In this episode, JD reveals NAMB (the SBC home mission board) funding a church plant with a lead lady pastor. Other topics are covered as well, including The Gospel Coalition telling pastors not to speak out as much.
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Since the bombing didn’t occur at a mosque, you may not have heard: First Works Baptist Church in El Monte, California was attacked with an improvised explosive device last Saturday. Authorities hesitated to call it a hate crime since the attack was not directed at a protected class like homosexuals, Muslims, or men calling themselves women. Instead, they were quick to label the church and its pastor as the hateful ones.
Worse, media and government authorities blamed the church for “raising tensions” by holding to a traditional view of gender roles and daring to preach it from the pulpit. Guess those horrible misogynists had it coming, huh?
LA County County supervisor Hilda Solis released a statement focused on the church being the reason such an attack happened, due to their “anti-LGBTQ+ and misogynistic sermons,” and revealed her move to refer the pastor to a government commission to “deescalate the situation”:
In response to the attack, pastor Bruce Mejia said, “I’m still going to preach God’s Word. I’m never going to stop.” Amen, brother.
The government response to this attack is absolutely horrifying, but not surprising in the wake of LA County and governments around the country engaging in the most egregious violations of religious liberty seen in the modern age. We must expect this persecution to increase.
Buckle up Christians, because your government is showing that it has no interest in protecting your freedom to worship or express your beliefs, and will instead blame you for any violence that befalls you or your church. Arm yourselves spiritually and physically for the war that is at your doorstep.
A Charismatic prophet from Nigeria has been arrested by the Police for a little stunt that went viral, after he was filmed performing a “money-making ritual” by throwing money at a bunch of naked men in the river.
The action by Mr. Onyebuchi Okocha, founder of Children of Light Anointing Ministries and popularly known as Prophet Onyeze Jesus, was just one of a series of bizarre actions that have him on people’s radar and which prompted the police to step in.
The other issue of note is claiming he will raise several people from the dead later today, January 28th, prompting the government to issue a bulletin to morgues and hospitals several days before, telling them to keep an eye on their corpses and not give the prophet access to them.
Prophet Onyeze Jesus was arrested by the government for “criminal and indecent conduct in the name of religion.” They released a statement about the affair, explaining:
Onyeze Jesus promotes superstition and strife in society. By telling his gullible and brainwashed followers that their misfortune is caused by family members, relatives, friends and business associates through magical powers, he is fomenting serious troubles and instigating eternal enmity in various places and businesses. Some of these troubles can lead to physical fights, bodily injuries and even deaths.
By throwing plenty of naira notes into the river regularly as part of sacrifice to the river goddess and filming it and distributing the film to the whole world, he has brought Anambra State into global ridicule, and worse, gregariously committed a criminal offense. Burning or destroying the naira through any means is an offense criminalized by the Central Bank of Nigeria Act of 2007, and the offender is liable to imprisonment.
By forcing his disciples to have a bath naked in a river, then film the naked adults and distribute the videos across the globe, Onyeze Jesus is guilty of denying his followers the right to self-dignity and of promoting indecent exposure, which is a crime under the Nigerian law.
These of course are actions that Dr. Michael Brown would have no reasonable grounds to object to. Once you’ve defended the “Sneaky Squid Spirit,” you’ve really backed yourself into a corner and limited what you will and will not accept.
According to reports, the Anambra State Ministry of Health “warned public and private hospitals and mortuaries operating in the state against allowing ‘Onyeze Jesus’ access to their facilities to carry out his practices after he claimed he could raise 7 corpses from the dead on the 28th of January, 2021”
Pastors at Hillsong Church were living lavish lifestyles for years, spending money like drunken sailors at the expense of member’s tithes, according to a new report in the NY Post that spoke with former pastors and members.
They describe how Hillsong NY, the former home of the disgraced woke pastor Carl Lentz, did not expect their leaders to act modestly or use the tithing wisely.
“Pastors splurged on fancy restaurant meals, designer clothes and weekly manicures while living in the same Kent Avenue Williamsburg high-rise (whose apartments rent on average of nearly $6,0000 a month) and zipping around the neighborhood on ATVs .”
Former Hillsong LA service pastor Nicole Herman recounts how they all used PEX cards (prepaid expense cards) which were loaded up at the end of services after all the tithes were collected.
These cards would be used on pretty much whatever they wanted and did not have to be reconciled, explained or justified at the end of the month.
The post reports that “Of the $12.7 million that Hillsong East Coast made in 2019, 88% of it came from “tithes & offerings.” Over 66% of that revenue went to a combination of staff salaries, benefits and expenses ($3.8 million) and operating expenses including venue rentals, staffing, and production costs ($4.9 million).”
One congregant who nannied for many of the pastors,Jenna Babitt, described a long list of extravagant purchases, including large quantities of food for the pastors before services, mostly consistent of Sushi and expensive takeout, with the occasional Chipotle chipped in. They frequently rolled out the red carpet for guest and celebrity attendees, pushing designer purchases and spending up to 200$ on a single meal from pricey the Dean and Deluca restaurant.
Another former member, Megan Phalon, got a job babysitting for pastors Kane and Karla Keatinge, eventually doing light personal assistant duties for them. She says “He’d be spending all this money and at the end of the month he’d be like, ‘I don’t know what this was for.” She describes going out and buying a brand new unlocked iPhone without being told who it was for, and the pastors buying All-Terrain Vehicles to drive around town.
Another former member who functioned as lead pastor Reed Boggard’s assistant and was there from day one, Brandon Walker, describes how Hillsong leadership were all about eating out and staying in fancy hotels and Airbnb’s, including booking one that cost nearly$1100 a night.
According to the post:
“Walker recalled one day out on the town with Jess Bogard and two of his friends when she bought the group matching $100 jackets before taking them out to dinner at a “pretty nice, pretty expensive Italian restaurant” called North Italia, where she dropped hundreds on a decadent, wine-filled meal. “I think the bill was $600 to $700,” Walker recalled. “It was just, like, ‘Wow. [She] just dropped over $1,000 for no reason.’ ”
He concludes:
At the end of the day, there’s no accountability, there’s no self-reflection. Everything’s a flex, everything’s a show.”
1Name Church, the North American Mission Board Church plant that blew up in Southern Baptist circles after it was revealed they had a woman as lead pastor has left the SBC, sources have confirmed.
We wrote about this recently, after Jamie Farver, a woman, was aggressively and prominently marketed all throughout the church website and social media as a “pastor” and “lead pastor” even though that is strictly prohibited by the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BF&M2K), the official position document of the SBC.
Tom Ascol updated the world after talking to Kevin Ezell, NAMB president, about the status of the church plant, later adding, “If the church isn’t in agreement with SBC confessional commitments then it was an honorable decision to leave.”
Of course, we don’t find anything honorable about taking cooperative program dollars and then running off with the money. In fact, the “honorable thing” would be to pay NAMB back.
Was it honorable for the NAMB not to do their due diligence by ensuring that the church would be fully in line with the BF&M2K before they gave them who knows how much financial and infrastructure support?
Did NAMB know they weren’t in full co-operation with the BF&M2K before they funded them or after?
When did they leave the SBC? Was it immediately after they were planted, or just recently as they received the negative attention?
Furthermore, who is the sending church? These things don’t happen ex nihilo. Surely the mothership would have known 1Name Church had no intention of her not preaching, teaching, and leading the church. Was this disclosed?
John Kaleo on Twitter is likewise asking the right questions.
As far as the request to leave them alone, we have that covered too:
Ravi Zacharias International Ministry has confirmed they have no intention of releasing one of Zacharias’ victims from a non-disclosure/non-disparagement agreement she signed years ago, according to her lawyers, continuing to a long-standing pattern of silencing, victim-blaming, and ignoring her wherever possible.
The world-renown apologist who passed away last year, signed the agreement in 2017, before it was confirmed that he was a long-time sexual molester and deviant. A year before he entered into a friendship/counseling relationship with Lori Anne Thompson, grooming her to the point that he began requesting that she send him nude pictures. Thompson eventually decided to end things and tell her husband, which led Ravi to threaten to kill himself if she revealed his actions. He sued her, filing a RICO lawsuit and they settled out of court, with RZIM pledging to drop the suite and offering her $250,000 if she signed non-disclosure agreement.
Despite the agreement, it didn’t stop Ravi from widely defaming her and spreading malicious lies about her, claiming she was trying to blackmail him and releasing a statement to the rag Christianity Today, saying:
“Subsequently, she began to contact me via the email address I had used to contact her husband after first meeting them. My responses were usually brief. Then, last year, she shockingly sent me extremely inappropriate pictures of herself unsolicited. I clearly instructed her to stop contacting me in any form; I blocked her messages, and I resolved to terminate all contact with her.
That of course is a lie. In the same letter he also wrote this, before news of him groping and propositioning his employees at a spa he owned came to light:
In my 45 years of marriage to Margie, I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind. I love my wife with all my heart and have been absolutely faithful to her these more than 16,000 days of marriage, and have exercised extreme caution in my daily life and travels, as everyone who knows me is aware. I have long made it my practice not to be alone with a woman other than Margie and our daughters—not in a car, a restaurant, or anywhere else.“
In a letter sent to Ministry Watch, RZIM likewise reiterated their libelous allegations of false claims, blackmail and harassment.
Since then, Thompson has made many appeals to RZIM to release her of her NDA over the years and they have refused, despite their namesake being a known deceiver. Recently her lawyer Boz Tchivijian again requested that she be released, and again they refused.
What makes this all the more frustrating is that despite RZIM allegedly launching a full investigation into his “spa activities,” they have also confirmed that she is ‘beyond the scope’ of their investigation, setting the stage for a continued cover-up without justice or resolution.
Thompson has reveled to Protestia that none of the investigators have spoken to her, and seemingly have no plans to, despite being the most prominent and visible victim, the catalyst for his exposure, and the one woman they continue to libel.
Ruth Hutchings said it best, writing on Twitter:
RZIM has a special responsibility to Lori Anne because the Board and senior leadership personally choose to slander her and her husband as “greedy extortionists” inside and outside the company. For other situations, they likely can say they didn’t know, they weren’t involved. Perhaps they were deceived, but these are still actions they’re responsible for correcting to the best of their ability. If Margie (his wife) continues to refuse, the least RZIM can do is take her off the Board/staff and make a statement repudiating their earlier remarks.
The fact is that the lawsuit that precipitated the signing of the NDA wasn’t done to prove and assert Ravi’s innocence, but rather to hide and conceal his guilt. RZIM refusing to release her because it “honors his last wishes” needs to be viewed from the perspective of a deeply dishonorable man who wielded the lawsuit as a cudgel to maintain his oppression and silence the victim.
What a wonderful legacy RZIM is hoping to leave.
With the news that The Gospel Coalition has launched a new International branch “TGC Albania,” we have a message of warning for our Albanian brethren: stay as far away from this ministry as possible.
Të dashur shqiptarë të krishterë,
Një shërbesë e re midis jush ka nisur, e cila përbëhet nga një shoqëri kishash dhe udhëheqësish të njohur si Koalicioni i Ungjillit (KIU). Ata synojnë të mbështesin kishën dhe të jenë thellësisht të përkushtuar në “ripërtëritjen e besimit tonë në ungjillin e Krishtit dhe në reformimin e praktikave tona të shërbesës për t’u përshtatur plotësisht me Shkrimet” duke siguruar “burime të besueshme dhe në kohë, të dobishme dhe të mençura dhe të përqendrua në ungjillin e Jezu Krishtit.”
Asgjë nuk mund të jetë më larg së vërtetës.
Në vend që t’u qëndrojnë besnik shkrimeve të shenjta dhe t’u besojë atyre të diktojnë praktikat e shërbesës, KIU është një entitet i korruptuar plotësisht – një bastion i krishterimit liberal dhe progresiv dhe një vrimë kryesore e atyre që sjellin herezi të dënueshme pa dijeni.
Disa nga emrat më të shquar që duhet të shënohen dhe shmangen janë Thabiti Anyabwile, Ligon Duncan, Tim Keller, Sam Alberry, Joe Carter, Jonathan Leeman, dhe Russell Moore. Këta janë autorët që po shtyjnë doktrinën korruptuese dhe jobiblike në Amerikën e Veriut dhe ne lutemi që ata të mos eksportojnë axhendën e tyre liberale në Shqipëri.
Në njoftimin e tyre për shtyp, ata thonë se “armiku nuk është i kënaqur me këtë zgjim (Në Shqipëri) dhe po përpiqet të mbjellë fara mosmarrëveshje dhe mësimi të rremë në komunitetin e krishterë që po Lind.” Kjo është e vërtetë. Dhe mbjellësi më i madh i mosmarrëveshjes është vetë Koalicioni i Ungjillit. Me 40% të shqiptarëve që flasin anglisht si gjuhë e dytë, ju mund të shihni pse Këtu dhe Këtu.
Ikni nga kjo organizatë që helmon gjithë çfarë prek dhe spërkat shpirtin si një gajzer. Nuk është e mirë për shpirtin tuaj dhe nuk janë pasqyrim i krishterimit biblik.
Translated:
Dear Albanian Christians:
A new ministry within your midst has launched, consisting of a fellowship of churches and leaders known as The Gospel Coalition (TGC). They purport to support the church and to be deeply committed to “renewing our faith in the gospel of Christ and to reforming our ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures” by providing “resources that are trusted and timely, winsome and wise, and centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Rather than being faithful to the scriptures and entrusting them to dictate ministry practices, TGC is by and large a thoroughly corrupt entity – a bastion of liberal and progressive Christianity and chief hidey-hole of those who bring in damnable heresies unawares.
Some of the more prominent names that should be marked and avoided are Thabiti Anyabwile, Ligon Duncan, Tim Keller, Sam Alberry, Joe Carter, Jonathan Leeman, and Russell Moore. These are the authors who are pushing corrupting and unbiblical doctrine in North America, and we pray they don’t export their liberal agenda to Albania.
In their press release, they say that “the enemy is not pleased by this awakening (In Albania) and is attempting to sow seeds of discord and false teaching in the nascent Christian community.” This is true. And the biggest sower of discord is the Gospel Coalition itself. With 40 percent of Albanians speaking English as a second language, you can see why Here and Here.
Flee from this organization that poisons everything it touches and spouts spiritual strychnine like a geyser. They are not good for your soul, and are not a reflection of Biblical Christianity.
A church in Canada that has continued to gather for services in defiance of lockdown orders and despite the pastor and elder team being handed tens of thousands of dollars in fines, and whose church faces $10,000,000 in fines for being opened, may have their congregating come to an end, as police and politicians publicly state there is a plan in place to prevent them from gathering.
Premier Doug Ford, the Conservative Premier of Ontario was asked about what he thinks should be done with Trinity Baptist Church, one of a handful of churches in a province of 15 million who are continuing to open their doors for worship. Presently gatherings of more than 10 people are prohibited, irrespective of the size of the church and its capacity to safely hold them.
I think it’s careless and irresponsible for them to host this, especially when we are in the situation we are in right now…I’d really encourage them not to do this. They aren’t being responsible. I discourage this 100 percent…Please don’t continue doing this. There will be consequences…
The Solicitor General Sylvia Jones said, “all options are on the table” in regards to the church gatherings and Waterloo Regional Police Chief Bryan Larkin made the most ominous threat of them all, explaining that they have something up their sleeve and that there will be a plan in place to prevent the church from furthering gathering.
Larkin has been criticized by many for being TOO SOFT on the church, with many demanding that his officers enter the sanctuary and break up the service. While he has demurred from that up to this point, suggesting that dispersing several hundred people would be a health risk to his officers, that may be back on the table. He explains:
We will develop a plan to ensure and prevent any further services from happening…I feel very confident that to prevent any further gatherings and to ensure the community that all of the approaches we’ve been taking has been strategic, it’s been well planned, well co-ordinated…But we do intend to take action.
Suggested action would likely be to fine every church member and visitor seeking to attend the service $1000 if they refuse to stay away, barricading the roads to physically prevent vehicles from entering the parking lot, or arresting the pastor, elders, and wayward congregation members if they don’t leave the church.
There has been no comment from Trinity Church yet about the newest threats.
The host of In Pursuit of Jesus has made waves for his support of Critical Race Theory, comparing opponents of CRT to the corrupted Roman Catholic Church during the protestant reformation, and proponents of it to the feisty reformers nailing their theses to the church door in Wittenberg.
Rascool Berry hosts several podcasts for Our Daily Bread, a well-known non-denominational, non-profit organization with staff and volunteers in nearly 40 offices and who distribute more than 60 million resources in 150 countries. Berry is a also pastor at The Bridge Church in Brooklyn and is all-in on Critical Race Theory
In a livestream discussion with Brian Dye and D.A. Horton, he made the following remarks:
When one comes from the vantage point that all that we have in terms of, as a point of emphasis as evangelicals, is all that we should ever have and this has came from on high and our tradition didn’t miss anything, then any attempt to correct or to critique or to say, “Hey, there’s some things that we should be talking about that our churches haven’t historically talked about,” is seen as a bringing in a foreign substance that doesn’t belong.
But the problem is that in doing so, we’re guilty of the same things that the very Reformation was opposing, which was this idea that tradition has as much weight as the scriptures do.
But as I look at the scriptures, I look at the commitment that we see in Micah 6:8 – ‘What does God require of you, O man, but to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly before your God.’ It’s right there. In the text when I look at Isaiah, when I look at all these different passages, Jesus in Luke chapter 4.
It’s all there, but there’s a tendency to want to explain those away and remove that and not to add to the reality or speak to the reality that these things don’t have any place to be talked about in the church.
H/T To @WokepreacherTV for the link
(Christian Headlines) Half of American pastors say they often hear members of their church repeating conspiracy theories about news events, with white pastors more likely than black pastors to say they’ve heard conspiracies relayed, according to a new LifeWay Research survey.
The poll of 1,007 Protestant pastors found that 49 percent of Protestant pastors say they “frequently hear” members of their congregation “repeating conspiracy theories” about “why something is happening in the country.” Forty-seven percent of pastors say they have not heard members repeat conspiracies.
White pastors (50 percent) are more likely than black pastors (36 percent) to say they’ve heard members repeat conspiracy theories.
The survey was released Tuesday.
“Christian churches resolve to be places focused…
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Editor’s Note. This article was written by Michael Foust and published at Christian Headlines.
