Pentecostal Christian Hypocrites
I thought Bob Jones was just an unacredited University, but now I learn that the real Rev. Bob Jones was not only crazy for God but was crazy for the ladies in the church office! Hypocrites everywhere!
Lots of homos in the ranks according to the list below, dont you think Rev. Rick? Notice how very few seem to be "ex gays" Some have kept their cock craving issues hidden under the rug, others pulled out a $425,000 check to shut up their black boyfriends, and others just seem to ignore their front page public outings (Liardon) and affairs. Not real "family friendly" is it when your boinking the hottie choir director every time your preacher wife and pastor daughter leave the church to run to the Circle K to grab a Diet Coke. Of course the really sad ones are the really brainwashed self haters like Ted Haggard who may have to spend five years in a dark closet (or whatever) to possibly brainwash the gay demons out of their lives, with a ex gay success rate John Paulk would admit is very unpromising.
Even worse may be the guys like the aging gay preacher Paul Cain who was once called a "prophet" --the poor old gay guy gets drunk while out chasing dick and runs off the road and wakes up to find himself kidnapped by a bunch of fundamentalist nuts and blonde bimbos clutching the Bible with a plan to turn the old prophet into a heterosexual within five years or so, unless he dies first.
Sorry Charlie, but five years of "reconstruction" is a shitty deal when you are seventy years old like Cain (or even fifty years old) and realize you missed out on a lifetime of happiness and frienships and t-dances and community by not just coming out and being the very person that God made you.
I find their stories sad and so tragic. Personally, I am so very thankful (delighted, actually!)that our God made me just the way I am - Gay! I am thankful that I knew about it early in my life, like in the third grade! I am thankful that Joe Kaye grabbed my hand and kissed me one night in high school and help me make my own personal coming out such a positive event for me, and also for helping me confirm that Robert Lafosse wasnt the only other gay guy in my hometown. Lafosse had a great future in Ballet in NYC.
Thus, Staying in the closet and asking God to change your sexual orientation has been a tragic waste of good years for these Pentacostals...so THANK YOU GOD FOR MY FAMILY AND FOR HELPING MY LIFE TURN OUT THE WAY IT HAS!
---------------------------------------------
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/recent-pentecostal-scandals.html
From its inception the Pentecostal movement has been marred deeply by moral
scandals, as we have documented in our new illustrated 317-page book The
Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements: Its History and Its Error. If the movement
had the fullness of the Holy Spirit unction and power that it claims, we would
not see such an exhibition of the flesh, but in fact moral scandals have
continued to plague it in recent history. The following are some prominent
examples:
In 1989 JIM BAKKER, head of the very influential Pentecostal
PTL television program went to prison for defrauding his followers out of $158
million. He was paroled in 1994 after serving five years of a 45-year sentence.
His trial brought to light his lavish lifestyle, which included six luxurious
homes and even an air-conditioned dog house. Prosecutors charged Bakker with
diverting to his own use $3.7 million of the money that had been given to his
“ministry.” Bakker also committed adultery with church secretary Jessica Hahn
and paid more than $250,000 in an attempt to hush up the matter. Bakker’s wife
and the former co-host of the PTL Club, Tammy Faye, divorced him while he was in
prison and married Roe Messner, an old family friend whose company helped build
PTL’s Heritage USA resort complex. Today Tammy Faye has a non-judgmental
ministry to homosexuals. She appears at “gay-pride” events nationwide, including
a Tammy Faye look-alike contest in Washington, D.C., where she was “surrounded
by men in falsies and pancake makeup…” (Charisma News, November 2002). In
January 2000 Bakker told Larry King, “Every person who died in the [Jewish]
Holocaust is in heaven.” Bakker defended this heretical doctrine in a letter to
the editor that appeared in Charisma magazine in June of that year.
A
year after the PTL scandal first hit the world’s headlines, JIMMY SWAGGART, one
of the leading Pentecostal preachers of modern times, created his own scandal
when he was caught with a prostitute. At the time, Swaggart had a 6,000-member
congregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a 270-acre headquarters, a Bible
College, an influential television ministry that reached to many parts of the
world (broadcast on 9,700 stations and cable outlets), and a ministry income of
$142-million per year. Swaggart is the cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis and both can
pound the piano, but whereas Jerry Lee pursued a flamboyant rock & roll
career Jimmy pursued a flamboyant gospel career. A report from a Swaggart
crusade in Calgary, Alberta, described the “gospel music at acid-rock volumes”
and said “it is a good show” with Swaggart “hammering away at the grand piano,
sweating and gesturing like Elvis Presley” and “working the audience like Frank
Sinatra” (The Courier News, Elgin, Ill., May 20, 1991, p. 5A). Swaggart refused
to stay away from the pulpit for a year as the Assemblies of God in Louisiana
stipulated for his discipline, so he was disbarred but he continued preaching
anyway. He lost three-fourths of his television audience and his Bible college
students and a large percentage of his church members; his finances crumbled.
But the Jimmy Swaggart scandal wasn’t over even though he claimed that when he
asked God, “Lord, do you still want me to take this work?” God replied
emphatically, “Yesssss! You’re in better shape today that you’ve ever been
before” (“Swaggart Back in Pulpit with Tales of Nightmares and Revelation,”
Religious News Service, May 23, 1988; reprinted in Christian News, June 3, 1988,
p. 5). In a television broadcast in May 1988 Swaggart had the audacity to boast,
“You are looking at a clean preacher!” and “I do not lie!” (Don Matzat, “The
Same Ol' Jimmy,” Christian News, May 16, 1988). Perhaps this is because Swaggart
had sought counseling from Oral Roberts and Roberts had observed demons with
long fingernails digging into Swaggart’s flesh and had cast them out (Huntsville
Times, Huntsville, Alabama, AP report, March 31, 1988; reported from Calvary
Contender, April 15, 1988). Just like that. The exorcism didn’t last though. In
1991 Swaggart was again in hot water when police in Indio, California, stopped
him on a traffic charge and found that the woman riding with him was a
prostitute. In spite of all of this Swaggart is still swaggering, though his
crowd isn’t very large. On his Sept. 12, 2004, program he said, “I’ve never seen
a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m gonna be blunt and plain; if one
ever looks at me like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.”
By
the 1980s Pentecostal evangelist PETER POPOFF had a ministry on 51 television
channels and 40 radio stations and an annual income of seven million dollars. He
also held healing crusades in many cities, during which he would exercise a
“word of knowledge” by calling out the names, addresses, and illnesses of
strangers who were in attendance. In 1986 the news broke that Popoff’s amazing
“revelations” were actually broadcast to him by his wife after she had conversed
with members of the audience. She transmitted her information by radio signal
and Peter could hear her voice through a tiny receiver in his ear. A team of
skeptics discovered the ruse and recorded the private broadcasts using a
scanning receiver and recording equipment (Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1986).
When questioned about the matter by John Dart, religion writer for the Los
Angeles Times, Popoff replied that his wife only supplied him with about 50% of
the information and the rest he got from the Lord! Popoff was forced to file for
bankruptcy in 1987 but by 1990 he was back in business with a new book entitled
Dreams, which he announced in a full-page ad in Charisma magazine
ROBERT
TILTON, who was voted one of the most popular Pentecostals by Charisma magazine
readers in 1983 and appeared on the cover of Charisma in July 1985, was the
founder of the Word of Faith Satellite Network, host of Success-N-Life
broadcasts, and founder and pastor of the Word of Faith World Outreach Center in
Farmers Branch, Texas. He taught the Kenneth Hagin Word-Faith doctrines and
promised prosperity and healing to those who supported his ministry and
exercised faith. He wrote, “You are ... a God kind of creature” (Tilton, God’s
Laws of Success, pp. 170--71). In 1990 he said: “Being poor is a sin, when God
promises prosperity. New house? New car? That’s chicken feed. That’s nothing
compared to what God wants to do for you” (John Macarthur, Charismatic Chaos, p.
285). In 1991, when his ministry was taking in $80 million, Tilton’s empire was
shaken when ABC-TV’s PrimeTime Live exposed his extravagant lifestyle and his
shady fund-raising practices. His estate included an 11,000-square-foot home
near Dallas, a condominium in Florida, a yacht, and other assets worth $90
million. The show reported that Tilton’s ministry threw thousands of unread
prayer requests into the trash even though Tilton claimed to pray over them. He
had even claimed: “I laid on top of those prayer requests so much that the
chemicals actually got into my bloodstream, and ... I had two small strokes in
my brain” (Robert Tilton, Success-N-Life, November 22, 1991). Though Tilton
protested that he was the victim of falsehood and sued ABC for libel, the case
was thrown out of the courts. Because of the scandal Tilton lost much of his
television audience and most of his church members, but he is still on the air
and still preaching the prosperity gospel and still begging for donations and
still promising God’s blessing on those who give.
In 1991 Kansas City
prophet BOB JONES’ tapes were removed from the Vineyard Ministries International
product catalog after he admitted to “a moral failure” (Lee Grady, “Wimber Plots
New Course for Vineyard,” Charisma, Feb. 1993, p. 64). Jones was using his
alleged spiritual authority and “prophetic anointing” to induce women to
disrobe.
Pentecostal preacher JAMIE BUCKINGHAM (1933-92) was the author
of 40 books that sold 20 million copies, editor-in-chief of Ministries Today
magazine, a columnist for Charisma magazine, and pastor of the 2,000-member
Tabernacle Church in Melbourne, Florida. Buckingham began his ministry as a
Southern Baptist pastor but after being “baptized by the spirit” at a Full
Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship meeting, he became a Pentecostal. Buckingham’s
“spirit baptism” made him a radical ecumenist who called for unity between
Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, and Pentecostals. In an article entitled
“Bridge Builders” (Charisma, March 1992, p. 90), he said there is no higher
calling than ecumenical bridge building and he praised David Duplessis for
building bridges between Pentecostals and Roman Catholics, and Jewish rabbi
Yechiel Eckstein for building bridges between Jews and Christians. Buckingham
taught that God has promised healing through Christ’s atonement, and when he was
diagnosed with cancer in 1990 many Pentecostals, including Oral Roberts,
prophesied his healing. Buckingham said that God told him personally that he was
going to live to be “at least 100 years of age in good health and with a clear
mind.” The April 1991 issue of Charisma magazine featured this testimony in “My
Summer of Miracles.” Note the following excerpt from that article:
“One
day my wife … suddenly spoke aloud [and] said, ‘Your healing was purchased at
the cross.’ … Here is what I discovered. YOU HAVE WHAT YOU SPEAK. If you want to
change something, you must believe it enough to speak it. … If you talk poverty,
you’ll have it. If you say you’re sick, you’ll be (and remain) sick. … despite
what the doctors said, I refused to say ‘My cancer.’ It was not mine. It was the
devil’s. I didn’t have cancer. I had Jesus. The cancer was trying to have me,
but THE WORD OF GOD SAID I WAS HEALED THROUGH WHAT JESUS DID ON CALVARY. … I
popped a videotape into my VCR and lay down on the sofa. … The tape was an Oral
Roberts’ sermon … I came up off the sofa, shouting, ‘I’M HEALED!’ My wife leaped
out of her chair and shouted, ‘Hallelujah!’ For the next 30 minutes all we did
was walk around the house shouting thanks to God and proclaiming my healing”
(Jamie Buckingham, “My Summer of Miracles,” Charisma, April 1991).
Ten
months after the publication of this article, on February 17, 1992, Jamie
Buckingham died of cancer about 40 years shy of his 100th birthday. Not only did
Jamie Buckingham lead others astray with his false teaching but he also deceived
himself.
The Cathedral at Chapel Hill near Atlanta, Georgia, founded by
EARL PAULK, has been plagued with moral scandals and radical false teaching. At
the height of his power Paulk was exceedingly influential. He authored many
books, had a large television ministry, was the founder of the International
Charismatic Bible Ministries, and a “prophet” in Bill Hamon’s Christian
International Network of Prophetic Ministries. Paulk amalgamated the Word-Faith
doctrine with Reconstructionist or Dominion theology and promoted it widely
among Pentecostals. As for the Word-Faith doctrine, Paulk echoes Kenneth Hagin
and Kenneth Copeland and others when he wrote: “Just as dogs have puppies and
cats have kittens, God has little gods. Until we comprehend that we are gods,
and begin to act like little gods, we can’t manifest the Kingdom of God” (Paulk,
Satan Unmasked, pp. 96, 97). Paulk merges this Kingdom Now Word-Faith theology
(that Christians are little gods with the authority of Christ on earth) with the
dominion doctrine the churches are to unify and then retake the world from Satan
and ruler over it before Christ returns. He gives this teaching in books such as
Satan Unmasked (1984), Held in the Heavens Until (1985), and Ultimate Kingdom
(1986). Paulk wrote in his book The Wounded Body of Christ, “We need not wonder
whether He [Jesus] will come back; HE CANNOT. Christ can only return when the
people of God have reached that place of unity in which the Spirit and the Bride
can say, ‘Come’” (p. 73). By 1992, Chapel Hill Harvester Church had 12,000
members and was one of the most prosperous churches in America, but that year
DON PAULK, who had taken over as senior pastor from his brother Earl, admitted
having an “improper” relationship with a woman staffer. He resigned but was
immediately reinstated by the church council. Allegations were made by a group
of women about sexual relationships with the Paulks and in 2001 another female
church member filed a lawsuit claiming that Paulk molested her when she was a
child and into her teenage years, but the accusations were denied and swept
under the rug. In August 2005 long-time church member and soloist Mona Brewer
and her husband Bobby, who was a major financial supporter of the church, filed
a lawsuit against Earl Paulk alleging that she was manipulated into being his
paramour for 14 years. Brewer says that the members were conditioned to give
unconditional obedience to the pastor, who called himself “Archbishop Paulk,”
and that he taught her that those who are spiritually exalted can have sexual
relationships and it isn’t adultery. He called it “kingdom relationships.” She
says that Paulk even shared her with family members and visiting Charismatic
preachers. This case was featured on CCN’s Paula Zahn Now program on Jan. 19,
2006, but as of March 2006 Paulk’s television program was still broadcast on
Trinity Broadcasting Network.
In 2000, CLARENCE MCCLENDON, pastor of
Pentecostal Church of the Harvest International in Los Angeles and prominent
“bishop” in the International Communion of Charismatic Churches, divorced his
wife and a mere week later married another woman. His first wife, who accused
him of fathering a child out of wedlock, took their three children and moved to
Hawaii, but Clarence went right on as if nothing had happened and he had all of
the support he needed. Charisma magazine observed that “in just a few months,
members of his new congregation were dancing in the aisles in their new
facility, and the talented young preacher was back on the conference circuit, no
questions asked. ... McClendon enjoys the spotlight on Christian television, and
he shares pulpits with top leaders in our movement” (Lee Grady, “Sin in the
Camp,” Charisma, Feb. 2002).
In 2002 ROBERTS LIARDON, pastor of Embassy
Christian Center in Irvine, California, and influential Pentecostal author,
acknowledged that he had “a homosexual relationship” (Charisma News, Jan. 31,
2002), though he was back in the ministry without weeks.
On September
12, 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported that PAUL CROUCH OF TRINITY
BROADCASTING NETWORK had paid $425,000 in 1998 to Enoch Lonnie Ford, an employee
at TBN, to keep him from going public with his allegation that they had a
homosexual encounter. It was after Ford threatened to sue that Crouch paid
almost a half-million dollars to keep the matter quiet. TBN also paid thousands
of dollars in debts that Ford had accrued. Crouch denied the allegations and
tried to blacken the character of his accuser, which was not difficult to do.
Ford is a convicted sex and drug offender, but it seems very strange that Crouch
would pay such a large sum to a man if there was no truth to his allegation.
Ford wrote his testimony of the affair but it was sealed by the courts after
Crouch sued to have the matter squelched.
In 2004, PAUL CAIN, the most
prominent Pentecostal prophet, was exposed as a homosexual and an alcoholic
(“Paul Cain, “Latter Rain Prophet of Renown Is Now Discredited,” The Plumbline,
December 2004).
______________________________
THE
PENTECOSTAL-CHARISMATIC MOVEMENTS: THE HISTORY AND THE ERROR. I have been
examining and re-examining the Pentecostal-Charismatic movements for more than
three decades since I was led to Christ by a Pentecostal in 1973 and began to
seek God’s will about tongues-speaking and the miraculous gifts of the early
churches. I have built a large library of materials on this subject and have
interviewed Pentecostals and Charismatics and attended their churches in many
parts of the world. I have also attended large Charismatic conferences with
press credentials. I have approached these studies with an open mind in the
sense of having a commitment only to the truth and not to anyone’s tradition. I
am a member of an independent Baptist church but Baptist doctrine and practice
is not my authority; the Bible is. Each fresh evaluation of the
Pentecostal-Charismatic movement has brought an increased conviction that it is
unscriptural and dangerous. This book begins with my own experience with the
Pentecostal movement. The next section deals with the history of the Pentecostal
movement, beginning with a survey of miraculous signs from the second to the
18th centuries. We then examine the movements in the 19th century that led up to
the creation of Pentecostalism and the outbreak of “tongues-speaking” at Charles
Parham’s Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, and at William Seymour’s Azusa
Street Mission in Los Angeles in 1906. We examine some of the major Pentecostal
denominations, the Latter Rain Covenent, the major Pentecostal healing
evangelists, the Sharon Schools and the New Order of the Latter Rain, the
Manifest Sons of God, the Word-Faith movement and its key leaders, the
Charismatic Movement, the Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the Pentecostal
Prophets, the Third Wave, and the recent Pentecostal scandals. We conclude the
historical section with a look at the Laughing Revival. In the last section of
the book we deal with the theological errors of the Pentecostal-Charismatic
movements (exalting experience over Scripture, emphasis on the miraculous,
Messianic and apostolic miracles can be reproduced, the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, the baptism of fire, exalting the Holy Spirit, tongues speaking is for
today, sinless perfectionism, healing is guaranteed in the atonement, spirit
slaying, spirit drunkenness, visions of Jesus, trips to heaven, women preachers,
and ecumenism). The final section of the book answers the question: “Why are
people deluded by Pentecostal-Charismatic error?” David and Tami Lee, former
Pentecostals, after reviewing a section of the book said: “Very well done! We
pray God will use it to open the eyes of many and to help keep many of His
children out of such deception.” And Mary Keating, also a former Charismatic,
said, “The book is excellent and I have no doubt whatever that the Lord is going
to use it in a mighty way. Amen!!” 317 pages. $9.95, available from Way of Life
Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143,
fbns@wayoflife.org
Lots of homos in the ranks according to the list below, dont you think Rev. Rick? Notice how very few seem to be "ex gays" Some have kept their cock craving issues hidden under the rug, others pulled out a $425,000 check to shut up their black boyfriends, and others just seem to ignore their front page public outings (Liardon) and affairs. Not real "family friendly" is it when your boinking the hottie choir director every time your preacher wife and pastor daughter leave the church to run to the Circle K to grab a Diet Coke. Of course the really sad ones are the really brainwashed self haters like Ted Haggard who may have to spend five years in a dark closet (or whatever) to possibly brainwash the gay demons out of their lives, with a ex gay success rate John Paulk would admit is very unpromising.
Even worse may be the guys like the aging gay preacher Paul Cain who was once called a "prophet" --the poor old gay guy gets drunk while out chasing dick and runs off the road and wakes up to find himself kidnapped by a bunch of fundamentalist nuts and blonde bimbos clutching the Bible with a plan to turn the old prophet into a heterosexual within five years or so, unless he dies first.
Sorry Charlie, but five years of "reconstruction" is a shitty deal when you are seventy years old like Cain (or even fifty years old) and realize you missed out on a lifetime of happiness and frienships and t-dances and community by not just coming out and being the very person that God made you.
I find their stories sad and so tragic. Personally, I am so very thankful (delighted, actually!)that our God made me just the way I am - Gay! I am thankful that I knew about it early in my life, like in the third grade! I am thankful that Joe Kaye grabbed my hand and kissed me one night in high school and help me make my own personal coming out such a positive event for me, and also for helping me confirm that Robert Lafosse wasnt the only other gay guy in my hometown. Lafosse had a great future in Ballet in NYC.
Thus, Staying in the closet and asking God to change your sexual orientation has been a tragic waste of good years for these Pentacostals...so THANK YOU GOD FOR MY FAMILY AND FOR HELPING MY LIFE TURN OUT THE WAY IT HAS!
---------------------------------------------
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/recent-pentecostal-scandals.html
From its inception the Pentecostal movement has been marred deeply by moral
scandals, as we have documented in our new illustrated 317-page book The
Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements: Its History and Its Error. If the movement
had the fullness of the Holy Spirit unction and power that it claims, we would
not see such an exhibition of the flesh, but in fact moral scandals have
continued to plague it in recent history. The following are some prominent
examples:
In 1989 JIM BAKKER, head of the very influential Pentecostal
PTL television program went to prison for defrauding his followers out of $158
million. He was paroled in 1994 after serving five years of a 45-year sentence.
His trial brought to light his lavish lifestyle, which included six luxurious
homes and even an air-conditioned dog house. Prosecutors charged Bakker with
diverting to his own use $3.7 million of the money that had been given to his
“ministry.” Bakker also committed adultery with church secretary Jessica Hahn
and paid more than $250,000 in an attempt to hush up the matter. Bakker’s wife
and the former co-host of the PTL Club, Tammy Faye, divorced him while he was in
prison and married Roe Messner, an old family friend whose company helped build
PTL’s Heritage USA resort complex. Today Tammy Faye has a non-judgmental
ministry to homosexuals. She appears at “gay-pride” events nationwide, including
a Tammy Faye look-alike contest in Washington, D.C., where she was “surrounded
by men in falsies and pancake makeup…” (Charisma News, November 2002). In
January 2000 Bakker told Larry King, “Every person who died in the [Jewish]
Holocaust is in heaven.” Bakker defended this heretical doctrine in a letter to
the editor that appeared in Charisma magazine in June of that year.
A
year after the PTL scandal first hit the world’s headlines, JIMMY SWAGGART, one
of the leading Pentecostal preachers of modern times, created his own scandal
when he was caught with a prostitute. At the time, Swaggart had a 6,000-member
congregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a 270-acre headquarters, a Bible
College, an influential television ministry that reached to many parts of the
world (broadcast on 9,700 stations and cable outlets), and a ministry income of
$142-million per year. Swaggart is the cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis and both can
pound the piano, but whereas Jerry Lee pursued a flamboyant rock & roll
career Jimmy pursued a flamboyant gospel career. A report from a Swaggart
crusade in Calgary, Alberta, described the “gospel music at acid-rock volumes”
and said “it is a good show” with Swaggart “hammering away at the grand piano,
sweating and gesturing like Elvis Presley” and “working the audience like Frank
Sinatra” (The Courier News, Elgin, Ill., May 20, 1991, p. 5A). Swaggart refused
to stay away from the pulpit for a year as the Assemblies of God in Louisiana
stipulated for his discipline, so he was disbarred but he continued preaching
anyway. He lost three-fourths of his television audience and his Bible college
students and a large percentage of his church members; his finances crumbled.
But the Jimmy Swaggart scandal wasn’t over even though he claimed that when he
asked God, “Lord, do you still want me to take this work?” God replied
emphatically, “Yesssss! You’re in better shape today that you’ve ever been
before” (“Swaggart Back in Pulpit with Tales of Nightmares and Revelation,”
Religious News Service, May 23, 1988; reprinted in Christian News, June 3, 1988,
p. 5). In a television broadcast in May 1988 Swaggart had the audacity to boast,
“You are looking at a clean preacher!” and “I do not lie!” (Don Matzat, “The
Same Ol' Jimmy,” Christian News, May 16, 1988). Perhaps this is because Swaggart
had sought counseling from Oral Roberts and Roberts had observed demons with
long fingernails digging into Swaggart’s flesh and had cast them out (Huntsville
Times, Huntsville, Alabama, AP report, March 31, 1988; reported from Calvary
Contender, April 15, 1988). Just like that. The exorcism didn’t last though. In
1991 Swaggart was again in hot water when police in Indio, California, stopped
him on a traffic charge and found that the woman riding with him was a
prostitute. In spite of all of this Swaggart is still swaggering, though his
crowd isn’t very large. On his Sept. 12, 2004, program he said, “I’ve never seen
a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m gonna be blunt and plain; if one
ever looks at me like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.”
By
the 1980s Pentecostal evangelist PETER POPOFF had a ministry on 51 television
channels and 40 radio stations and an annual income of seven million dollars. He
also held healing crusades in many cities, during which he would exercise a
“word of knowledge” by calling out the names, addresses, and illnesses of
strangers who were in attendance. In 1986 the news broke that Popoff’s amazing
“revelations” were actually broadcast to him by his wife after she had conversed
with members of the audience. She transmitted her information by radio signal
and Peter could hear her voice through a tiny receiver in his ear. A team of
skeptics discovered the ruse and recorded the private broadcasts using a
scanning receiver and recording equipment (Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1986).
When questioned about the matter by John Dart, religion writer for the Los
Angeles Times, Popoff replied that his wife only supplied him with about 50% of
the information and the rest he got from the Lord! Popoff was forced to file for
bankruptcy in 1987 but by 1990 he was back in business with a new book entitled
Dreams, which he announced in a full-page ad in Charisma magazine
ROBERT
TILTON, who was voted one of the most popular Pentecostals by Charisma magazine
readers in 1983 and appeared on the cover of Charisma in July 1985, was the
founder of the Word of Faith Satellite Network, host of Success-N-Life
broadcasts, and founder and pastor of the Word of Faith World Outreach Center in
Farmers Branch, Texas. He taught the Kenneth Hagin Word-Faith doctrines and
promised prosperity and healing to those who supported his ministry and
exercised faith. He wrote, “You are ... a God kind of creature” (Tilton, God’s
Laws of Success, pp. 170--71). In 1990 he said: “Being poor is a sin, when God
promises prosperity. New house? New car? That’s chicken feed. That’s nothing
compared to what God wants to do for you” (John Macarthur, Charismatic Chaos, p.
285). In 1991, when his ministry was taking in $80 million, Tilton’s empire was
shaken when ABC-TV’s PrimeTime Live exposed his extravagant lifestyle and his
shady fund-raising practices. His estate included an 11,000-square-foot home
near Dallas, a condominium in Florida, a yacht, and other assets worth $90
million. The show reported that Tilton’s ministry threw thousands of unread
prayer requests into the trash even though Tilton claimed to pray over them. He
had even claimed: “I laid on top of those prayer requests so much that the
chemicals actually got into my bloodstream, and ... I had two small strokes in
my brain” (Robert Tilton, Success-N-Life, November 22, 1991). Though Tilton
protested that he was the victim of falsehood and sued ABC for libel, the case
was thrown out of the courts. Because of the scandal Tilton lost much of his
television audience and most of his church members, but he is still on the air
and still preaching the prosperity gospel and still begging for donations and
still promising God’s blessing on those who give.
In 1991 Kansas City
prophet BOB JONES’ tapes were removed from the Vineyard Ministries International
product catalog after he admitted to “a moral failure” (Lee Grady, “Wimber Plots
New Course for Vineyard,” Charisma, Feb. 1993, p. 64). Jones was using his
alleged spiritual authority and “prophetic anointing” to induce women to
disrobe.
Pentecostal preacher JAMIE BUCKINGHAM (1933-92) was the author
of 40 books that sold 20 million copies, editor-in-chief of Ministries Today
magazine, a columnist for Charisma magazine, and pastor of the 2,000-member
Tabernacle Church in Melbourne, Florida. Buckingham began his ministry as a
Southern Baptist pastor but after being “baptized by the spirit” at a Full
Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship meeting, he became a Pentecostal. Buckingham’s
“spirit baptism” made him a radical ecumenist who called for unity between
Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, and Pentecostals. In an article entitled
“Bridge Builders” (Charisma, March 1992, p. 90), he said there is no higher
calling than ecumenical bridge building and he praised David Duplessis for
building bridges between Pentecostals and Roman Catholics, and Jewish rabbi
Yechiel Eckstein for building bridges between Jews and Christians. Buckingham
taught that God has promised healing through Christ’s atonement, and when he was
diagnosed with cancer in 1990 many Pentecostals, including Oral Roberts,
prophesied his healing. Buckingham said that God told him personally that he was
going to live to be “at least 100 years of age in good health and with a clear
mind.” The April 1991 issue of Charisma magazine featured this testimony in “My
Summer of Miracles.” Note the following excerpt from that article:
“One
day my wife … suddenly spoke aloud [and] said, ‘Your healing was purchased at
the cross.’ … Here is what I discovered. YOU HAVE WHAT YOU SPEAK. If you want to
change something, you must believe it enough to speak it. … If you talk poverty,
you’ll have it. If you say you’re sick, you’ll be (and remain) sick. … despite
what the doctors said, I refused to say ‘My cancer.’ It was not mine. It was the
devil’s. I didn’t have cancer. I had Jesus. The cancer was trying to have me,
but THE WORD OF GOD SAID I WAS HEALED THROUGH WHAT JESUS DID ON CALVARY. … I
popped a videotape into my VCR and lay down on the sofa. … The tape was an Oral
Roberts’ sermon … I came up off the sofa, shouting, ‘I’M HEALED!’ My wife leaped
out of her chair and shouted, ‘Hallelujah!’ For the next 30 minutes all we did
was walk around the house shouting thanks to God and proclaiming my healing”
(Jamie Buckingham, “My Summer of Miracles,” Charisma, April 1991).
Ten
months after the publication of this article, on February 17, 1992, Jamie
Buckingham died of cancer about 40 years shy of his 100th birthday. Not only did
Jamie Buckingham lead others astray with his false teaching but he also deceived
himself.
The Cathedral at Chapel Hill near Atlanta, Georgia, founded by
EARL PAULK, has been plagued with moral scandals and radical false teaching. At
the height of his power Paulk was exceedingly influential. He authored many
books, had a large television ministry, was the founder of the International
Charismatic Bible Ministries, and a “prophet” in Bill Hamon’s Christian
International Network of Prophetic Ministries. Paulk amalgamated the Word-Faith
doctrine with Reconstructionist or Dominion theology and promoted it widely
among Pentecostals. As for the Word-Faith doctrine, Paulk echoes Kenneth Hagin
and Kenneth Copeland and others when he wrote: “Just as dogs have puppies and
cats have kittens, God has little gods. Until we comprehend that we are gods,
and begin to act like little gods, we can’t manifest the Kingdom of God” (Paulk,
Satan Unmasked, pp. 96, 97). Paulk merges this Kingdom Now Word-Faith theology
(that Christians are little gods with the authority of Christ on earth) with the
dominion doctrine the churches are to unify and then retake the world from Satan
and ruler over it before Christ returns. He gives this teaching in books such as
Satan Unmasked (1984), Held in the Heavens Until (1985), and Ultimate Kingdom
(1986). Paulk wrote in his book The Wounded Body of Christ, “We need not wonder
whether He [Jesus] will come back; HE CANNOT. Christ can only return when the
people of God have reached that place of unity in which the Spirit and the Bride
can say, ‘Come’” (p. 73). By 1992, Chapel Hill Harvester Church had 12,000
members and was one of the most prosperous churches in America, but that year
DON PAULK, who had taken over as senior pastor from his brother Earl, admitted
having an “improper” relationship with a woman staffer. He resigned but was
immediately reinstated by the church council. Allegations were made by a group
of women about sexual relationships with the Paulks and in 2001 another female
church member filed a lawsuit claiming that Paulk molested her when she was a
child and into her teenage years, but the accusations were denied and swept
under the rug. In August 2005 long-time church member and soloist Mona Brewer
and her husband Bobby, who was a major financial supporter of the church, filed
a lawsuit against Earl Paulk alleging that she was manipulated into being his
paramour for 14 years. Brewer says that the members were conditioned to give
unconditional obedience to the pastor, who called himself “Archbishop Paulk,”
and that he taught her that those who are spiritually exalted can have sexual
relationships and it isn’t adultery. He called it “kingdom relationships.” She
says that Paulk even shared her with family members and visiting Charismatic
preachers. This case was featured on CCN’s Paula Zahn Now program on Jan. 19,
2006, but as of March 2006 Paulk’s television program was still broadcast on
Trinity Broadcasting Network.
In 2000, CLARENCE MCCLENDON, pastor of
Pentecostal Church of the Harvest International in Los Angeles and prominent
“bishop” in the International Communion of Charismatic Churches, divorced his
wife and a mere week later married another woman. His first wife, who accused
him of fathering a child out of wedlock, took their three children and moved to
Hawaii, but Clarence went right on as if nothing had happened and he had all of
the support he needed. Charisma magazine observed that “in just a few months,
members of his new congregation were dancing in the aisles in their new
facility, and the talented young preacher was back on the conference circuit, no
questions asked. ... McClendon enjoys the spotlight on Christian television, and
he shares pulpits with top leaders in our movement” (Lee Grady, “Sin in the
Camp,” Charisma, Feb. 2002).
In 2002 ROBERTS LIARDON, pastor of Embassy
Christian Center in Irvine, California, and influential Pentecostal author,
acknowledged that he had “a homosexual relationship” (Charisma News, Jan. 31,
2002), though he was back in the ministry without weeks.
On September
12, 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported that PAUL CROUCH OF TRINITY
BROADCASTING NETWORK had paid $425,000 in 1998 to Enoch Lonnie Ford, an employee
at TBN, to keep him from going public with his allegation that they had a
homosexual encounter. It was after Ford threatened to sue that Crouch paid
almost a half-million dollars to keep the matter quiet. TBN also paid thousands
of dollars in debts that Ford had accrued. Crouch denied the allegations and
tried to blacken the character of his accuser, which was not difficult to do.
Ford is a convicted sex and drug offender, but it seems very strange that Crouch
would pay such a large sum to a man if there was no truth to his allegation.
Ford wrote his testimony of the affair but it was sealed by the courts after
Crouch sued to have the matter squelched.
In 2004, PAUL CAIN, the most
prominent Pentecostal prophet, was exposed as a homosexual and an alcoholic
(“Paul Cain, “Latter Rain Prophet of Renown Is Now Discredited,” The Plumbline,
December 2004).
______________________________
THE
PENTECOSTAL-CHARISMATIC MOVEMENTS: THE HISTORY AND THE ERROR. I have been
examining and re-examining the Pentecostal-Charismatic movements for more than
three decades since I was led to Christ by a Pentecostal in 1973 and began to
seek God’s will about tongues-speaking and the miraculous gifts of the early
churches. I have built a large library of materials on this subject and have
interviewed Pentecostals and Charismatics and attended their churches in many
parts of the world. I have also attended large Charismatic conferences with
press credentials. I have approached these studies with an open mind in the
sense of having a commitment only to the truth and not to anyone’s tradition. I
am a member of an independent Baptist church but Baptist doctrine and practice
is not my authority; the Bible is. Each fresh evaluation of the
Pentecostal-Charismatic movement has brought an increased conviction that it is
unscriptural and dangerous. This book begins with my own experience with the
Pentecostal movement. The next section deals with the history of the Pentecostal
movement, beginning with a survey of miraculous signs from the second to the
18th centuries. We then examine the movements in the 19th century that led up to
the creation of Pentecostalism and the outbreak of “tongues-speaking” at Charles
Parham’s Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, and at William Seymour’s Azusa
Street Mission in Los Angeles in 1906. We examine some of the major Pentecostal
denominations, the Latter Rain Covenent, the major Pentecostal healing
evangelists, the Sharon Schools and the New Order of the Latter Rain, the
Manifest Sons of God, the Word-Faith movement and its key leaders, the
Charismatic Movement, the Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the Pentecostal
Prophets, the Third Wave, and the recent Pentecostal scandals. We conclude the
historical section with a look at the Laughing Revival. In the last section of
the book we deal with the theological errors of the Pentecostal-Charismatic
movements (exalting experience over Scripture, emphasis on the miraculous,
Messianic and apostolic miracles can be reproduced, the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, the baptism of fire, exalting the Holy Spirit, tongues speaking is for
today, sinless perfectionism, healing is guaranteed in the atonement, spirit
slaying, spirit drunkenness, visions of Jesus, trips to heaven, women preachers,
and ecumenism). The final section of the book answers the question: “Why are
people deluded by Pentecostal-Charismatic error?” David and Tami Lee, former
Pentecostals, after reviewing a section of the book said: “Very well done! We
pray God will use it to open the eyes of many and to help keep many of His
children out of such deception.” And Mary Keating, also a former Charismatic,
said, “The book is excellent and I have no doubt whatever that the Lord is going
to use it in a mighty way. Amen!!” 317 pages. $9.95, available from Way of Life
Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143,
fbns@wayoflife.org
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