to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. Copies were widely distributed in several European languages, shaking Europe, inciting heated debate, sparking the Reformation and the exodus of millions from the Roman Catholic Church—and hopefully bringing salvation to many of them.
Although Luther retained some of his Catholicism, his bold declaration before the Imperial Diet at Worms (in stark contrast to the attitude of so many Christians today) has inspired millions: “I am bound by the Scriptures...and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything...here I stand; may God help me.” That he really meant what he said is proved by the fact that it should have cost him his life had not some powerful German princes taken up his cause and protected him in protest against Rome—an event from which we get the designation “Protestant.”
Desperate to maintain the Church’s totalitarian authority, Catholic bishops and cardinals launched a counter-Reformation defining Church doctrines and demanding obedience thereto at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Its Canons and Decrees (see Resources) denounced the sole authority of Scripture affirmed by Luther, denied salvation by faith in Christ without Church sacraments and good works, and basically rejected everything the Reformers asked the Church to accept in submission to God’s Word. Trent pronounced more than 100 anathemas (excommunication/damnation) against all who accepted any Reformation teaching. It was costly to stand for the truth of God’s Word in those days, and many thousands would not compromise their convictions in spite of torture and death.
We are in great need of a revival of such unwavering conviction today. It will not come, however, without an awakening of an individual hunger and thirst after righteousness (Mt 5:6) and deep passion for our Lord and for His Word. Sadly, the truth of God is not only neglected and compromised today but is actually undermined by many whom millions of Christians look up to as evangelical leaders. Tragically, multitudes are being prepared to follow the great delusion that will befall those who “received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thes 2:8-12).
Is the fifteenth-century Reformation and Rome’s opposition to it at that time merely interesting history with little relationship to the church and world today? Hardly! The battle continues and has reached a far deadlier phase. A growing delusion has deceived multitudes into embracing ecumenical compromise while imagining that they are still on the Lord’s side.
In 1962, at the opening of Vatican II in Rome, Pope John XXIII affirmed, “I do accept entirely all that has been decided and declared at the Council of Trent.” Vatican II itself “proposes again the decrees of the Council of Trent.” On 12/31/95, honoring the 450th anniversary of the opening of Trent, Pope John Paul II declared, “Its conclusions maintain all their value.”
Regardless of what a Catholic friend, a liberal priest, or a professor at a Catholic university may say, Trent remains the official teaching of Rome and has been reconfirmed many times since by the highest Church authority. Here are only a few of Trent’s anathemas, all of which were renewed by Vatican II, The Code of Canon Law, and the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, and which remain today as the official teaching of Roman Catholicism, sustaining the inflexible dogmas of that “infallible” Church, regardless of statements by anyone to the contrary:
* If anyone denies that by...baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted [or] denies that...[the] justice, sanctification and redemption...of Jesus Christ is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism...let him be anathema.... (Rome’s emphasis)
* If anyone says that the sacraments of the New Law [i.e., the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church] are not necessary for salvation...and that without them...men obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification...let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that baptism is...not necessary for salvation, let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out...that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass...wherein that life-giving victim by which we are reconciled to the Father is daily immolated on the altar by priests...is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one...offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be anathema.
* No bolder nor clearer rejection of the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ could be declared. This brief sample presents the actual teaching of Roman Catholicism as it is taught to and practiced by hundreds of millions of Catholics today. There is no disputing the fact that this is a false gospel, which, sadly, holds Roman Catholics in bondage on their way to the flames—not of a “purgatory” invented by popes, but to the eternal Lake of Fire. How can those who profess to admire Luther and the Reformation defend Catholicism?
Given these indisputable facts, no evangelical could call Roman Catholics born-again Christians.The shameful irony is that so many evangelical leaders and their followers, while claiming to honor the Reformation and its gospel of salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ, at the same time close their eyes to the truth and act as though the Reformation never occurred and as if Catholics believe the biblical gospel. Have we forgotten that those who do not believe the gospel are eternally lost? Will their endless doom be on our hands?
Shameful ironies abound. Although the Roman Catholic Church no longer burns opponents at the stake (a practice now repugnant even to the secular world), it still maintains every false teaching and practice opposed by Luther and his fellow Reformers, thereby deceiving countless millions. It still teaches salvation through baptism, good works, and the other sacraments mediated by Mary as the “doorway to Christ”; it still offers indulgences at a price for release from purgatory to heaven; and it still rejects the final authority of Scripture! All of the anathemas pronounced by Trent against Protestant beliefs remain in full force and effect. Yet many of Luther’s modern followers now embrace Roman Catholicism as the true gospel!
On 10/31/99, representatives of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed a Joint Declaration (JDDJ) declaring that they had resolved the major differences that caused the Reformation. Not one doctrine or practice had changed in the Catholic Church. While Lutherans were congratulating themselves on this wonderful “agreement,” Pope John Paul II was offering special indulgences unto salvation for the year 2000. Had Martin Luther been alive, he would have denounced the traitors leading the church that bears his name and would have nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” to the door of the Lutheran World Federation headquarters! How can we explain the blindness leading to this unconscionable betrayal of the Reformation, and of Christ and His Word?
Five years earlier, no less shameful, evangelical leaders (Bill Bright, Charles Colson, Os Guinness, Richard Mouw [president of Fuller Theological Seminary], J.I. Packer, Pat Robertson, John White [former president of National Association of Evangelicals], et al.), had endorsed “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (ECT). It calls for evangelicals to join Roman Catholics in evangelizing the world, and states, “We thank God for the discovery of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.”
Nor was ECT anything new, but the culmination of a compromise of truth that had been growing within the evangelical movement for a long time. For at least 40 years prior to ECT, Billy Graham had been declaring that his beliefs were basically the same as those of orthodox Roman Catholics, and that he and the Pope agreed on almost everything, including the way of salvation! The same stance had long been adopted by evangelical universities such as Westmont and Wheaton, publications such as Christianity Today and Charisma, organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth With A Mission, and World Vision, as well as by other evangelical institutions and leaders. Highlighting evangelicalism’s schizophrenia, Wheaton, which has a large Center and Museum honoring Billy Graham and which hires short-term Catholic professors, last year fired a popular professor for “converting to Catholicism,” while calling him "a gifted brother in Christ"!
Martin Luther and the other Reformers would have died at the stake rather than sign such documents as JDDJ and ECT! How do we explain today’s denial of all that the Reformation stood for by those who claim to honor it and to follow in the faith of the Reformers? Attempting to fathom such spiritual schizophrenia, The New York Times, in its March 30, 1994, announcement of ECT, had written:
They toiled together in the movements against abortion and pornography, and now leading Catholics and evangelicals are asking their flocks...to finally accept each other as Christians. In what’s being called a historic declaration, evangelicals...joined with conservative Roman Catholic leaders...[and] urged Catholics and evangelicals to stop aggressive proselytization of each other’s flocks. John White, president of Geneva College and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the statement was a “triumphalistic moment” in American religious life after centuries of distrust....
The gospel of Jesus Christ, by which alone one is born again (1 Pt 1:22-25) is being denied. That is the issue, with the eternal destiny of souls hanging in the balance. While they did not personally sign ECT, Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, like so many other evangelical leaders, give the appearance of full cooperation and agreement with Rome. In violation of the clear command of Scripture to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), neither Hybels nor Warren nor most other evangelical leaders, including Billy Graham, will use their huge influence to bring any warning or correction—to Rome or to anyone else!
Even Islam is defended as a valid “faith” that Rick Warren cooperates with in working (through his P. E.A.C.E Plan) for what he calls a “New Reformation.” In its advancement, he says he “would trust any imam or priest or rabbi....” Do we no longer believe the gospel and that those who reject it are eternally lost?
John Paul II denounced everything the Reformation stood for, yet he, too, is highly honored by those who still praise Luther. How can we honor two diametrically opposed beliefs at the same time? Have “Christians” gone mad?! Words have changed their definitions, contradictory convictions are simultaneously professed, and truth is re-defined to suit anyone’s taste. We are adrift on an ocean of meaninglessness without rudder or compass—yet nearly everyone praises our “progress.” Exactly like the world, the church (“rich, and increased with goods” – Rv 3:17) willingly blurs the essential differences between God’s truth and Satan’s lies. Oh, yes, evangelical leaders still claim to affirm God’s Word, yet who stands up against the false doctrines made popular by today’s “Christian” radio and TV or against the “mother of harlots” (Rv 17:5) as did Luther?
Though lip service is still given to the Reformation, the deep convictions that birthed it have been compromised. The hour grows late and the evangelical church desperately needs to face some honest questions:
1. What was the purpose of the Reformation?
2. Was its uncompromising affirmation of biblical truth appropriate in Luther’s day but not now?
3. What did it stand for at that time, at the cost of so many martyrs and so much suffering, that should now be denied?
4. Have Jesus Christ and His gospel changed?
5. Has any belief or practice changed in the Catholic Church that would justify evangelicals embracing Catholicism as the biblical gospel?
While evangelicals are literally thumbing their noses at the Reformers, a powerful Reformation of Islam is gathering momentum in the Muslim world. Urgent calls go forth to abstain from the fleshly immorality of America, “the Great Satan.” After the stunning defeats by Israel in 1948 and 1967, imams began to preach that Allah was not happy and that Muslims must get back to the Qur’an and true Islam. The result has been a growing awakening of fundamentalist Islam with its accompanying terrorism.
At the same time, the “Christian” West sinks into ever-deepening depravity. As one example, Howard Stern’s foul mouth and glorification of immorality have made him the highest paid radio personality in the U.S. That movies, television, and radio shows continue to grow ever bolder in their mocking of biblical truth and promotion of homosexuality and other shameful perversions only reflects what the vast majority of Westerners, including Catholics and Protestants, want and enjoy.
The Bible hasn’t changed. God hasn’t changed. The gospel hasn’t changed. Has our hope changed? Instead of “looking for that blessed hope...the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Ti 2:13), are we looking instead to “Christian” politicians for salvation? The evangelical church today is in the mood of accommodation, unity, compromise. Are these the “perilous times” (2 Tm 3:1) ominously foretold in Scripture? TBC
September 7, 2008
Benny Hinn - Healer or Heretic?
The Heretic
D Magazine - July 2003
By John Bloom
Controversial televangelist and faith healer Benny Hinn came to Texas in 1999, abandoning his congregation in Florida to build a World Health Center in Irving. But Hinn - whose lifestyle more closely resembles Michael Jackson's than Jerry Falwell's - recently got word from on high to delay his plans for the theme park/New Age miracle spa. Thank God. If you drive west from the city, through the neo-modern lunarscape of Las Colinas, past the airport on our denuded prairie, into the warren of faceless office buildings that make up cosmopolitan Grapevine, you'll never find Benny Hinn.
He wants it that way. The nerve center of his worldwide organization is tucked away in a group of cheap, white, nondescript buildings that look like the kind of domiciles favored by mafia fronts on the wharves of New Jersey. Inside, several dozen employees process an estimated $100 million per year in donations from people who believe in Hinn as a sort of Elmer Gantry for the 21st century. (Obviously they didn't read the novel.)
Now go the other way, into the cul-de-sacs and barrios of deep East Dallas. On a dead-end street next to a nursing home, in an expansive two-story house that doesn't look like a mafia front, even though it was once owned by the Dallas mob, the Trinity Foundation works 24/7 trying to find out just how much money passes through Grapevine, where it comes from, and where it goes. Members of the Christian watchdog organization do so by running undercover operations, infiltrations, spying, surveillance, the cultivation of ties to disgruntled ex-employees, and even going through Benny Hinn's garbage in an effort to, well, to make him prove he's not a fraud.
"All we want is for Benny Hinn to make good on promises he made to me in 1993," says Ole Anthony, president of the Trinity Foundation. "He promised he would stop airing fake healings, that he would medically verify all healings, that he would wait six months after the healing before putting it on TV, to make sure it was authentic. He said he would do all these things, and he's done none of them. It would also be nice if he would submit himself to a real theologian for examination. Some of his teachings are off the scale, even bordering on necromancy."
What the heck is Benny Hinn doing in Dallas?
It's weird. It was weird when he announced he was moving here in 1999, pretty much abandoning his church congregation in Florida. It was weirder still when he announced that God had ordered him to build a $30 million World Healing Center in Irving, making it sound like a combination theme park and New Age miracle spa. The way he laid it out, it would be a sort of shrine to famous faith healers of the past, complete with "stereophonic statue gardens," as well as a Holy Ghost Mayo Clinic for the halt, the lame, and the afflicted. One envisioned wheelchair-bound hordes being lifted off jumbo jets at DFW Airport and convoying their way over to Las Colinas, like pilgrims pouring into a Disney World version of Lourdes. Isn't this the kind of thing that belongs in Tulsa?
Fortunately, God changed His mind last summer and told Hinn not to build the healing center after all, even though he had spent two years collecting donations for it. (God was apparently vague about what Hinn should do with the money. The county tax assessor was less vague, telling Hinn it was unlikely that his tax exemption would survive theme-park ownership.) Hinn said it was just a timing matter. God wants the healing center, but he doesn't want it right now. (Because the only other building the Almighty is known to have ordered is the Temple at Jerusalem, maybe He's just unimpressed with Irving.) Hinn finally said he would keep his headquarters in Dallas because the central location saves him money.
"Good," Anthony says. "It will save us money, too."
If anything, the move to Texas looks like an attempt to spread his operations over as many geographical jurisdictions as possible. For example, Hinn's TV show, This Is Your Day!, originates in studios in Orange County, California, and airs in 192 countries, making it one of the most widely disseminated programs in the world. Hinn is so ubiquitous on religious TV, in fact, that you would assume by this point - 30 years into his preaching ministry - that he would have become a household name, like Billy Graham, counseling the president and appearing on The Today Show in times of national crisis. But Hinn has done the opposite.
Aside from his twice-monthly appearances at his own choreographed "crusades," held in the largest sports arenas on the planet, Hinn is a virtual recluse, surrounded by armies of bodyguards, ensconced in an $8 million oceanfront hacienda in southern California, traveling by private jet for "snorkeling vacations" in the Cayman Islands, staying in $3,000 presidential suites, and claiming a level of financial secrecy and paranoid internal security that's more often associated with drug dealers than men of the cloth. By surrounding himself with yes-men and stage-managing every detail of his public image - even to the point of stiff-arming the occasional paparazzo who tries to photograph him - he has more in common with Michael Jackson than Jerry Falwell. He may, in fact, be the first Christian rock star. The analogy is not Paul McCartney, though. Hinn's career is more like Cher's. He makes it up as he goes along, re-inventing himself whenever necessary.
Hinn has no church. He belongs to no denomination. He's not even affiliated with any particular religion, although his buzz words indicate he tends to dwell on the freaky fringe of Pentecostalism. As recently as three centuries ago, he probably would have been burned as a heretic. To give you some idea of his doctrinal strangeness, he once preached that the Trinity is actually nine persons because each member of the Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - is also a Trinity. He also says that God and the Holy Spirit have real bodies with eyes, hands, mouth, etc. Various theologians have trashed Hinn, of course, for preaching "new revelations" directly from God that turn out to be, when examined, variations of thousand-year-old heresies. He thinks of himself as a prophet (even when his prophecies don't come true) and, in one burst of grandeur, "a new messiah walking on the earth." He believes that the Biblical Adam flew into outer space; that when God parted the Red Sea he made it into a wall of ice; that God talks to him more frequently than he talked to, say, Moses; that a man has risen from the dead in his presence; that a man turned into a snake before his eyes; that angels come to his bedroom and talk to him; and that the only reason we're not all in perfect health, living forever, is that there are demons in the world, attacking us. He's expressed opinions normally heard only on schizophrenia wards, and he's done it in front of millions of people - and still they come. They come in such numbers that thousands have to be turned away, and even the ones turned away gladly give him their money.
It happened at the age of 11, when Jesus first appeared to either him or his mother while he was living in Jaffa, Israel. Or maybe it happened at 18, when he had a conversion experience at a high school in Toronto. That's when Benny Hinn says he was "anointed." Or maybe it was shortly after that, when he took a bus trip to Pittsburgh to see the faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman. It's difficult to say exactly when it happened, or what form it took, because Hinn parcels out little bits and pieces of his background as it suits him, then embellishes the stories so that isolating any one event in his life is like puzzling through a 30-year-old KGB file.
What we do know - because he returns to it time and again - is that a transforming moment in his life occurred when, as a teenager, he was assigned to take care of a crippled arthritic woman on a pilgrimage to see one of Kuhlman's healing services, and he saw the woman apparently lose all pain in her legs and "untwist," as he put it. Depending on how cynical you are, he had either found his holy calling or discovered one of the oldest American carnie games. Ever since then, he's been praised as a true miracle worker - Oral Roberts himself is his biggest fan - and also debunked by various investigative reporters around the world, including 60 Minutes Australia, which concluded, "Benny Hinn is a fake. A dangerous fake. What he does is prey on the sick, the desperate, and the gullible." (Dallas' Trinity Foundation does most of the legwork for all the various networks and newspapers that have investigated Hinn. Of the Australian report, Ole Anthony says, "Apparently in Australia you can just go ahead and say the truth out loud.")
Hinn is a peculiar sort, even by the standards of the ongoing circus called American televangelism. If you look at the superstars of the past 20 years - Bakker, Swaggart, Tilton - they're all of a type: WASPy extroverts with good looks in a sort of dime store gigolo way. (Even Jim Bakker had that lost-puppy look that's so attractive to lonely widows, and older women living alone are the number one demographic group when it comes to sending money to television ministries.) Hinn, on the other hand, is short, slight, Semitic, round-faced, and often sports a haircut that looks like a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream that's been knocked off the top of the cone. He reminds you of a discount Persian rug merchant, not a spiritual leader. He's a Palestinian with a Greek father and Armenian Turk mother, raised in a Catholic school along with eight brothers and sisters who were stuffed into a tiny two-bedroom apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Jaffa. In Hinn's books he claims that his father was the mayor of Jaffa. As it turns out, Jaffa had no mayor after the year 1948, four years before Hinn was born. Like many factoids in the Hinn legend, this one seems to be a fib.
Toufik Benedictus Hinn, known to his family as "Tutu," didn't much like living in Israel with an Arabic first name, so early in life he became "Benny." He was not particularly noted by his classmates at College de Frere elementary school in Jaffa or, after the family emigrated when Benny was 14, at Georges Vanier Secondary School in Toronto. In his sermons and books, Hinn has portrayed his childhood as that of a social outcast, handicapped by a severe stutter, who was nonetheless a stellar student. But when G. Richard Fisher and M. Kurt Goedelman, two journalists who write for Christian publications, looked into Hinn's youth, they found that both claims were untrue: nobody remembered Hinn's stutter, and he had dropped out of high school after the 11th grade. White lies, by themselves, don't really mean that much, but they indicate how twisted Hinn's mythmaking can be. He invents things that reflect badly on him just as easily as he invents things that reflect well on him. Psychologically, he can't stand the unadorned truth.
Occasionally, though, the enhancements expand from the realm of the white lie into the land of the whopper. For example, Hinn claims to have preached at an all-girls Catholic school in Jerusalem in 1976 and "every single girl in that school got saved, including all the nuns." Since there's only one Catholic girls school in Jerusalem, Schmidt's Girls College, it was a fairly easy matter to question all the nuns who were there in 1976, as well as Father Dusind, who has overseen all religious instruction since 1955. The result? "This is nonsense, real nonsense," Dusind told Fisher and Goedelman. "It never happened and could not happen because a Charismatic healer or Protestant preacher would never ever be let in to talk to the girls."
Or how about the time Hinn went into a Catholic hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and healed everyone there? The way Hinn tells it, he, three other Pentecostal preachers, and seven Catholic priests held a service together in the hospital chapel, where everyone went to work with "anointing bottles," and patients were healed instantly. They were then asked to lay hands on all the patients in the hospital's rooms, so Hinn and his "Miracle Invasion" team went down the hall healing people, knocking them down with God's power, until "the hospital looked like it had been hit by an earthquake."
The reality - easily confirmed by speaking to officials at Sault Ste. Marie General Hospital and the Gray Sisters of the Immaculate Conception who work there - is that no patients were released the day Hinn held a small service in the chapel and that, furthermore, "Mr. Hinn's claims are outlandish and unwarranted."
Okay, so what? Benny Hinn isn't the first flamboyant, white-suited evangelist to play fast and loose with "miracles," and he won't be the last. What makes Hinn different is that, after moving to Orlando in 1979 and founding the Orlando Christian Center in 1983, he became the most famous - and perhaps richest - evangelist in the world. When he preaches in the Philippines or Africa, for example, it's not uncommon to have 500,000 people at the service. And they all come for the same reason: supernatural events, miracles, ecstatic emotional experiences. He refined his technique in the '80s at the Orlando church, which was the scene of loud, frenzied, charismatic services almost from the moment he opened his doors. Hinn would frequently speak in tongues - something he no longer does now that his services are televised - and issue wild prophecies and reveal divine messages given only to him, as he essentially incorporated into his own services all the techniques he learned from watching Kathryn Kuhlman. Soon the Orlando church became a mecca for the suffering, and by the time Hinn started doing organized crusades in the late '80s, he was poised to fill the void left by the spectacular crashes of the Bakkers, Swaggarts, and Tiltons.
In many ways, Hinn is a throwback to the tent revival meetings of the 19th century. Short on scripture, long on enthusiasm, these were originally ways to carry the gospel to backwoods people who weren't served by churches, and the tradition was to collect a little money for the minister's traveling expenses at the end of the service. As time went on, the tent revival fell prey to shysters and carnie men, who discovered they could make a sizeable haul by stoking the emotions of the illiterate and making them feel like they were in the presence of miraculous events. It was a short jump from there to Aimee Semple Macpherson, the now discredited healer of the 1920s who, oddly enough, Hinn reveres as one of his spiritual predecessors. Macpherson was the first to take the tent revival nationwide.
This is not to say that everyone who held a healing service was a fraud - but the ones who made an entire career of it tended to be. There even developed a body of sleight-of-hand that survived well into the '90s, notably practiced by Dallas' own W.V. Grant, who can make a leg look like it has grown longer or shorter simply by manipulating the shoe with a deft magician's move. The healing service, almost from the beginning, was a strange mixture of showmanship, fervent worship, and magic.
Hinn's services, for example, follow a strict pattern that's calculated for maximum emotional impact and, not so coincidentally, maximum offering collection. From the time the crowd enters the arena, they're massaged with mood lighting, repetitive music, responsive chanting, group gestures, group singing, various forms of choral and instrumental entertainment, all leading up to the moment Hinn makes his entrance. The song sung for the entrance is "How Great Thou Art," making convenient use of an ambiguous personal pronoun.
"There's power here, people!" Hinn will typically say. "Lift your hands and receive it."
All dutifully lift their hands.
"You will be healed tonight!"
They sob and shout hallelujah.
"All things are possible to him that believeth!"
Hinn repeats this same sentence three times, getting a bigger emotional reaction each time he says it.
Chant, song, gesture, salute - all the classic techniques used to submerge the individual into a group. It works for dictators, and it works for Hinn. But now that he's joined them together in hope, he adds a dose of fear.
He speaks of huge disasters coming to the world. He tells them of the strange times we live in, a sinful world that will be cleansed by fire and earthquake. And there's only one slim hope to escape: "Only those who have been giving to God's work will be spared."
As a violin plays, money is collected in big white plastic buckets. And as the ushers do their work, Hinn's voice turns soothing. "Nothing will touch you. No one will touch your children. Nothing will touch your home."
Although he never says, "Donate money or you'll die," he comes close. There is a constant theme in his preaching of the connection between "giving" and "healing," making a "faith vow" and "having your needs met." He comes within a hairsbreadth of saying, "If you give me money, you will be healed." And the collection always occurs between his promise of healing and the actual healing session - the same way street performers save their biggest trick until after the hat has been passed.
Along about 10 p.m., when all the checks and dead presidents have been collected, Hinn announces that God is speaking to him. Sometimes he sees angels in the room. Sometimes he sees ugly demon monsters that are fleeing from the building. ("You ugly spirit of sickness, go out of this place! Let God's people go!") Sometimes he just feels the presence of spirits or angels. Once he saw the whole arena bathed in golden dust. And then, as though his body has been taken over by a force he can't control, he starts running around knocking people over. Sometimes he knocks them over with his coat, sometimes by blowing on them, sometimes by pushing their forehead with his hand - but when he touches them, they fall over. As he does this, he calls out the healings - a brain tumor, a cancer, a crippled left leg - as though he's watching something occurring that the rest of us can't see. And then, one by one, various people are brought onto the stage, and an announcer describes their affliction so that Hinn can lay hands on them and pronounce the disease vanquished. On an average night he'll heal about 80 people, in addition to the ones he shouts out in a sort of "wherever you are, you're healed" way.
No wonder Hinn needs bodyguards. Very few, if any, of these people are actually healed. And when they die, or their disease becomes worse, their relatives tend to become angry. For the past 10 years, this has been demonstrated over and over again by various investigative reports conducted with the resources of the Trinity Foundation, beginning with an Inside Edition show in 1993 hosted by Bill O'Reilly and reported by Steve Wilson.
Just a few examples:
He healed a case of brain cancer on stage, even though Inside Edition followed up with tests that showed the tumor was still present.
The "cure" of a deaf woman turned out to be a woman who, according to her doctor, was not deaf in the first place.
A Houston woman who thought she was cured of lung cancer ("It will never come back!" Hinn told her) rejected her doctors' advice and care - and died two months later.
Heavyweight boxer Evander Holyfield, banned from boxing because of a heart condition, went to a Benny Hinn crusade in Philadelphia, had Hinn lay hands on him, and gave Hinn a check for $265,000 after he was told he was healed. In fact, he passed his next examination by the boxing commission, but later his doctors said he never had a heart condition in the first place. He had been misdiagnosed.
Hinn claims that a man in Ghana was raised from the dead on the platform. "We have it on video!" he says, although he's never produced the video.
In two cases, journalists have tried to verify all the healings at a particular crusade. For an HBO documentary called A Question of Miracles, researchers attended a Portland, Oregon, crusade at which 76 miracles were claimed. Even though Hinn had agreed to provide medical verification of each one, he stonewalled requests for the data, then eventually responded 13 weeks later - with only five names. HBO followed up the five cases and determined that a woman "cured" of lung cancer had died nine months later, an old woman's broken vertebra wasn't healed after all, a man with a logging injury deteriorated as he refused medication and a needed operation, a woman claiming to be healed of deafness had never been deaf (according to her husband), and a woman complaining of "breathlessness" had stopped going to the doctor on instructions of her mother.
Just last December, NBC's Dateline tried to duplicate the HBO study. At a crusade in Las Vegas, they counted 56 miracles. Of those, Hinn eventually provided data "proving" five of them. Four of those people refused to share their medical records with NBC. The remaining one, a woman supposedly cured of Lou Gehrig's Disease, had been misdiagnosed, according to her doctor.
There have been so many documentaries and investigations on Hinn - almost all of them orchestrated by Trinity Foundation - that they even have a common structure:
Here's what Hinn looks like in action.
Here's what he claims to do.
Here's what his critics say.
Is he a fraud or is he a healer?
Let's find out.
Not much healing going on.
Okay, here's what Hinn says in his defense.
And one thing Hinn says in his defense - when confronted with evidence that someone claimed to be healed and then died - is that, "The reason people lose their healing is because they begin questioning if God really did it." If you're not healed - or, worse yet, if your sick child is not healed - it's your fault for not having enough faith. It's at this point that Hinn's ministry almost passes over into the realm of primitive magic - i.e., if you want it bad enough, and you say the right things and feel the right things, it will come true.
As it turns out, though, the media investigations are the best thing that ever happened to Hinn. They made him more famous, and more recognizable, than religious TV ever could have. And because most of his audience is made up of the truly desperate - the chronically sick, the dying, people living with pain - Benny Hinn became one more "treatment" for them to take a shot at.
When the first investigation broke, in March 1993, Hinn must have thought his empire was about to fall apart. There was a nasty shoving incident at the Philadelphia airport with Steve Wilson of Inside Edition, followed by a damage-control campaign in which Hinn went on many radio and TV shows and met privately with several of his critics to admit that he'd made mistakes and vow that he would never again air "miracles" on TV unless they had been medically verified. "God has taken me by the neck," he said to his congregation. "I think I'm gonna stop preaching healing and start preaching Jesus." At the request of Inside Edition, Ole Anthony traveled to Orlando to meet with Hinn. At the only face-to-face meeting the two men have had, Hinn said he was reformed and that he intended to start medically verifying all miracles and holding them back from television for six months, so that they could be proven authentic. He even said at one point that worldly wealth was sinful - something you'll rarely hear fall out of the mouth of a TV evangelist.
If you study this particular year in his life, 1993, he's remarkably consistent in his statements, very self-aware of exactly what errors he's made, very humble, very apologetic, very interested in getting "back to the gospel." He even says at one point that he'll stop doing healing services entirely. And most everyone believed him, including Inside Edition, in a follow-up report, and including Anthony. "I was disappointed," Anthony says today, "that a year later he was back to his old tricks."
By 1994, it was as though the soul searching of the previous year had never existed. He geared up to be bigger than ever. He added crusades, he became more flamboyant, more theatrical, and the procession of "miracles" flitting across the TV screen every day continued unabated.
Apparently what he'd discovered is that scandal was good for business. Or at least this particular type of scandal was good for business. Bakker and Swaggart - he must have thought of them at some point - had been brought down by sex, which is difficult for the Christian world to forgive. Greed, on the other hand, can be overcome. Tilton had been brought down by money issues, but after a few years of lying low, he was back in action. This was a whole new type of media attention. The reporters simply said, "Is he a healer, or is he a fake?" And because it was presented as an open-ended question, the crowds got even larger.
Ten years later, Hinn has become something of a media master. Whenever he's investigated now, he simply admits his "mistakes." He's especially fond of going on The Larry King Show at any time of crisis. He's also refined his view of what he does. He doesn't heal anyone, he always reminds the interviewer. He just creates an atmosphere so that God can heal people. By the time people get to the stage, they've already been healed by God, he says. If the healing turns out to be bogus, then the person was self-deluded. Besides, hope is a great thing.
He also says he has a doctor backstage now to counsel the miracle cases and encourage them to continue with their medication until the healing has been verified. This seems to satisfy the media, even though it amounts to an admission of his own inability to know whether someone is healed.
The image he presents to the faithful is the opposite, of course. To them he's a man possessed of special wisdom. He sees things no one else can see. He has conversations with Jesus that no one else has had. He witnesses the presence of God when no one else would be aware of it. And he constantly says his teaching is "new." ("You didn't come here to hear the same preaching you've been hearing for 50 years, did you?") Of course, to orthodox Christians, this alone makes him heretical. Far from being "new," they would say, the gospel has not changed for 2,000 years.
But there's an even darker side to Hinn and his organization. In 1998, two members of his inner circle died of heroin overdoses. In 1999, after one of his many vows of reform, he fired several board members and hired an ex-cop named Mario C. Licciardello to do an internal investigation of his ministry. Licciardello was the brother of Carman, who is sort of the Engelbert Humperdinck of Christian singers, so many think Hinn considered him "safe." But Licciardello did such a good job - taking hundreds of depositions and getting to the bottom of the heroin use - that Hinn then sued him. While Licciardello was still his head of security, the ministry filed a lawsuit demanding that all his files be turned over and sealed, because their public release could result in the end of the ministry. Licciardello was a police investigator with 25 years of experience, and he felt like his whole career was being smeared, so he fought back with his own lawyers. His counsel continually tried to take Hinn's deposition, but Hinn fought him at every step. The judge, however, ruled against him and said that, if Hinn intended to enjoin Licciardello, he would have to make himself available for questioning.
On the very day that Hinn was supposed to give his deposition in the case, Licciardello had a heart attack and died. The Hinn organization made an out-of-court settlement with Licciardello's widow, which included sealing the court papers.
Hinn runs the largest evangelistic organization in the world that is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. That means his finances are private, his salary is secret, and his income is anybody's guess. Royalties from his books alone are estimated at $500,000 per year, but he essentially has carte blanche to take anything out of the till he wants. "He lives the lifestyle of a billionaire," says Ole Anthony, "all on the backs of false promises and selling false hope."
As Hinn put it himself, in a moment of rare revelatory candor, "I don't need gold in heaven, I gotta have it now."
During 1993, his one year of "reform," he talked about being stung by being portrayed as a millionaire and how he wanted to be "more Christ-like." His solution: "The Lord said sell the Benz and the watch."
He got rid of his Rolex and his Mercedes. Notice he didn't give them away. He sold them - and then replaced the Mercedes with a $65,000 BMW. This is what God told him to do. Just as God told him more recently that now is not the right time for the World Healing Center in Irving. And who better to know what God wants, because Hinn, after all, is only the third person in the history of the universe to have actually seen God and lived to tell about it.
D Magazine - July 2003
By John Bloom
Controversial televangelist and faith healer Benny Hinn came to Texas in 1999, abandoning his congregation in Florida to build a World Health Center in Irving. But Hinn - whose lifestyle more closely resembles Michael Jackson's than Jerry Falwell's - recently got word from on high to delay his plans for the theme park/New Age miracle spa. Thank God. If you drive west from the city, through the neo-modern lunarscape of Las Colinas, past the airport on our denuded prairie, into the warren of faceless office buildings that make up cosmopolitan Grapevine, you'll never find Benny Hinn.
He wants it that way. The nerve center of his worldwide organization is tucked away in a group of cheap, white, nondescript buildings that look like the kind of domiciles favored by mafia fronts on the wharves of New Jersey. Inside, several dozen employees process an estimated $100 million per year in donations from people who believe in Hinn as a sort of Elmer Gantry for the 21st century. (Obviously they didn't read the novel.)
Now go the other way, into the cul-de-sacs and barrios of deep East Dallas. On a dead-end street next to a nursing home, in an expansive two-story house that doesn't look like a mafia front, even though it was once owned by the Dallas mob, the Trinity Foundation works 24/7 trying to find out just how much money passes through Grapevine, where it comes from, and where it goes. Members of the Christian watchdog organization do so by running undercover operations, infiltrations, spying, surveillance, the cultivation of ties to disgruntled ex-employees, and even going through Benny Hinn's garbage in an effort to, well, to make him prove he's not a fraud.
"All we want is for Benny Hinn to make good on promises he made to me in 1993," says Ole Anthony, president of the Trinity Foundation. "He promised he would stop airing fake healings, that he would medically verify all healings, that he would wait six months after the healing before putting it on TV, to make sure it was authentic. He said he would do all these things, and he's done none of them. It would also be nice if he would submit himself to a real theologian for examination. Some of his teachings are off the scale, even bordering on necromancy."
What the heck is Benny Hinn doing in Dallas?
It's weird. It was weird when he announced he was moving here in 1999, pretty much abandoning his church congregation in Florida. It was weirder still when he announced that God had ordered him to build a $30 million World Healing Center in Irving, making it sound like a combination theme park and New Age miracle spa. The way he laid it out, it would be a sort of shrine to famous faith healers of the past, complete with "stereophonic statue gardens," as well as a Holy Ghost Mayo Clinic for the halt, the lame, and the afflicted. One envisioned wheelchair-bound hordes being lifted off jumbo jets at DFW Airport and convoying their way over to Las Colinas, like pilgrims pouring into a Disney World version of Lourdes. Isn't this the kind of thing that belongs in Tulsa?
Fortunately, God changed His mind last summer and told Hinn not to build the healing center after all, even though he had spent two years collecting donations for it. (God was apparently vague about what Hinn should do with the money. The county tax assessor was less vague, telling Hinn it was unlikely that his tax exemption would survive theme-park ownership.) Hinn said it was just a timing matter. God wants the healing center, but he doesn't want it right now. (Because the only other building the Almighty is known to have ordered is the Temple at Jerusalem, maybe He's just unimpressed with Irving.) Hinn finally said he would keep his headquarters in Dallas because the central location saves him money.
"Good," Anthony says. "It will save us money, too."
If anything, the move to Texas looks like an attempt to spread his operations over as many geographical jurisdictions as possible. For example, Hinn's TV show, This Is Your Day!, originates in studios in Orange County, California, and airs in 192 countries, making it one of the most widely disseminated programs in the world. Hinn is so ubiquitous on religious TV, in fact, that you would assume by this point - 30 years into his preaching ministry - that he would have become a household name, like Billy Graham, counseling the president and appearing on The Today Show in times of national crisis. But Hinn has done the opposite.
Aside from his twice-monthly appearances at his own choreographed "crusades," held in the largest sports arenas on the planet, Hinn is a virtual recluse, surrounded by armies of bodyguards, ensconced in an $8 million oceanfront hacienda in southern California, traveling by private jet for "snorkeling vacations" in the Cayman Islands, staying in $3,000 presidential suites, and claiming a level of financial secrecy and paranoid internal security that's more often associated with drug dealers than men of the cloth. By surrounding himself with yes-men and stage-managing every detail of his public image - even to the point of stiff-arming the occasional paparazzo who tries to photograph him - he has more in common with Michael Jackson than Jerry Falwell. He may, in fact, be the first Christian rock star. The analogy is not Paul McCartney, though. Hinn's career is more like Cher's. He makes it up as he goes along, re-inventing himself whenever necessary.
Hinn has no church. He belongs to no denomination. He's not even affiliated with any particular religion, although his buzz words indicate he tends to dwell on the freaky fringe of Pentecostalism. As recently as three centuries ago, he probably would have been burned as a heretic. To give you some idea of his doctrinal strangeness, he once preached that the Trinity is actually nine persons because each member of the Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - is also a Trinity. He also says that God and the Holy Spirit have real bodies with eyes, hands, mouth, etc. Various theologians have trashed Hinn, of course, for preaching "new revelations" directly from God that turn out to be, when examined, variations of thousand-year-old heresies. He thinks of himself as a prophet (even when his prophecies don't come true) and, in one burst of grandeur, "a new messiah walking on the earth." He believes that the Biblical Adam flew into outer space; that when God parted the Red Sea he made it into a wall of ice; that God talks to him more frequently than he talked to, say, Moses; that a man has risen from the dead in his presence; that a man turned into a snake before his eyes; that angels come to his bedroom and talk to him; and that the only reason we're not all in perfect health, living forever, is that there are demons in the world, attacking us. He's expressed opinions normally heard only on schizophrenia wards, and he's done it in front of millions of people - and still they come. They come in such numbers that thousands have to be turned away, and even the ones turned away gladly give him their money.
It happened at the age of 11, when Jesus first appeared to either him or his mother while he was living in Jaffa, Israel. Or maybe it happened at 18, when he had a conversion experience at a high school in Toronto. That's when Benny Hinn says he was "anointed." Or maybe it was shortly after that, when he took a bus trip to Pittsburgh to see the faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman. It's difficult to say exactly when it happened, or what form it took, because Hinn parcels out little bits and pieces of his background as it suits him, then embellishes the stories so that isolating any one event in his life is like puzzling through a 30-year-old KGB file.
What we do know - because he returns to it time and again - is that a transforming moment in his life occurred when, as a teenager, he was assigned to take care of a crippled arthritic woman on a pilgrimage to see one of Kuhlman's healing services, and he saw the woman apparently lose all pain in her legs and "untwist," as he put it. Depending on how cynical you are, he had either found his holy calling or discovered one of the oldest American carnie games. Ever since then, he's been praised as a true miracle worker - Oral Roberts himself is his biggest fan - and also debunked by various investigative reporters around the world, including 60 Minutes Australia, which concluded, "Benny Hinn is a fake. A dangerous fake. What he does is prey on the sick, the desperate, and the gullible." (Dallas' Trinity Foundation does most of the legwork for all the various networks and newspapers that have investigated Hinn. Of the Australian report, Ole Anthony says, "Apparently in Australia you can just go ahead and say the truth out loud.")
Hinn is a peculiar sort, even by the standards of the ongoing circus called American televangelism. If you look at the superstars of the past 20 years - Bakker, Swaggart, Tilton - they're all of a type: WASPy extroverts with good looks in a sort of dime store gigolo way. (Even Jim Bakker had that lost-puppy look that's so attractive to lonely widows, and older women living alone are the number one demographic group when it comes to sending money to television ministries.) Hinn, on the other hand, is short, slight, Semitic, round-faced, and often sports a haircut that looks like a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream that's been knocked off the top of the cone. He reminds you of a discount Persian rug merchant, not a spiritual leader. He's a Palestinian with a Greek father and Armenian Turk mother, raised in a Catholic school along with eight brothers and sisters who were stuffed into a tiny two-bedroom apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Jaffa. In Hinn's books he claims that his father was the mayor of Jaffa. As it turns out, Jaffa had no mayor after the year 1948, four years before Hinn was born. Like many factoids in the Hinn legend, this one seems to be a fib.
Toufik Benedictus Hinn, known to his family as "Tutu," didn't much like living in Israel with an Arabic first name, so early in life he became "Benny." He was not particularly noted by his classmates at College de Frere elementary school in Jaffa or, after the family emigrated when Benny was 14, at Georges Vanier Secondary School in Toronto. In his sermons and books, Hinn has portrayed his childhood as that of a social outcast, handicapped by a severe stutter, who was nonetheless a stellar student. But when G. Richard Fisher and M. Kurt Goedelman, two journalists who write for Christian publications, looked into Hinn's youth, they found that both claims were untrue: nobody remembered Hinn's stutter, and he had dropped out of high school after the 11th grade. White lies, by themselves, don't really mean that much, but they indicate how twisted Hinn's mythmaking can be. He invents things that reflect badly on him just as easily as he invents things that reflect well on him. Psychologically, he can't stand the unadorned truth.
Occasionally, though, the enhancements expand from the realm of the white lie into the land of the whopper. For example, Hinn claims to have preached at an all-girls Catholic school in Jerusalem in 1976 and "every single girl in that school got saved, including all the nuns." Since there's only one Catholic girls school in Jerusalem, Schmidt's Girls College, it was a fairly easy matter to question all the nuns who were there in 1976, as well as Father Dusind, who has overseen all religious instruction since 1955. The result? "This is nonsense, real nonsense," Dusind told Fisher and Goedelman. "It never happened and could not happen because a Charismatic healer or Protestant preacher would never ever be let in to talk to the girls."
Or how about the time Hinn went into a Catholic hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and healed everyone there? The way Hinn tells it, he, three other Pentecostal preachers, and seven Catholic priests held a service together in the hospital chapel, where everyone went to work with "anointing bottles," and patients were healed instantly. They were then asked to lay hands on all the patients in the hospital's rooms, so Hinn and his "Miracle Invasion" team went down the hall healing people, knocking them down with God's power, until "the hospital looked like it had been hit by an earthquake."
The reality - easily confirmed by speaking to officials at Sault Ste. Marie General Hospital and the Gray Sisters of the Immaculate Conception who work there - is that no patients were released the day Hinn held a small service in the chapel and that, furthermore, "Mr. Hinn's claims are outlandish and unwarranted."
Okay, so what? Benny Hinn isn't the first flamboyant, white-suited evangelist to play fast and loose with "miracles," and he won't be the last. What makes Hinn different is that, after moving to Orlando in 1979 and founding the Orlando Christian Center in 1983, he became the most famous - and perhaps richest - evangelist in the world. When he preaches in the Philippines or Africa, for example, it's not uncommon to have 500,000 people at the service. And they all come for the same reason: supernatural events, miracles, ecstatic emotional experiences. He refined his technique in the '80s at the Orlando church, which was the scene of loud, frenzied, charismatic services almost from the moment he opened his doors. Hinn would frequently speak in tongues - something he no longer does now that his services are televised - and issue wild prophecies and reveal divine messages given only to him, as he essentially incorporated into his own services all the techniques he learned from watching Kathryn Kuhlman. Soon the Orlando church became a mecca for the suffering, and by the time Hinn started doing organized crusades in the late '80s, he was poised to fill the void left by the spectacular crashes of the Bakkers, Swaggarts, and Tiltons.
In many ways, Hinn is a throwback to the tent revival meetings of the 19th century. Short on scripture, long on enthusiasm, these were originally ways to carry the gospel to backwoods people who weren't served by churches, and the tradition was to collect a little money for the minister's traveling expenses at the end of the service. As time went on, the tent revival fell prey to shysters and carnie men, who discovered they could make a sizeable haul by stoking the emotions of the illiterate and making them feel like they were in the presence of miraculous events. It was a short jump from there to Aimee Semple Macpherson, the now discredited healer of the 1920s who, oddly enough, Hinn reveres as one of his spiritual predecessors. Macpherson was the first to take the tent revival nationwide.
This is not to say that everyone who held a healing service was a fraud - but the ones who made an entire career of it tended to be. There even developed a body of sleight-of-hand that survived well into the '90s, notably practiced by Dallas' own W.V. Grant, who can make a leg look like it has grown longer or shorter simply by manipulating the shoe with a deft magician's move. The healing service, almost from the beginning, was a strange mixture of showmanship, fervent worship, and magic.
Hinn's services, for example, follow a strict pattern that's calculated for maximum emotional impact and, not so coincidentally, maximum offering collection. From the time the crowd enters the arena, they're massaged with mood lighting, repetitive music, responsive chanting, group gestures, group singing, various forms of choral and instrumental entertainment, all leading up to the moment Hinn makes his entrance. The song sung for the entrance is "How Great Thou Art," making convenient use of an ambiguous personal pronoun.
"There's power here, people!" Hinn will typically say. "Lift your hands and receive it."
All dutifully lift their hands.
"You will be healed tonight!"
They sob and shout hallelujah.
"All things are possible to him that believeth!"
Hinn repeats this same sentence three times, getting a bigger emotional reaction each time he says it.
Chant, song, gesture, salute - all the classic techniques used to submerge the individual into a group. It works for dictators, and it works for Hinn. But now that he's joined them together in hope, he adds a dose of fear.
He speaks of huge disasters coming to the world. He tells them of the strange times we live in, a sinful world that will be cleansed by fire and earthquake. And there's only one slim hope to escape: "Only those who have been giving to God's work will be spared."
As a violin plays, money is collected in big white plastic buckets. And as the ushers do their work, Hinn's voice turns soothing. "Nothing will touch you. No one will touch your children. Nothing will touch your home."
Although he never says, "Donate money or you'll die," he comes close. There is a constant theme in his preaching of the connection between "giving" and "healing," making a "faith vow" and "having your needs met." He comes within a hairsbreadth of saying, "If you give me money, you will be healed." And the collection always occurs between his promise of healing and the actual healing session - the same way street performers save their biggest trick until after the hat has been passed.
Along about 10 p.m., when all the checks and dead presidents have been collected, Hinn announces that God is speaking to him. Sometimes he sees angels in the room. Sometimes he sees ugly demon monsters that are fleeing from the building. ("You ugly spirit of sickness, go out of this place! Let God's people go!") Sometimes he just feels the presence of spirits or angels. Once he saw the whole arena bathed in golden dust. And then, as though his body has been taken over by a force he can't control, he starts running around knocking people over. Sometimes he knocks them over with his coat, sometimes by blowing on them, sometimes by pushing their forehead with his hand - but when he touches them, they fall over. As he does this, he calls out the healings - a brain tumor, a cancer, a crippled left leg - as though he's watching something occurring that the rest of us can't see. And then, one by one, various people are brought onto the stage, and an announcer describes their affliction so that Hinn can lay hands on them and pronounce the disease vanquished. On an average night he'll heal about 80 people, in addition to the ones he shouts out in a sort of "wherever you are, you're healed" way.
No wonder Hinn needs bodyguards. Very few, if any, of these people are actually healed. And when they die, or their disease becomes worse, their relatives tend to become angry. For the past 10 years, this has been demonstrated over and over again by various investigative reports conducted with the resources of the Trinity Foundation, beginning with an Inside Edition show in 1993 hosted by Bill O'Reilly and reported by Steve Wilson.
Just a few examples:
He healed a case of brain cancer on stage, even though Inside Edition followed up with tests that showed the tumor was still present.
The "cure" of a deaf woman turned out to be a woman who, according to her doctor, was not deaf in the first place.
A Houston woman who thought she was cured of lung cancer ("It will never come back!" Hinn told her) rejected her doctors' advice and care - and died two months later.
Heavyweight boxer Evander Holyfield, banned from boxing because of a heart condition, went to a Benny Hinn crusade in Philadelphia, had Hinn lay hands on him, and gave Hinn a check for $265,000 after he was told he was healed. In fact, he passed his next examination by the boxing commission, but later his doctors said he never had a heart condition in the first place. He had been misdiagnosed.
Hinn claims that a man in Ghana was raised from the dead on the platform. "We have it on video!" he says, although he's never produced the video.
In two cases, journalists have tried to verify all the healings at a particular crusade. For an HBO documentary called A Question of Miracles, researchers attended a Portland, Oregon, crusade at which 76 miracles were claimed. Even though Hinn had agreed to provide medical verification of each one, he stonewalled requests for the data, then eventually responded 13 weeks later - with only five names. HBO followed up the five cases and determined that a woman "cured" of lung cancer had died nine months later, an old woman's broken vertebra wasn't healed after all, a man with a logging injury deteriorated as he refused medication and a needed operation, a woman claiming to be healed of deafness had never been deaf (according to her husband), and a woman complaining of "breathlessness" had stopped going to the doctor on instructions of her mother.
Just last December, NBC's Dateline tried to duplicate the HBO study. At a crusade in Las Vegas, they counted 56 miracles. Of those, Hinn eventually provided data "proving" five of them. Four of those people refused to share their medical records with NBC. The remaining one, a woman supposedly cured of Lou Gehrig's Disease, had been misdiagnosed, according to her doctor.
There have been so many documentaries and investigations on Hinn - almost all of them orchestrated by Trinity Foundation - that they even have a common structure:
Here's what Hinn looks like in action.
Here's what he claims to do.
Here's what his critics say.
Is he a fraud or is he a healer?
Let's find out.
Not much healing going on.
Okay, here's what Hinn says in his defense.
And one thing Hinn says in his defense - when confronted with evidence that someone claimed to be healed and then died - is that, "The reason people lose their healing is because they begin questioning if God really did it." If you're not healed - or, worse yet, if your sick child is not healed - it's your fault for not having enough faith. It's at this point that Hinn's ministry almost passes over into the realm of primitive magic - i.e., if you want it bad enough, and you say the right things and feel the right things, it will come true.
As it turns out, though, the media investigations are the best thing that ever happened to Hinn. They made him more famous, and more recognizable, than religious TV ever could have. And because most of his audience is made up of the truly desperate - the chronically sick, the dying, people living with pain - Benny Hinn became one more "treatment" for them to take a shot at.
When the first investigation broke, in March 1993, Hinn must have thought his empire was about to fall apart. There was a nasty shoving incident at the Philadelphia airport with Steve Wilson of Inside Edition, followed by a damage-control campaign in which Hinn went on many radio and TV shows and met privately with several of his critics to admit that he'd made mistakes and vow that he would never again air "miracles" on TV unless they had been medically verified. "God has taken me by the neck," he said to his congregation. "I think I'm gonna stop preaching healing and start preaching Jesus." At the request of Inside Edition, Ole Anthony traveled to Orlando to meet with Hinn. At the only face-to-face meeting the two men have had, Hinn said he was reformed and that he intended to start medically verifying all miracles and holding them back from television for six months, so that they could be proven authentic. He even said at one point that worldly wealth was sinful - something you'll rarely hear fall out of the mouth of a TV evangelist.
If you study this particular year in his life, 1993, he's remarkably consistent in his statements, very self-aware of exactly what errors he's made, very humble, very apologetic, very interested in getting "back to the gospel." He even says at one point that he'll stop doing healing services entirely. And most everyone believed him, including Inside Edition, in a follow-up report, and including Anthony. "I was disappointed," Anthony says today, "that a year later he was back to his old tricks."
By 1994, it was as though the soul searching of the previous year had never existed. He geared up to be bigger than ever. He added crusades, he became more flamboyant, more theatrical, and the procession of "miracles" flitting across the TV screen every day continued unabated.
Apparently what he'd discovered is that scandal was good for business. Or at least this particular type of scandal was good for business. Bakker and Swaggart - he must have thought of them at some point - had been brought down by sex, which is difficult for the Christian world to forgive. Greed, on the other hand, can be overcome. Tilton had been brought down by money issues, but after a few years of lying low, he was back in action. This was a whole new type of media attention. The reporters simply said, "Is he a healer, or is he a fake?" And because it was presented as an open-ended question, the crowds got even larger.
Ten years later, Hinn has become something of a media master. Whenever he's investigated now, he simply admits his "mistakes." He's especially fond of going on The Larry King Show at any time of crisis. He's also refined his view of what he does. He doesn't heal anyone, he always reminds the interviewer. He just creates an atmosphere so that God can heal people. By the time people get to the stage, they've already been healed by God, he says. If the healing turns out to be bogus, then the person was self-deluded. Besides, hope is a great thing.
He also says he has a doctor backstage now to counsel the miracle cases and encourage them to continue with their medication until the healing has been verified. This seems to satisfy the media, even though it amounts to an admission of his own inability to know whether someone is healed.
The image he presents to the faithful is the opposite, of course. To them he's a man possessed of special wisdom. He sees things no one else can see. He has conversations with Jesus that no one else has had. He witnesses the presence of God when no one else would be aware of it. And he constantly says his teaching is "new." ("You didn't come here to hear the same preaching you've been hearing for 50 years, did you?") Of course, to orthodox Christians, this alone makes him heretical. Far from being "new," they would say, the gospel has not changed for 2,000 years.
But there's an even darker side to Hinn and his organization. In 1998, two members of his inner circle died of heroin overdoses. In 1999, after one of his many vows of reform, he fired several board members and hired an ex-cop named Mario C. Licciardello to do an internal investigation of his ministry. Licciardello was the brother of Carman, who is sort of the Engelbert Humperdinck of Christian singers, so many think Hinn considered him "safe." But Licciardello did such a good job - taking hundreds of depositions and getting to the bottom of the heroin use - that Hinn then sued him. While Licciardello was still his head of security, the ministry filed a lawsuit demanding that all his files be turned over and sealed, because their public release could result in the end of the ministry. Licciardello was a police investigator with 25 years of experience, and he felt like his whole career was being smeared, so he fought back with his own lawyers. His counsel continually tried to take Hinn's deposition, but Hinn fought him at every step. The judge, however, ruled against him and said that, if Hinn intended to enjoin Licciardello, he would have to make himself available for questioning.
On the very day that Hinn was supposed to give his deposition in the case, Licciardello had a heart attack and died. The Hinn organization made an out-of-court settlement with Licciardello's widow, which included sealing the court papers.
Hinn runs the largest evangelistic organization in the world that is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. That means his finances are private, his salary is secret, and his income is anybody's guess. Royalties from his books alone are estimated at $500,000 per year, but he essentially has carte blanche to take anything out of the till he wants. "He lives the lifestyle of a billionaire," says Ole Anthony, "all on the backs of false promises and selling false hope."
As Hinn put it himself, in a moment of rare revelatory candor, "I don't need gold in heaven, I gotta have it now."
During 1993, his one year of "reform," he talked about being stung by being portrayed as a millionaire and how he wanted to be "more Christ-like." His solution: "The Lord said sell the Benz and the watch."
He got rid of his Rolex and his Mercedes. Notice he didn't give them away. He sold them - and then replaced the Mercedes with a $65,000 BMW. This is what God told him to do. Just as God told him more recently that now is not the right time for the World Healing Center in Irving. And who better to know what God wants, because Hinn, after all, is only the third person in the history of the universe to have actually seen God and lived to tell about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
