Malachi Smith's List: THE FALLING AWAY

• "THE   FAMILY" AND ITS HIJACKING OF EVANGELICALISM
• PART 1
• By   Attorney Constance Cumbey
    August 8, 2008
    NewsWithViews.com
• "Now   all of the resonating core groups with outwardly different purposes   are merging and blending and coming together to do THE ONE WORK."   Barbara Marx Hubbard to a Unity Church congregation, Seattle, Washington,   April, 1988.
• The   Washington Fellowship, a Washington, D.C. and suburbs based Christian   organization has received much publicity in the past two years.
• Jeff   Sharlet’s new book, THE   FAMILY says it reveals “the secret fundamentalism at the heart   of American Power.”
• If only zeal for Jesus were what “The   Fellowship” was about, I might not bother writing this article,   except perhaps to advocate on its behalf.
• Unfortunately it is abundantly   clear that any alleged “fundamentalism” at the “core”   of the Fellowship is much more akin to the New Age networking type than   it is to Christian orthodoxy.
• Another prominent internet researcher,   Wayne Madsen, charges that the Fellowship is using Jesus as a cynical   logo in pursuit of cynical political pursuits.
• He goes so far as to   call it a monstrous criminal plot to seize control of the “biggest   prize of all – the   United States government.”
• Years   ago the New Agers tried to pin the Jim Jones and his kool aid mass murder/suicide   cult on what they called “fundamental Christianity.”
• I was   happy to have played a small role in giving him back to his long time   New   Age Movement confederates.

  • lol..lol..
• Jim Jones had been a New Ager from the   beginning, listed in two major New Age directories in the early 1972s   as a New Age center networking with other New Age centers.
• Now   that “The Family” together with its Doug Coe leadership   is being pointed to as an example of “Christians” trying   to take over the United States government and beyond, it is time that   the record be set straight.
• It is much more akin to a New Age operation   than any Christian one.
• That the Fellowship sometimes known as “The   Cedars” is influential and powerful is hardly disputable.

• As the   Los Angeles Times   reported:

   

  “While   the annual breakfast is a widely known event attended by a succession   of U.S. presidents and foreign dignitaries, the Fellowship's role in   diplomacy and current events has remained in the shadows. That's the   way the organization wants it ..."
• What   I have discovered is that “The Family” and the Institute   for Noetic Sciences, one of the most all time powerful New Age organizations,   have intertwined   core leadership and financing.
• The   Fellowship did not come under my personal radar until late October 1987.
• Colorado friends expressed me tapes of a David Spangler talk at a Boulder   Episcopalian church.

  • David Spangler, one Benjamin Creme's "wonder boy" once..speaking at a Colorado Episcopal Church.
• He explained to the audience that his talk to   the Episcopalian church had been added “almost as an afterthought.”   The real reason he was in town was to attend the latest in a series   of ongoing meetings he had been having with Evangelical Christian leaders.
• This last one just finished had been held at the Gold Lake Ranch near   Boulder, Colorado.
• A prior conference had been held at Hollyhock   Farms in British Columbia. That is another established New Age center.
• I   wrote much of Spangler in my 1983 book, THE   HIDDEN DANGERS OF THE RAINBOW. David Spangler is the New Age leader   who distinguished himself by writing in his innocuously named book,   REFLECTIONS ON THE CHRIST that the required entry point to the New Age   was "a Luciferic initiation."[1]  
• That may be the most honest thing anybody ever said about the New Age   Movement.
• Among   many outrages, in a chapter entitled LUCIFER, CHRIST AND GOD, Spangler   wrote:
• “The   being who chose to embody these energies and to be in essence the angel   of man’s inner evolution is the being we know as Lucifer. (p.   36) . . .
• The being that helps man reach this point [“freedom”]   is Lucifer. That is his role.
• He is the angel of man’s evolution.   He is the angel of man’s inner light. Lucifer is the spirit of   light in the microcosmic world. (p. 37) . . .
• When this great project   of evolution began, man went forth as consciousness to learn his divinity   and Lucifer went with him Lucifer was just what his name implies –   the bringer of light. (pp. 36-37) . . .
• “It is important to see   that Lucifer, as I am using this term, describes an angel, a being,   a great and mighty planetary consciousness. . . .
• “Christ is the   same force as Lucifer but moving in seemingly the opposite direction   . .
• the light that reveals to us the path to Christ comes from Lucifer.   . .
• Lucifer prepares man in all ways for the experience of Christhood   and the Christ prepares man for the experience of God. (p. 43) , ,
• “Lucifer works within each of us to bring us to wholeness and   as we move into a new age, which is the age of man’s wholeness,   each of us in some way is brought to that point which I term the Luciferic   initiation, the particular doorway through which the individual must   pass . . . (p. 44)
• Lucifer comes to give to us the final gift of wholeness.
• If we accept it then he is free and we are free. That is the Luciferic   initiation
• It is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will   be facing, for it s an initiation into the New Age . . .”   (p. 45)
• My   path and the path of “The Fellowship” were to unpleasantly   cross in July 1988.
• I rather suspect they were aware of my whereabouts   and work long before that.
• I rightfully suspect that events and donor   trails of the Fellowship had much to do with frantic evangelical leadership   attempts to halt my work and question the very existence of the New   Age Movement.
• Christianity Today, InterVarsity Publishing, InterVarsity   Cbristian Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ, Multnomah College,   Spiritual Counterfeits Project, Christian Research Institute, Denver   Seminary leadership (Vernon Grounds and J. Gordon Lewis) were among   those joining hands in an effort to bring into question the very existence   of the New Age Movement on an organized level.

  • So-called "Christian" groups who question the reality of a "New Age" movement that Ms Cumbey has written and warned about..
• Pat Robertson, Harald   Bredesen, and even some of those I counted as friends and allies tried   either openly or surreptitiously to block my work.

  • Pat Robertson is one among many prominent Evangelicals actively opposing Constance Cumbey and trying to block her work.
• The   motivating impulse for the frantic effort to deprive the Christian world   of warnings of a movement publicly working for (1) a “New World   Order; (2) a “New World Religion” and (3) a New Age “messiah”   who was clearly not Jesus may well have stemmed from major financial   support and political ties with one of the most prominent and visible   New Age promoters – billionaire Harvard graduate attorney, Paul   N. Temple.
• Paul Temple, together with astronaut Edgar Mitchell, organized   the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973.

  • This same Edgar Mitchell (moon shot astronaut) who just a few days ago (July 2008) publicly admitted the governments of the world are in cahoots with ETs and space aliens....Now I begin to get a clearer picture of Mr Mitchell..
• Working closely with the two   of them was Stanford Research Institute’s Willis Harman.
• Paul   N. Temple who proudly professes his role in establishing the Institute   of Noetic Sciences in 1973 worked, per the Billy   Graham Center archives, with the Fellowship as early as January   1944.
• He would have been 21 years old that year. In the last few years   he has given millions of dollars to various causes he supports through   his Three Swallows Foundation.
• The information was culled from its 990   reports. Nearly $1.7 million dollars since 1998 went to the “International   Foundation.”
• Although one funding report gave a link to a modest   Arkansas operation, searching the address on the 990 reports quickly   yielded Doug Coe’s Washington, D.C. address.

  • Doug Coe and the Washington D.C. area "The Cedars."
• I detailed those   amounts in an article I posted several weeks ago to my   own blogspot., “The   Harmonic Convergence of Noetic Science and Evangelicalism.”
• That article detailed the financial aid of Paul Temple and his Three   Swallows Foundation to both the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Doug   Coe’s Fellowship Foundation may be read by clicking   here.
• I   am certain that many rationalized this as some did in heated discussions   I had with certain evangelical leaders about their acceptance of largesse   from Rev. Moon by a belief that “it’s ok to take New Age   moneys to build the Kingdom of God on earth.”
• In   my opinion, God does not need twenty five cents of moneys dedicated   to Rev. Moon nor to the Institute of Noetic Sciences to build his kingdom!

  • True....Rather the sticky fingers of some greedy clergy and ministries hunger for the cash no matter where it comes from.
• What was built was not the “Kingdom of God on Earth,” but   silence sufficient to allow the final nails to be built in the long   awaited kingdom of the Antichrist –
• the open and obvious expectancy   of the New Age forces who shamelessly avow their loyalties to Lucifer.
• How   I found it:
• After   listening to David Spangler’s taped lecture of October 26, 1987,   I launched through California helpers an effort to secure the Gold   Lake Ranch tapes.
• Our caller was told by Gold Lake ranch personel   that “the meeting was by invitation only,” She was further   told that the meeting had been fully taped and each and every participant   had been supplied a full set of the tapes.
• When our caller expressed   disappointment, the very helpful Gold Lake Ranch responder said, “why   don’t you contact one of your friends who was there and duplicate   their tapes.” She acted, per my assistant, as if it were no big   deal.
• Good   idea! We called our “friends” at the Spiritual Counterfeits   Project. David Spangler had reported they were in his speech.
• The lady   my research assistant spoke with promised to get information and call   her back which she did a little more than two hours later. She called   saying, “I’m fairly new around here and don’t pretend   to know all the ins and outs, but something is definitely wrong. I have   mailed out hundreds of tapes – of anything and everything. I have   never denied a request for tapes before. When I requested these tapes,   they went into a closed door meeting from which they have just now emerged   and said “no tapes are available. The meeting was not taped.”

  • Cover up and conspiracy by the "Spiritual Counterfeits Project"
• That   was obviously a lie. I placed a plea in my then newsletter, CONSTANCE   CUMBEY’S NEW AGE MONITOR begging for somebody to come forward.   You can read about that frustrating effort which spanned nearly a year   by clicking this link.
• I   made a few telephone calls to Colorado contacts who reported in turn   a few names of disturbed friends there who were there.
• I compiled a   data base using a MicroSoft card file program. As I received new information,   I added same to the data base.
• All   information seemed to cease when I received a telephone call asking   me to do a television debate in April, 1988 against New Age writer,   Marilyn Ferguson. I accepted the challenge.
• A few minutes later I received   a telephone call from Ms. Ferguson herself. She suggested we might want   to consider telling our television audience all the things we agreed   upon rather than our differences.
• I had no intention of doing that,   but as long as she was calling my house in such a nice conciliatory   mood, I decided to take advantage and explore any knowledge she had   of the Gold Lake doings. She told me she had not received her invitation   to that particular party either, but she would see what she could learn   and get back to me.
• She called me back a few minutes later. She said   she had spoken to David Spangler who told her the meeting had been organized   by Evangelicals and Barbara Marx Hubbard had chaired it at the invitation   of the Evangelicals.

  • Evangelical turncoats, apostates and New Age fellow travelers..!!!
• It   was to be several more months before I would learn of Doug Coe’s   purported organization of the event. I say “purported,”   because it now appears that although Doug Coe was an active participant,   the event more likely was organized as part of an effort to neutralize   Christian opposition to the New Age Movement.
• It appears to have been   organized by Paul Temple’s daughter Robin who noted in the invitation   that Doug Coe and Barbara Marx Hubbard had agreed to co-chair the event.
• This was the same Paul N. Temple who was an activist with the Prayer   Breakfast network even before Doug Coe – since the days of founder   Abraham (“Abram) Vereide.
• It was also the same Paul N. Temple   who had bought Mark Hatfield’s Washington, D.C. real estate at   an inflated price in 1981, leading to a Senate Ethics investigation   of the former Oregon governor who went on to serve many years in the   United States Senate.
• Next   Week part two. Buying Evangelical Silence: The Institute of   Noetic Sciences and the Moonies buy Christian suppression and silence.

• Footnotes:  

   

  1.   Spangler, David. REFLECTIONS ON THE CHRIST, published by Findhorn Publications,   Findhorn, Moray, Scotland, Third Edition, 1981.

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• Texe Marrs: The Blind and The Dead
• Exposed!—Benny Hinn, Paul and Jan Crouch, Steve Brock, Steve Hill, John Avanzini, Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Rodney Howard-Browne, and a host of other famous-name “Christian” televangelists and charismatic leaders.
• You’ll be shocked, stupefied, appalled, disgusted, and saddened all in one as you watch the outrageous antics of well-known Christian celebrities and their untold thousands of gullible followers.
• You’ll shake your head in dismay as you see men barking like dogs and being led around on leashes; women howling like wolves and braying like donkeys; and profanity shouted from the pulpit.
• You’ll recoil in astonishment to discover supposed Christian leaders scoffing at Bible doctrine; a televangelist and his associates sharing an opium smoking pipe; possessed people slithering like serpents at crusades; and thousands of worshippers blasphemously speaking in false tongues and breaking out in roaring, hysterical laughter..

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• Joel’s Purpose Driven Army
• August 25th, 2008<!-- by Derek --> · 8 Comments
• TWO EVENTS took place the weekend of August 16-17, 2008 that Christians should mark well. They herald nothing less than the march of American evangelicals down a road that culminates in the ascendancy of the Antichrist.
• The first event was the televised “Saddleback Civil Forum”, hosted by Rick Warren, arguably the most recognizable and popular evangelical pastor in America.
• Warren, author of the best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life, managed to bring presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain together for a nationally televised (on two cable news networks) forum.
• Many evangelicals watched the event to see how the candidates responded to Warren’s questions on faith and politics and a sea of virtual ink has been spilled debating the candidates’ answers.
• However, the most important question of the night was never asked: Doesn’t a minister of the gospel, especially one responsible for the 22,000 souls who attend his church, have anything better to do than inject himself into a political campaign?

  • Good question and one that needs to be asked of a large number of pastors across this nation.
• The answer should be clear: Yes, he does. That the question hasn’t crossed the minds of most evangelicals is the real story of the Saddleback Civil Forum.

• Jesus called His disciples to be in the world, not of it. In fact, He made it clear that being in, not of, the world was not the way to win friends and influence people:

   

  “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you…“
   (John 15:18-20, ESV)
• Jesus was crucified for his preaching. Rick Warren is a New York Times best-selling author who gets a couple hours of live simultaneous prime-time coverage on two competing cable news networks. Think on that.
• The political realm is familiar territory for Pastor Warren, who hobnobbed with the rich and famous at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2006 and again this year.

  • Chaplain to the Illuminati?
• He’s addressed the United Nations, the African Union, the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, TED (the Technology Entertainment Design conference), and TIME’s Global Health Summit.
• Warren has recently signed on as a member of the Advisory Council to Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation, an ecumenical organization that intends to unite the Abrahamic faiths — Muslim, Christian, and Jew — in advancing the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

  • Union of Muslim, Jew and Christian???

• Those eight goals are:

   

  1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
   2. Achieve universal primary education
   3. Promote gender equality and empower women
   4. Reduce child mortality
   5. Improve maternal health
   6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
   7. Ensure environmental sustainability
   8. Develop a global partnership for development
• Noble goals, to be sure, but we followers of Christ must remember that the Great Commission was to preach the gospel to the ends of the Earth. We were never commanded to partner with earthly governments to redistribute wealth.
• And let’s be honest: all eight of the MDGs ultimately involve taking money from taxpayers and giving them to government.

• To achieve these noble goals, Warren has launched his global PEACE plan, which aspires to:

   

  • Promote reconciliation
   • Equip servant leaders
   • Assist the poor
   • Care for the sick
   • Educate the next generation
• It’s significant that Warren changed the “P”. In his original PEACE plan, P stood for “Plant churches”. Presumably, that didn’t go over too well with some of Warren’s prospective partners in global development.

  • Change language, plans and blue prints to suit the Luciferian Elite...
• Now, it’s pretty easy to understand why Rick Warren softened the gospel message at his Civil forum last Saturday night. If he’d talked about Christ and Him crucified, he would never have been granted a two hour national simulcast.

  • True!
• The programming gurus at Fox News and CNN knew he’d steer clear of the gospel and so they had no fear of featuring “America’s most influential pastor” in a prime time broadcast.
• But why would Warren water down the gospel message with his global outreach?
• One of his mentors was the late management consultant Peter Drucker.
• Simply, Warren treats church as a business.
• So for Warren, it’s all about results, measured by tangible, quantifiable actions. In his own words: “The first Reformation was about beliefs. This one needs to be about behavior.… We’ve had a Reformation; what we need now is a transformation.”
• In other words, rather than reaching out to the world with a message about beliefs essential to eternal salvation, Warren preaches a gospel of changing the world now. And that is what the old-timers called heresy.
• Which is where last weekend’s second big event comes in. While overshadowed by Warren’s political forum, it’s no less significant in what it represents.
• An estimated 50,000 people converged on Washington, D.C., for “TheCall”, twelve hours of fasting and praying for God’s forgiveness on a nation that’s turned away from His holiness. Like Warren’s PEACE plan, it sounds noble. But look beneath the surface.
• TheCall is the work of Lou Engle, who was inspired by the Promise Keepers’ 1997 “Stand in the Gap” gathering on the Mall in D.C.

  • The Call is also a part of or an affiliate of Joel's Army
• Since then, he’s organized TheCall DC and a number of regional gatherings aimed at bringing young people together in a nascent “Joel’s Army” through “prayer furnaces” and an invitation for young people to become modern-day Nazirites
• (see Numbers 6:1-21), in clear disobedience of Christ’s command against swearing vows (Matthew 5:37).
• In recruiting volunteers for his events, Engle repeatedly cites the prophetic vision of the prophet Joel:
• 12 “Yet even now,” declares the LORD,
    “return to me with all your heart,
   with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
    13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
   Return to the LORD your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
   slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
    and he relents over disaster.
• 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion;
    consecrate a fast;
   call a solemn assembly;
    16 gather the people.
   Consecrate the congregation;
    assemble the elders;
   gather the children,
    even nursing infants.
   Let the bridegroom leave his room,
    and the bride her chamber.
• 18 Then the LORD became jealous for his land
    and had pity on his people.

• 28 “And it shall come to pass afterward,
    that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
   your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    your old men shall dream dreams,
    and your young men shall see visions.

   

  (Excerpts from Joel 2, ESV)
• First, the apostle Peter said that Joel’s prophecy was fulfilled at Pentecost (Acts 2:14-21). And while it’s true that prophecy often has dual fulfillments, it’s clear that the events Joel describes refer to the “day of the Lord”, which prophecy scholars identify with a future divine cataclysm that immediately precedes the Second Coming.
• This is a classic example of proof texting.
• The prophecy also refers to Israel, an inconvenient truth for Engle and his supporters.
• And the command to weep and pray “between the vestibule and the altar” is directed to “the priests, the ministers of the LORD”, not kids aged 14 to 24.
• So what’s the purpose of TheCall? It’s patriotic dominionism, a call to the youth of America to reclaim their country from the evils of secularism, paganism, and especially abortion, in disturbingly military terms.
• To many Christians, this sounds a like a good thing, a way to engage youths and young adults who are the principal targets of the peddlers of our culture of death.
• Wrong; it’s a conflation of Old Testament prophecy and modern military jargon with an emphasis on prophetic “words” from self-proclaimed seers who keep getting it wrong (which, under Mosaic Law, would be a death sentence).
• We’re known by the company we keep, and Lou Engle is no exception. His advisory board includes:

• • Rick Joyner (Morning Star Ministries), who shared his vision of God’s kingdom:

   

  The kingdom of God will not be socialism, but a freedom even greater than anyone on earth knows at this time. At first it may seem like totalitarianism, as the Lord will destroy the antichrist spirit now dominating the world with “the sword of His mouth” and will shatter many nations like pottery. However, fundamental to His rule is II Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

   

  Instead of taking away liberties and becoming more domineering, the kingdom will move from a point of necessary control while people are learning truth, integrity, honor, and how to make decisions, to increasing liberty so that they can. (Emphasis mine.)
• • Che Ahn (Harvest Rock International), under whom Engle served as associate pastor, and C. Peter Wagner (Global Harvest Ministries), who appeared together onstage June 23 to “align” themselves with charismatic evangelist Todd Bentley, who believes the Holy Spirit ordered him to “leg drop” a pastor, “clothesline” a man hoping for a miraculous healing, and kick an elderly woman in the face with his biker boot during worship services.
• At the very least, this calls into question the discernment of Ahn and Wagner — and, of course, Engle for requesting their advice.
• • Cindy Jacobs, whose prophetic ministry, “Generals International”, perpetuates the use of military terminology for theological concepts.
• • Chuck Pierce (Glory of Zion International Ministries), another self-proclaimed prophet, whose teachings appear to draw more from astrology and Jewish mysticism (kabbalah) than the Bible.
• But lest you think TheCall’s support comes exclusively from Christianity’s charismatic fringe, consider that the Lou Engle’s advisory board also includes such recognized mainstream figures as Gary Bauer (former presidential candidate and president of the Family Research Council),

  • Gary Bauer on Engle's advisory board
• Tony Perkins (current president of the FRC),
• Coach Bill McCartney (founder of Promise Keepers),
• Dr. Alveda King (niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.),
• Steve Douglas (president of Campus Crusade),
• actor Stephen Baldwin,
• Rod Parsley,
• Luis Palau,
• musicians Ricky Skaggs and Michael W. Smith, and others.
• Ted Haggard, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was a member of the board before his very public fall from grace.
• Perkins and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee were featured speakers at TheCall DC last week, so writing this off as a fringe event underestimates its growing influence with evangelical power brokers.
• Next stop for Engle is San Diego, to organize voters for Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban on the California ballot in November. In this, Engle’s political activism echoes that of established evangelicals like Pat Robertson, Dr. James Dobson, and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, but with a cooler website.
• Here is the heart of the matter: Lost in all of the political dealings of Lou Engle and Rick Warren is the simple gospel message of sin and salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

  • Where these Dominionists, Reconstructionists and Joel's Army troopers miss it..
• Oh, most evangelicals assume it’s in there somewhere, amidst all the talk of Nazirite vows and goals to eliminate poverty, but in the dominionist theology of Engle and Warren, grace is replaced by “purity”, reformation by transformation, and doctrine by deeds.
• Grace? That’s so 18th century.
• We’re on a dangerous road, the same path traveled by our ancestors in the faith nearly 1,700 years ago.
• American Christians are tempted to see good in what appears to be the growing influence of Jesus Christ in the political realm.
• Similarly, most 4th century Christians were convinced that the Emperor Constantine’s decision to legalize the faith was an act of God, and Theodosius the Great’s decree to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire was seen as further evidence of God’s power.
• After 300+ years of often brutal persecution, that’s an understandable reaction.
• Instead of God’s kingdom on Earth, however, state support of Christianity spawned the grasping hierarchy, worldly excesses, and extra-biblical doctrines of the medieval Roman Catholic Church.

  • And the eventual persecution of real and genuine Christian Believers..
• Why should we expect any better from a 21st century marriage of church and state?
• The emphasis by Warren and Engle and their supporting ministries on producing quantifiable changes in the here and now, rather than storing up treasures in heaven through individual witnessing, has produced a profound shift —
• a word that keeps turning up during my research into the growing stream of New Age thought in American evangelicalism —

  • SEE: Constance Cumbey's 3-part exposure of the meeting and wedding of American Evangelicals and blatant New Age operatives in secret meetings...Go to "News With Views" website for her articles.
• away from orthodox Christian doctrine by our most influential pastors.
• Political power is sought because it’s necessary to bring about God’s kingdom now.

  • SEE: Doug Coe and "The Cedars"
• Don’t worry; it will only seem like totalitarianism at first, until we re-educate all those rebellious unbelievers. (In its most extreme forms, dominionists actually believe that Jesus cannot return until we “take dominion” of the Earth, which makes it easier to justify the means.)
• Ultimately, this dominionist heresy will lead many professing Christians to welcome the Antichrist as one of their own.

  • Exactly....Christ stated that those who would kill His true followers "wouldl think they were doing God a service" and that deception at the End Time would be so cunning, so masked as to "deceive the very elect if that were possible."
• Bear in mind that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light”.
• If American evangelicals are so lacking in discernment that thousands swallow Todd Bentley’s demon-inspired histrionics as the work of the Holy Spirit, and tens of millions buy into Warren’s purpose-driven social gospel without questioning his documented habit of proof texting, then how many more will welcome a charming, self-effacing leader who’s only stated desire is to bring, well, PEACE to Earth?
• Now, Rick Warren probably isn’t the Antichrist, and Lou Engle no doubt believes that changing the culture according to God’s standards is a holy and righteous thing to do.
• But their actions are not scriptural, and they’re laying the groundwork for a political leader who says he shares their goals to win the hearts, minds, and souls of millions of people who claim to be Christians.

  • True
• 8 responses so far ↓
• Adrian Boyce   // Aug 25, 2008
• Unfortunately it seems many people think they can find a better way than Jesus outlines. He suffered as well as his disciples for preaching the Gospel. It was a gospel that called for great sacrifice.
• Suffering was synonymous with believing. That is the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Apostles were considered the scum of the earth and no-one wanted to be an Apostle. My, how things have changed.
• David Garrett   // Aug 25, 2008
• Well it seems we are just witnessing what the Lord said would happen,Christianity has left the old paths,lots of confusion out there now,a close walk with the Lord and discernment are the only way we can make it.
• Here is a link of a mp3 file from an old fashioned pastor who has confronted Rick Joyner to his face here in Charlottle,NC,telling him he was a false prophet.
• Rick Joyner has been knighted into some group called The Knights of Malta,and has some real weird views about scripture. http://www.pawcreek.org/audio_mp3/pwobd030808.mp3
• Joanne   // Aug 26, 2008
• btw… both Rick Joyner and Ricky Scaggs were initiated into the Knights of Malta in the late ’90’s

• Mike   // Aug 28, 2008 at 10:31 am 

   

   

  Thanks for the post! And thank you Derek and Sharon for all your work with PID- there are a lot of great alternative news websites/podcasts, but PID really kept things in perspective- not sowing fear, and keeping everything Christ centered.
• Concerning the post on Warren. I was listening to Dr. Dennis Cuddy on Radio Liberty. He has 2 new articles- The Management Plan part 1 and 2: http://www.newswithviews.com/Cuddy/dennis135.htm
• On Radio Liberty Dr. Cuddy was speaking of what is called the “civic church”. This is essentially the concept of church as an all-inclusive universalist, humanitarian organization.
• Both the interview, and article are full of information on how this seemingly “modern” movement of the social gospel/dominionism has actually been in planning for a long time.
• His reference to Alice Bailey’s book, Problems of Humanity and the 1893 World Parliament of Religions really captured my attention as some great examples to expose these long planned hidden intentions.

• David Garrett   // Aug 28, 2008 at 5:14 pm 

   

   

  Dr. Dennis Cuddy is a great researcher as well as the Collins brothers,for those interested he was on Southwest Radio Church two days this month talking about the new world order,the 25th and 26th of August http://www.swrc.com/ministry/schedule/schedule.html

• Ainsley Broussard   // Aug 31, 2008 at 1:51 pm 

   

   

  Excellent article, Derek. I came across your and Sharon’s website via Tom Horn of “Raiders News Network.” Since then I have been a devoted reader and listener. Though I am middle-age and too over the hill for enlisting in “The Call” and “Jesus Camp”; I do have two sons in their early 20’s. We are a Christian family and you can believe I am watching these movements of Bentley, Engle and Warren like a hawk. Thanks to “watchmen on the wall” like you, Sharon, Tom Horn and others, you are helping we grass roots laymen to spread the word on the dangers of Dominionism and Reconstructionists. Oh..and if you would, say hello to Sharon for me and tell her I so enjoy her articles too.

94 more annotations...

• 'Arming' for Armageddon
• Militant Joel's Army Followers Seek Theocracy

  • Not sayng this version of a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center is not accurate or contains some truth. However, considering the source of this report, Southern Poverty Law Center, I take anything in this particular report, with a grain of salt.
• By Casey Sanchez
  Photography by Lowell Handler
        <!-- intel report issue information: Issue 131 --> 

    Intelligence Report
    Fall 2008
• 
  Canadian Todd Bentley, who preached for months on end this year in Florida, is a general in Joel's Army
• LAKELAND, Fla. — Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors.
• Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous "supernatural healing revival" in central Florida.
• To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day.
• Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don't bat an eye when he tells them he's seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. "He was looking very Jewish," Bentley notes.
• Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read "Joel's Army."

  • Tattoos
• They're evidence of Bentley's generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that's gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right.
• According to Bentley and a handful of other "hyper-charismatic" preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel's Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers.

  • "Christianity" by force?
• "An end-time army has one common purpose — to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion," Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada.

  • "Dominionists"
• "The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel's Army. …
• Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God's kingdom on earth."
• Joel's Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they're members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches.
• Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel.
• In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel's Army.

  • In my reading of that portion of the Book of Joel, that locust army sounds like anything but something of God or Christian. Traditional Bible scholars have in the past interpreted this army as demonic.
• Despite their overt militancy, there's no evidence Joel's Army followers have committed any acts of violence.
• But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God's avenging army.
• This video was posted on YouTube by a detractor.
• Those sounding the alarm about Joel's Army are not secular foes of the Christian Right, few of whom are even aware of the movement or how widespread it's become in the past decade.
• Instead, Joel's Army critics are mostly conservative Christians, either neo-Pentecostals who left the movement in disgust or evangelical Christians who fear that Joel's Army preachers are stealing their flocks, even sending spies to infiltrate their own congregations and sway their young people to heresy. And they say the movement is becoming frightening.
• "The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008," writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity.
• "One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors."
• 'Snorting Religion'
• Joel's Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism.
• Dominionism's original branch is Christian Reconstructionism, a grim, Calvinist call to theocracy that, as Reconstructionist writer Gary North describes, wants to "get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

  • Definition of Christian "Reconstructionism." Writer Gary North is a "Reconstructionist"..????
• Notorious for endorsing the public execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterers, the Christian Reconstructionist movement is far better known in secular America than Joel's Army.
• That's largely because Reconstructionists have made several serious forays into mainstream politics and received a fair amount of negative publicity as a result.
• Joel's Army followers eschew the political system, believing the path to world domination lies in taking over churches, not election to public office.
• Another key difference between the two branches of dominionism, which maintain a testy, arms-length relationship with one another, is Christian Reconstructionism's buttoned-down image and heavy emphasis on Bible study, which contrasts sharply with Joel's Army anti-intellectual distrust of biblical scholars and its unruly style.
• "Some people snort cocaine, others snort religions," Joel's Army Pastor Roy said while ministering a morning program at Todd Bentley's Lakeland, Fla., revival in late May.
• As this article went to press, Bentley's "Florida Outpouring" had been running for more than 100 days straight. Many attendees came in search of spontaneous physical healing and a desire to be part of a mystical community marked by dancing, shouting, gyrating, speaking in tongues and other forms of ecstatic release.
• Snide jabs at traditional church services are fairly common at Bentley's revivals.
• In fact, what takes place onstage at the Florida Outpouring looks more like a pro wrestling extravaganza than church.
• On stage, Bentley and his team of pastors, yell, chant, and scream "Fire!" and "Bam!" while anointing followers.
• The audience members behave as if they are at a psychedelic counterculture festival.
• One couple jumps up and down twirling red and silver metallic flags. Dyed-haired teenagers pulled in by the revival's presence on Facebook and MySpace wander around looking dazed.
• Women lay facedown on the floor, convulsing and howling. Fathers wail in tongues as their confused children look on.
• Strangers lay hands on those who fail to produce tongues or gyrate wildly enough, pressuring them to "let it out."
• 
  "The Call," a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 young people held in a different city each year, is led by Joel's Army pastor Lou Engle
• Bentley is considered a prophet both by his followers and by other leaders of the Joel's Army movement, whose adherents claim to be reviving a "five-fold ministry" of prophets, apostles, elders, pastors and teachers, as outlined in the Book of Ephesians.
• Not every five-fold ministry is connected to the Joel's Army movement, but the movement has spurred an interest in modern-day apostles and prophets that's troubling to the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal church, which has officially disavowed the Joel's Army movement.

  • Yeah, well the Assemblies of God have their own set of problems with their joining and endorsing the "Emerging Church" movement of Rick Warren fame. Both of these movements...Joel's Army and Emerging Church are to exposed and denounced by genuine Biblical Christianity.
• In a 2001 position paper, Assemblies of God leaders wrote that they do not recognize modern-day apostles or prophets and worried that "such leaders prefer more authoritarian structures where their own word or decrees are unchallenged."
• They are right to worry. Joel's Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city.
• Warrior Nation
• According to Joel's Army doctrine, the enforcers of the five-fold ministry will be members of the final generation, for whom the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade constituted a new Passover.
• "Everyone born after abortion's legalization can consider their birth a personal invitation to take part in this great army," writes John Crowder, another prominent Joel's Army pastor, who bills his 2006 book, The New Mystics: How to Become Part of the Supernatural Generation, as a literal how-to guide for joining Joel's Army.

  • John Crowder...a Joel's Army preacher.
• Both Bentley and Crowder are enormously popular on Elijah's List, an online watering hole for a broad spectrum of Joel's Army enlistees, from lightweight believers who merely share an affection for military rhetoric and pastors who dress in army camouflage (several Joel's Army pastors are addressed by their congregants as "commandant" or "commander") to hardliners who believe the church is called to have an active military role in end-times that have already begun.

  • "Elijah's List"
• Elijah's List currently has more than 125,000 subscribers on its electronic mailing list.
• Rick Joyner, a pastor whose books, The Harvest and The Call, helped popularize Joel's Army theology by selling more than a million copies each, goes the furthest on Elijah's List in pushing the hardliner approach.

  • Rick Joyner
• In 2006, he posted a sermon called "The Warrior Nation — The New Sound of the Church," in which he claimed that a last-day army is now gathering and called believers "freedom fighters."
• "As the church begins to take on this resolve, they [Joel's Army churches] will start to be thought of more as military bases, and they will begin to take on the characteristics of military bases for training, equipping, and deploying effective spiritual forces," Joyner wrote.
• "In time, the church will actually be organized more as a military force with an army, navy, air force, etc."

  • Huh???
• In a sort of disclaimer, Joyner writes at one point that God's army "will bring love, peace and stability wherever they go." But several of his books narrate with glee what he describes as "a coming civil war within the church."
• In his 1997 book The Harvest he writes: "Some pastors and leaders who continue to resist this tide of unity will be removed from their place. Some will become so hardened they will become opposers and resist God to the end."
• Two years later, in his book The Final Quest, Joyner described a vision (taken as prophecy in the Joel's Army world, where Joyner is considered an "apostle") of the coming Christian Civil War in which demon-possessed Christian soldiers enslave other, weaker Christians who resist them.

  • A "demon possessed" "Christian" army????
• He also describes how the hero of the novel — himself — ascends a "Holy Mountain" in order to learn new truths and to acquire new, magic weapons.
• Kids on Fire
• Bentley, who claims to be a supernatural healer, is no less over the top, playing his biker-punk appearance and heavy metal theatrics to the hilt.
• On YouTube, where clips of his most dramatic healings have been condensed into a three-minute highlight reel, Bentley describes God ordering him to kick an elderly lady in the face:
• "I am thinking, 'God, why is the power of God not moving?' And He said, 'It is because you haven't kicked that women in the face.' And there was, like, this older lady worshipping right in front of the platform and the Holy Spirit spoke to me and the gift of faith came on me. He said, 'Kick her in the face … with your biker boot.'
• I inched closer and I went like this [makes kicking motion]: Bam! And just as my boot made contact with her nose, she fell under the power of God."

  • I look upon this one tid-bit as an actual Satanic conditioning for this "Joel's Army" to harden the heart, soul and mind to commit atrocities without inhibition...much like the Nazis did in WWII.
• The atmosphere is less charged with violence at "The Call," a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel's Army pastor Lou Engle and held every summer in a major American city (this year's event was scheduled for Washington, D.C. in August).

  • "The Call" and pastor "Joe Engel."
• Attendees are called upon to fast and pray for 40 days and take up culture-war pledges to lead abstinent lives, reject pornography and fight abortion.
• They're further asked to perform "identificational repentance," lugging along family trees and genealogies to see where one of their ancestors may have enslaved or oppressed another so that they can make amends. (Many in the Joel's Army movement believe in generational curses that must be broken by the current generation).
• As even his critics note, Engle is a sweet, humble and gentle man whose persona is difficult to reconcile with his belief in an end-time army of invincible young Christian warriors.
• Yet while Engle is careful to avoid deploying explicit Joel's Army rhetoric at high-profile events like The Call, when he's speaking in smaller hyper-charismatic circles to avowed Joel's Army followers, he can venture into bloodlust.
• This March, at a "Passion for Jesus" conference in Kansas City sponsored by the International House of Prayer, or IHOP, a ministry for teenagers from the heavy metal, punk and goth scenes, Engle called on his audience for vengeance.
• "I believe we're headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground," said Engle. He was referring to the Baal of the Old Testament, a pagan idol whose followers were slaughtered under orders from the prophet Elijah.

  • An End Times show down...
• "There's an Elijah generation that's going to be the forerunners for the coming of Jesus, a generation marked not by their niceness but by the intensity of their passion," Engle continued. "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on everything that hinders love, with his eyes blazing fire."

  • SEE: Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" book series and his sanctioning of the "video game" that came from it where "Christians" actually fight, kill and maim non-Christians.
• Although Joel's Army theology is mainly directed at people in their teens and early 20s via events like The Call and ministries like IHOP, sometimes the target audience is even younger.
• In some of the most arresting images in "Jesus Camp," a 2006 documentary about the Kids on Fire bible camp in North Dakota, grade school-aged kids dressed in army fatigues wield swords and conduct military field maneuvers.

  • "Hitler Youth"???

• "A lot of people die for God and they're not afraid," one camper told ABC News reporters in a follow-up segment.

   

  "We're kinda being trained to be warriors," added another, "only in a funner way."
• Cain and the Intellectuals
• Both Christian and secular critics assailed the makers of "Jesus Camp" for referring to the camp's extremist, militant Christianity as "evangelical."
• There is a name, however, that describes Kids on Fire's agenda, if you're familiar with their theology: Joel's Army.
• Pastor Becky Fischer, who runs the camp, said that a third of the kids at her camp were under 6 years old because they are "more in touch in the supernatural" and proclaimed them to be "soldiers for God's Army."

  • Claims by some of these adults of Joel's Army that small children or more in tune with the "supernatural."
• Her camp's blend of end-times militancy and supernaturalism is perfectly emblematic of the Joel's Army movement, whose adherents believe their cause is prophesied in the Old Testament chapter titled "An Army of Locusts."

  • It is my understanding this "Army of Locusts" was an evil army; either demonic or demon inspired.
• The stark, evocative passages of that chapter describe a locust swarm that lays waste to Israel (to this day, the region suffers periodic locust invasions): "Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come."
• As remarkable as the language is, most biblical scholars agree that it is a literal description of a locust invasion and resulting famine that occurred sometime between the 9th and 5th centuries B.C.E.

  • Well if this is simply an infestation of "bugs"; whoever heard a insects raping women?
• In the Book of Joel, the locust invasion is described as an omen that an Assyrian army to the north may attack Israel if it fails to repent as a nation. But nowhere is the invasion described as an army of God.
• According to an Assemblies of God position paper: "It is a complete misinterpretation of Scripture to find in Joel's army of locusts a militant, victorious force attacking society and a non-cooperating Church to prepare the earth for Christ's millennial reign."
• The story of how an ancient insect invasion came to be a rallying flag for 21st-century dominonists begins just after World War II in Canada.
• Out of a small town in Saskatchewan, a Pentecostal preacher named William Branham spearheaded a 1948 revival in which he claimed that his followers lived in a new biblical time of "Latter Rain."

  • William Branham
• The most sinless and ardent of his flock would be called "Manifest Sons of God."

  • These are part of the Dominionists movement and Reconstructionists. Either way..all three are not Christian in any sense of the term.
• By the next year, the movement was so strong — and seemed so subversive to some — that the Assemblies of God banned it as a heretic cult.
• But Branham remained a controversial figure with a loyal following; many of his followers believed him to be the end-times prophet Elijah.
• Michael Barkun, a leading scholar of radical religion, notes that in 1958, Branham began teaching "Serpent Seed" doctrine, the belief that Satan had sex with Eve, resulting in Cain and his descendants.

  • I have run across this teaching on many websites which claim to be "Christian" and do, surface wise, appear to be Biblical based. But a closer study and reading of their website offerings will reveal their teaching of a sexual union between Eve and the Serpent/Devil. One such site which finally went over to Gnostism and actually advocating Gnostic teachings was a website called, "Return of the Star Gods."
• "Through Cain came all the smart, educated people down to the antediluvian flood — the intellectuals, bible colleges," Branham wrote in the kind of anti-mainstream religion, anti-intellectual spirit that pervades the Joel's Army movement to this day.
• "They know all their creeds but know nothing about God."
• The Gates of Hell
• Branham was killed in a car accident in 1965, but his Manifest Sons of God movement, the direct predecessor of Joel's Army, lived on within a cluster of hyper-charismatic churches.
• In the 1980s, Branham's teachings took on new life at the Kansas City Fellowship (KCF), a group of popular self-styled apostles and prophets who used the Missouri church as a launching pad for national careers promoting outright Joel's Army theology.

  • The "Kansas City Fellowship"; apostles and prophets movement. This year (2008) I have come across a couple of "Christian" websites and web owners who state they pulled out of the Kansas City Fellowship due to "unbiblical" excesses and "unChristian" conduct of some of the movement's leaders. One of these dissenters is "Matthew Stephen", who has since been embroiled in his own controversy and another is the web site of an Australian who also claims to have left the Kansas City Fellowship movement due to unBiblical happenings. He runs a website called the "Revivalist" or "Revival School."
• Ernie Gruen, a local pastor who initially promoted and gave citywide credibility to KCF pastors in the early 1980s, cut his connections in 1990.
• Concerned about KCF's plans to push its teachings worldwide, Gruen published a 132-page insider's account, based on taped sermons and conversations and interviews with parents who had enrolled their kids in KCF's Dominion school.
• According to Gruen's report, students at the school were taught that they were a "super-race" of the "elected seed" of all the best bloodlines of all generations — foreknown, predestined, and hand-selected from billions of others to be part of the "end-time Omega generation."

  • Sounds like Hitler's teachings on the Nazi German "master race" teachings.
• 
  The Joel's Army movement began with the 1940s preaching of William Branham, whose group was banned as heretical by the Assemblies of God
• Though he'd once promoted these doctrines himself, Gruen became convinced that the movement was turning into an end-times cult, marked by what he summarized as "spiritual threats, fears, and warnings of death," "warning followers to beware of other Christians" and exhibiting "a 'super-race' mentality toward the training of their children."
• When contacted by the Intelligence Report, Gruen's spokesman said that Gruen stands by everything he published in the report but no longer grants media interviews.
• The Kansas City Fellowship remains in operation and has served as a farm team for many of the all-stars of the Joel's Army movement.
• Those larger-than-life figures include John Wimber, the founder of a California megachurch, The Vineyard, who, before his death in 1997, proclaimed that Joel's Army would not only conquer the earth but defeat death itself.

  • John Wimber was a part of this Kansas City movement
• Lou Engle founded The Call based on the Joel's Army visions that KCF "prophet" Bob Jones (not to be confused with Bob Jones III of Bob Jones University) received while at KCF.
• Mike Bickle, another KCF member, stayed in Kansas City to form the International House of Prayer.
• IHOP members and other Joel's Army adherents are well aware of how their movement is perceived by other conservative Christians.
• "Today, you can type 'Joel's Army' into a search engine and a thousand heresy hunter websites pop up, decrying the very mention of it," writes John Crowder in The New Mystics.
• Crowder doesn't exactly allay critic's fears. "This is truly warfare," he writes. "This battle is not a game. They [Joel's Army warriors] will not be on the defense; they will be on the offense — and the gates of hell will not be able to hold up against them."
• So far, few members of the secular media have taken notice of Joel's Army, even as they report on Protestant dominionists like Pat Robertson or the more outrageous calls for the stoning of gays and lesbians emanating from Reconstructionist circles.
• There are exceptions, however. On the DailyKos, a well-read, politically liberal blog, a diarist has been blogging for two years about her experiences as a walkaway from a Joel's Army church. She writes under a pseudonym out of fear of physical reprisals.
• She may have real cause for concern. As Wimber, the late founder of The Vineyard, put it in one of his most famous and fiery sermons, one that is still frequently cited by Joel's Army followers: "Those in this army will have His kind of power. … Anyone who wants to harm them must die."

  • Wimber, the Vineyard and Joel's Army's call for "death" for their enemies..even other non-conforming Christians.
• Southern Poverty Law Center
  400 Washington Ave.
  Montgomery, AL 36104

110 more annotations...

• "THE   FAMILY" AND ITS HIJACKING OF EVANGELICALISM
    PART 5
• By   Attorney Constance Cumbey
    September 7, 2008
    NewsWithViews.com
• Author’s   Notes: this was originally to be a four part series. Parts   I and II dealt with modern “merging and blending” of Washington’s   “Fellowship Foundation” and Paul N. Temple’s “Institute   of Noetic Sciences.”
• Barbara Marx Hubbard said in her 1988 Seattle   Unity Temple speech that “now all the resonating core groups with   outwardly different purposes are merging and blending and coming together   to do The One Work.”
• It was clear that she was working closely   with both Paul Temple and the Fellowship Foundation, both groups of   which he had and continues to successfully bridge.
• The   problems, however, are much older. They are clearly multi-generational.
• According to the Billy Graham Center archives, Paul Temple’s own   involvement with Abraham Vereide dated back to 1944.
• Meetings of the   group which included clear proponents of “We are gods” (Frank   Laubach) date back earlier to 1943 and perhaps even earlier.
• Developing   this series, I now know subject is clearly too vast to be easily synopsized   in only four relatively short articles that the NewswithViews editor   and I originally discussed.
• I was going to focus solely on the work   of “the twelve” this article, but in the drafting process   realized that to understand these twelve, one had to understand developments   that preceded them.
• Starting with Madame Blavatsky’s pre-death   pronouncement that they were to prepare the world to receive a new “Christ”   clear preparation went forth in a deliberate manner.

  • Antichrist?
  Add Sticky Note
• Only God knows   the intensity, motivations and commitment of those intentionally or   inadvertently helping to implement the Theosophical agenda, but an agenda   there clearly was
• and clearly there were professed Christians helping   even from the beginning who should have known better, particularly considering   their claimed levels of theological sophistication.

  • Precisely
  Add Sticky Note
• EARLY THEOSOPHICAL PLANNING
• Madame   Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and William L. Q. Judge organized their “Theosophical   Society” in New York City in the Year of Our Lord 1875.
• The first   of this trio was a Russian ex-patriate adventuress. The two gentlemen   were American lawyers.
• Olcott was reportedly a Civil War hero who had   played a leading role in the investigation of the Lincoln murders.

  • Now that is an interesting connection...
  Add Sticky Note
• The   purpose of the society was supposedly to study comparative religions.
• The occult (hidden) purpose was much deeper. Madame Helena Petrovna   Blavatsky revealed to her followers before what that purpose was: to   prepare the world to receive a new expected “messiah” by   the name of “Maitreya.”
• “Maitreya” was also   the name the Buddhists gave to their expected reincarnation of Buddha.
• Annie   Besant, the ex-wife of an Anglican clergyman took Blavatsky’s   charge very seriously. She led “The First Annual Congress of the   Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society.
• It was   held in Amsterdam from June 19th through 21st, 1904. I am fortunate   to own an original edition of its published proceedings. "FEDERATION   OF EUROPEAN SECTIONS OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY: TRANSACTIOSNS FIRST   ANNUAL CONGRESS: AMSTERDAM 1906."
• I have had the book which   I purchased back in the 1980s for the even then outrageous price of   $95.00. It was marked “rare.” It is an indispensable volume   in my research library.
• Some   names at that conference are still easily recognizable today. Annie   Besant, Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf / Steiner Schools / eurhythmy / biodynamic   farming); A. R. Orage (Social Credit / “The New Age”) were   among the more prominent in attendance whose recognition has survived   through modern history.
• The   two most significant articles from my perspective are the papers presented   to that congress by a name less known to us, but obviously from its   fruits, productive to the Theosophical Movement: I. HOOPER.

• Hooper’s   articles found respectively at pages 223 and 371 of that book are entitled:

   

  •   “The Reconstruction of Beliefs”
    • “The Theosophical Society and the Faith   to Come”

  • I. Hooper's articles presented at the 1904 Theosophical conference in Europe.
  Add Sticky Note
• Hooper   said beliefs fell into three stages: (1) universal acceptance; (2) total   disbelief; and (3) reconstruction. The job of the Theosophical Society,   concluded Hooper in the “Reconstruction” portion of those   1904 presentations was to “synthesize differing beliefs and to   reconstruct same.
• The forms of the “reconstruction” would   be dealt with in this chapter about “the Faith to Come.”   These days the Theosophists and their fellow New Age travelers usually   call that “the New World Religion.”
• Hooper   told his fellow Theosophists that they should downplay “obvious   theosophical propaganda.

• (p. 373) Theosophists were to share in the   following work to achieve their aims:

   

  “International   co-operation, political work, social movements of every kind, religious   and mystical cults, the strange reconstructive impulses of long-sleeping   national and racial life [to be gruesomely acted out in the 1930s and   1940s by German and other eugenic disciples of Theosophical lore, as   was Hitler himself!]

• Those   going forth from theosophy to evangelize the world to that mindset were   to carefully camouflage themselves in ways that would make George Bernard   Shaw and his Pygmalion [better known to us theatrically as MY FAIR LADY]   seem as amateurs:

   

  “We   must learn to speak their language as one born thereto; easily, naturally   seeing its beauty and its meaning. Not as one who translates laboriously   from a tongue he loves better . . . but as one who knows that the [theosophical]   truth can be uttered as perfectly and as sweetly as in the language   which to him is the more familiar.

   

  “In   a word, we must not take with us the phrases of the Theosophical Society;   we must not take its forms, but we must take its spirit and its life   . . .”

• In   urging the switch and bait, Hooper intriguingly said:

   

  “Sir   Oliver Lodge has recently pleaded for a restatement or revision of Christian   doctrines; it is much needed. The work of destructive criticism has   paved the way; now the day has dawned of constructive up-building.”   (p. 375)

• How   to do it? Hooper gave specifics:

   

  “People   in the Churches should be urged increasingly to learn that illumination   comes from within and that this life, which I call an independent inner   life as opposed to sacred rites and external teaching, should be led   by all who can lead it . . .” (p. 378)
• The   foregoing should be carefully contemplated particularly in view of the   writings of two who particularly bridged the occult and Christian world:   Jacob Boehme (sometimes spelled “Bohme” or “the Blessed   Behman (William Law) and Jacob Boehme’s English translator and   disciple: William Law.
• Probably   the most pernicious teaching spread by disciples of William Law who   was also Aldous Huxley’s favorite philosopher was that if one   failed to go in side for wisdom, he was in a sense blaspheming the work   of the Holy Spirit.
• Reliance on the Bible and traditional church creeds   that proclaimed the One God, the virgin birth, the rising again, etc.   were to be shed in favor of “the birth of Christ within.”

  • As Oprah Winfrey seems to have converted to this view.
  Add Sticky Note
• Those familiar with Theosophical and Alice Bailey literature well know   that one of the most prominent of the several “initiations”   used to reach “godhood” was “Christ being born in   the Cave of the Heart.”
• It   was a prominent disciple of both William Law and Norman Grubb who has   disseminated this heresy. His name would shock so many that I dare not   repeat it here.
• The wheat and the tares were go grow together until   the time of the harvest and repeating this name at this time and place   is more than certain to harm the wheat!
• These   were some of the same the teachings that obviously tares sown in the   bosom of the Prayer Breakfast Network.
• I will elaborate in my next article,   part VI of this series of “the twelve” who were part of   the original Washington, D.C. network.
• They formed camps with the name   “Farthest Out,” wrote books with open themes of “we   are gods” (“millions of gods” at that!), and called   their allegedly Christian facilities “ashrams.”
• They allied   themselves with and borrowed the concepts of Frank Buchman who had openly   expressed admiration for Himmler and Hitler.
• The   most authoritative text on the prayer breakfast network, MODERN VIKING:   the story of Abraham Vereide pioneer in Christian leadership, was written   by an energetic and enthusiastic proponent of both William Law and Jacob   Boehme: Norman Grubb.[1]
• Norman Grubb would work this side of the Atlantic   as well as influence huge segments of the Missionary Movement worldwide.
• His brother, Sir Kenneth Grubb would work the other side of the Atlantic,   also being active in the modern missionary movement,
• as well as being   chief of British intelligence during World War II, be a primary organizer   of the World Council of Churches,
• and co-found the International Institute   of Strategic Studies, today a primary think tank for Javier Solana and   his Western European Union confederates.
• Next   in series: Names of “the twelve,” Marian (Mrs.   Aymar) Johnson, Calvary House, Camps Farthest Out, Frank Buchman, Dr.   Frank Laubach together with his role in the establishment of the Meditation   Room for the United Nations, and the role of this group in the initial   founding of the United Nations as well as European Union structures.   What was the role of “The Keswick Experience”?

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• CHRISTIANS   PARTNER WITH PAGANS FOR A BETTER WORLD

• By   Paul Proctor

   

  October 3, 2008
    NewsWithViews.com
• It   would seem a new fall emphasis is underway to again try and bring the   world’s religions a little closer together with the help of the Southern   Baptist Convention’s two   most prominent Council on Foreign Relations members, pastor Rick   Warren and the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission president,   Richard Land.

  • Southern Baptist Convention and the criminal CFR
  Add Sticky Note
• If   you’re wondering what the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Great Commission   have to do with the CFR’s global agenda, you’re not alone.
• But how better   to gently steer the world’s largest protestant denomination toward the   coming new world order than with a couple of its more influential leaders   acting as facilitators?
• The   Washington Post had an article in its On Faith section the other   day, titled Rick   Warren, Interfaith Activist, that talked about Warren’s recent   appearance at the Clinton   Global Initiative where he continued to promote the idea of   getting “people of faith” to work together at solving the world’s problems   –
• as if a gathering of the gods and their do-gooders was all that was   needed to accomplish such a monumental task.
• Keep   in mind, the term “people of faith” is a carefully chosen expression   designed to exclude and offend no one while at the same time giving   willing participants, including gullible Christians, a warm and fuzzy   feeling of commonality with pagans and idolaters via good works and   a global cause.

  • Fact
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• After   all, who doesn’t have faith in someone or something?
• Apparently,   it doesn’t matter who’s headed to Hell anymore because we’re building   a heaven right here on Earth.
• All we have to do now is figure out how   to extend this life indefinitely.
• In   the Post piece, writer, Eboo Patel extolled the virtues of Warren’s   “pluralist” language and “religious diversity” this way:
• Last   week at the Clinton Global Initiative, Warren was asked how "the church"   could help to solve poverty. His response was to rattle off the numbers   of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians in the world - in that   order -
• and make a plea that the public and private sectors take seriously   "the faith sector as the third leg of the stool of successful development."

  • It's the "Third Leg" of this unholy trinity alright: the Antichrist, the False Prophet and the Devil
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• Warren   consistently used the language of a religious pluralist.
• He spoke   of "mosques, temples and churches" as central to the life of villages   in the developing world. He underscored the fact that there are huge   numbers of people of faith in the world, and huge numbers of houses   of worship in places where clinics, banks and schools don't exist.
• Those people of faith can be trained to be the arms and legs of any   development plan, and those houses of worship can double as clinics,   banks and schools.

  • As they will be..for 7 years. Then....
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• This   is a big deal, because it signals an important turn in the American   Evangelical tradition - from viewing people of other faiths primarily   as lost souls requiring conversion to viewing them as partners in   the plan to make earth more humane and just.

  • Rick Warren..false prophet
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• Yes,   I would call this an enormous “turn” from the “American Evangelical   tradition.”
• In fact, I’m not sure if the term “Evangelical” is even   appropriate anymore – at least in this setting.
• If   sin is what brought about all of the world’s problems, just how is ignoring   it going to solve them?
• Shall we merely treat the symptoms of sin around   a fallen world with an interfaith program of good works and discard   the cure as potentially divisive – that being, God’s call to repentance   and faith in Jesus Christ?
• How   does one work with pagans and their false gods and honor the   One True God Who warns us in His Word to not be “unequally yoked   together with unbelievers” and commands us to “come out from   among them, and be ye separate”? (2nd Corinthians 6:14-17)

  • "What fellowship has light with darkness?"
  Add Sticky Note
• The   bottom line is, as I pointed out, in a recent NewsWithViews.com article,   Rick Warren Still Doesn't Get It.
• Isn’t   Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. plan a little like rounding up bar patrons to follow   a drunk driver around town to render aid and comfort all the people   he runs off the road and organizing a fulltime crew of beer guzzlers   to repair all of the roadside damage he does with his out-of-control   vehicle instead of getting him off the street before he gets   behind the wheel of a car and sobering him up with the cold hard truth   and a stern warning about the dire consequences of his actions and the   life-saving benefits of abstinence?

• The   former spares the drunk’s feelings and lifestyle at the expense of future   victims.  

  The   latter saves lives – including the drunk’s.  

  Which   is really more loving and productive?
• The   Lord didn’t commission His followers to manage this world’s madness   with ecumenical efforts that ignore His Word, but rather call the lost   out of the insanity to faith in Jesus Christ while tending to   their more immediate physical needs.
• Warren   might claim in certain circles that both their spiritual and physical   needs are being met with his P.E.A.C.E. plan; but it is clear to me   that the focus is, more often than not, on the flesh and the temporal,   even though the Lord’s emphasis was predominately on the spiritual and   eternal.
• By   working with pagans instead of challenging their damning doctrines   before watchful eyes, as preachers of the Gospel are called to do, the   lost are simply fed, clothed, comforted and cared for on the road to   Hell.
• How   is that compassionate?
• It’s   like a cruel joke and about as loving as offering a death row inmate   a hot meal and a cigarette before he’s executed. Sure, he might appreciate   it; but what’s it all really worth in the end?
• Unfortunately,   time doesn’t permit me to go into the socialistic   implications of business management guru Peter Drucker’s “three-legged   stool” concept to unite the government, the business community and the   church for a better world.
• I am, however, including links in this article   that sufficiently address the subject at length.

• Now,   the other CFR Southern Baptist, Richard Land, is calling for “bridges   of understanding” in a little Baptist Press piece titled U.S.-   Muslim engagement seen as key to security, prosperity: 

   

  Deep   misunderstandings between the United States and Muslim communities   around the world are causing serious problems and solving them will   require constructing "bridges of understanding," says the president   of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
• So,   we don’t need to challenge Muslim beliefs and point them to Jesus Christ;   we just need to learn how to get along with them, is that it?
• Where   did our Lord teach this and what are some biblical references Land can   point to where the Apostles or anyone else in the early church built   “bridges of understanding” between Christians and other religions?

• Land   went on to say: 

   

  "Polls   show there is a huge lack of understanding of Americans in the Muslim   world. We need to broaden and deepen the understanding on both sides…”
• Who   needs polls to show us this when we have, among other things, four downed   planes, a missing World Trade Center and over three thousand dead people   to make that point?
• According   to the report, 18 months of “extensive research” was done by a “bipartisan   coalition” on the “challenge of reversing extremism, increasing international   security and improving relations with the Muslim community” – something   called The U.S. – Muslim Engagement Project – a group that is   apparently supported by two other like-minded organizations called,   (are you ready for this?) Search For Common Ground and The   Consensus Building Institute.
• Yeah   – that ought to get the Gospel out there.
• Land   can call it “bridges of understanding” if he wants to, but “common   ground” and “consensus” usually lead   to compromise; and spiritually speaking, that’s not a biblical option   for Christians.

• The   BP report continued with this: 

   

  The   group's plan calls for significant shifts in American foreign policy   to create a safer U.S. and a better world and suggests a "new blueprint"   on how to reconstruct America's relationship with Muslims around the   world, said Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers   Fund.

  • Rockefeller, huh?
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• Ah   yes – the Rockefellers – Always busy about the Lord’s work.

• Enough   said – I’ll close with this:  

  My   pastor shared something not long ago that he considered profound and   worth remembering.  

  He   said: “Whatever you permit, you promote.”  

  I   couldn’t agree more.

• Isn’t   it fascinating who and what the church accepts these days to partner   with for ministry that’s in clear violation of Gods Word?  

  Is   it ignorance, arrogance or just apathy?  

  Whatever   the case, the end is the same.
• “And   have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather   reprove them.” – Ephesians 5:11

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• The Ruling Class-Sponsored Race War and the Balkanization of America  Part Four: Rushdoony's Bastards and the Hijacking of the Ron Paul  Revolution
• by Paul & Phillip D. Collins, September 29th, 2008
• Previous installments of this series have examined the  disturbing conjunction between the Minute Men, neo-Nazis, white  supremacists, Malthusian population control advocates, and Dominionist  organizations like the Council for National Policy (CNP).
• The overall  contention presented in this series is that there is a racist Fifth  Column co-opting otherwise legitimate grassroots movements.
• This Fifth  Column is connected to the intelligence community, tax exempt  foundations, globalist organizations, and other conduits for elitist  interests.

  • "Fifth column" activists infiltrating and using legitimate grassroots organizations for their own fascist/neo-nazi goals.
  Add Sticky Note
• The power elite hope to use this Fifth Column to radicalize  activists within disparate enclaves, which will eventually be mobilized  in a politically and socially expedient race war.

  • The Power Elite hope to manipulate these fifth column fascists for their own ends.
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• If such a race war  can be successfully fomented, then the United States can be balkanized.
• With the Republic atomized and constitutional governance broken,  America can be assimilated into a socialist totalitarian world order.

  • Subverting the USA into the NWO
  Add Sticky Note
• This installment shall attempt to elucidate the neo-Confederate Trojan  Horse within the so-called "Ron Paul Revolution."

  • Ron Paul and the Neo-Confederates
  Add Sticky Note
• Masquerading as  libertarians, these neo-Confederates are trying to use Paul's movement  as a vehicle for divisive racial politics and secessionist objectives.
• Some of these neo-Confederate elements constitute a faction of the CNP,  as is evidenced by the personages of Rousas John Rushdoony and Gary  North.

  • Rushdoony and Gary North
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• Given this continuity of CNP involvement in the promulgation of  racial dialectics, it is clear that the same forces behind the  radicalization of the Minute Men are also responsible for the  corruption of the Ron Paul Revolution.
• The Ron Paul Devolution
• When Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul began his Presidential  campaign, many people across the political spectrum rejoiced and  pledged their undying support to Paul's cause, dubbing it "the Ron Paul  Revolution."
• It's not hard to understand the enthusiasm when one  examines the Revolution's exterior appearance.
• The Texas Republican has  called for the abolition of the Federal Reserve, the Federal income  tax, and other machinations of oppressive big government.
• If Paul were  to have a sit-down chat with a grassroots activist, there would likely  be more harmony than discord during the discussion. That's what makes  the results of a closer examination so disheartening.
• Paul has  political baggage that may render him unfit to hold the highest office  in the land.

  • Paul's "political baggage"
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• In a January 4, 2008 article on the Official Confederate States of  America (CSA) Government website, it was claimed that Ron Paul was "the  only candidate who might be friendly to the restoration of the  Confederacy" ("Ron Paul, the only candidate who might be friendly to  the restoration of the Confederacy," no pagination).
• The article also  stated that the CSA has "known for years Ron Paul to be essentially a  Confederate in his stand on the issues" (no pagination).
• What is giving  Paul his appeal with proponents of a Confederate revival? It is likely  that Paul's association with neo-Confederates posing as libertarians is  the reason for the attraction.

  • Whence cometh these Neo-Confederates to the Paul campaign?
  Add Sticky Note
• Paul's congressional Chief of Staff from 1978 to 1982 was Lew Rockwell,  the founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama  (Kirchick, no pagination).
• While the Institute claims to be a  libertarian think tank, there are members of its senior faculty that  can only be described as neo-Confederates.
• Senior faculty member Thomas  E. Wood Jr. is a founding member of the League of the South (no  pagination).
• The League is a secessionist group that seeks to  reestablish "the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people and  their institutions" (Beirich, no pagination).
• Paul has praised Woods'  pro-Confederate book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, claiming that the tract "heroically rescues real  history from the politically correct memory hole" (Kirchick, no  pagination).
• Another senior faculty member of the von Mises Institute is Thomas  DiLorenzo (no pagination). Like Woods, DiLorenzo is an unapologetic  neo-Confederate.
• In his book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, DiLorenzo  refers to the rebellion of 1861-65 as the "War for Southern  Independence" (no pagination). Paul actually endorsed the book on MSNBC  during a December 2007 debate over the necessity of the Civil War (no  pagination).
• Many of the von Mises Institute's neo-Confederate ideas  have contributed to Paul's thinking. Paul even spoke at a secession  conference hosted by the Institute in 1995 (no pagination).
• North is a  contributor to Rockwell's website and has worked on Paul's  congressional staff (no pagination).
• Another connection between Rockwell and Paul is Gary North.
• North was also a participant in  the Council for National Policy (CNP) in 1984, 1988, 1996, and 1998 and  was on the Council's Board of Governors in 1982 ("The Council for  National Policy: Selected Member Biographies," no pagination).
• The CNP  is a hotbed for Dominionist thinkers such as Marvin Olasky, the  deceased Dr. D. James Kennedy, and Howard Ahmanson, Jr. (no  pagination).

  • "Dominionists"
  Add Sticky Note
• North adheres to Christian Reconstructionism, a heretical belief system  that fathered Dominionism.

  • Gary North and Christian Reconstructionism and Dominionism
  Add Sticky Note
• It is through Christian Reconstructionism  that one finds the bridge between neo-Confederate ideology and  Dominionism.
• The father of Christian Reconstructionism was North's  father-in-law and CNP participant Rousas John Rushdoony (no  pagination). Rushdoony was heavily influenced by the writings of Robert  L. Dabney, the Chaplain to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall"  Jackson (Potok, no pagination).

  • Rousas John Rushdoony (Gary North's father-in-law); influenced by Stonewall Jackson's Chaplain, Robert L. Dabney.
  Add Sticky Note
• Dabney's writings portrayed the South  as a highly moral and Godly society that was unjustly oppressed by a  Godless and decadent North (no pagination).
• Dabney's influence on  Rushdoony can be seen in Rushdoony's book, Institute of Biblical  Law (no pagination). In that book, Rushdoony advocated  segregation and adamantly opposed interracial marriage (no pagination).
• As Rushdoony's influence spread into evangelical churches, the poison  of Confederate nationalism was injected into America's Christian  community (no pagination).
• This is truly ironic, given the fact that there is a body of evidence  that suggests that neo-Confederate ideology is merely a revival of  anti-Christian Celtic paganism.

  • I have run into some evidence of this on a personal level
  Add Sticky Note
• Neo-Confederates believe that the  establishment of a Confederate republic is not possible without a  revival of Anglo-Celtic culture (Pansler, no pagination).
• Neo-Confederates also venerate Confederate Generals, a practice similar  to the Celtic worship of warrior-gods (no pagination). A good  illustration of the modern day worship of Southern generals by  Neo-Confederates is the pro-Confederate movie Gods and  Generals (no pagination). While there are thematic threads  throughout the film that are comparable to the teachings of Dabney and  Rushdoony, the title really says it all: Southern Generals are to be  equated with deities.
• The neo-Confederate thinkers of the von Mises Institute, the League of  the South, and the CNP may be the source of many of the racist  statements that New Republic writer James Kirchick found in  many of Paul's newsletters (no pagination).

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• 100,000 secular Britons seek 'de-baptism'
• Mon Mar 30,
• LONDON (AFP) –  More than 100,000 Britons have recently downloaded "certificates of de-baptism" from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith.
• The initiative launched by a group called the National Secular Society (NSS) follows atheist campaigns here and elsewhere, including a London bus poster which triggered protests by proclaiming "There's probably no God."
• "We now produce a certificate on parchment and we have sold 1,500 units at three pounds (4.35 dollars, 3.20 euros) a pop," said NSS president Terry Sanderson, 58.
• John Hunt, a 58-year-old from London and one of the first to try to be "de-baptised," held that he was too young to make any decision when he was christened at five months old.
• he male nurse said he approached the Church of England to ask it to remove his name. "They said they had sought legal advice and that I should place an announcement in the London Gazette," said Hunt, referring to one of the official journals of record of the British government.
• So that's what he did -- his notice of renouncement was published in the Gazette in May 2008 and other Britons have followed suit.
• Michael Evans, 66, branded baptising children as "a form of child abuse" -- and said that when he complained to the church where he was christened he was told to contact the European Court of Human Rights.
• The Church of England said its official position was not to amend its records. "Renouncing baptism is a matter between the individual and God," a Church spokesman told AFP.
• "We are not a 'membership' church, and do not keep a running total of the number of baptised people in the Church of England, and such totals do not feature in the statistics that we regularly publish," he added.
• De-baptism organisers say the initiative is a response to what they see as increasing stridency from churches -- the latest last week when Pope Benedict XVI stirred global controversy on a trip to AIDS-ravaged Africa by saying condom use could further spread of the disease.
• "The Catholic Church is so politically active at the moment that I think that is where the hostility is coming from," said Sanderson. "In Catholic countries there is a very strong feeling of wanting to punish the church by leaving it."
• In Britain, where government figures say nearly 72 percent of the population list themselves as Christian, Sanderson feels this "hostility" is fuelling the de-baptism movement.

• Theologian Paul Murray at Durham University disagrees. "That is not my experience," he said, but concedes that change is in the air.

   

   "We are in an interesting climate where Catholicism and other belief systems have moved into the public, pluralist arena, alongside secularists," he said.
• De-baptism movements have already sprung up in other countries.
• In Spain, the high court ruled in favour of a man from Valencia, Manuel Blat, saying that under data protection laws he could have the record of his baptism erased, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.
• Similarly, the Italian Union of Rationalists and Agnostics (UAAR) won a legal battle over the right to file for de-baptism in 2002, according to media reports. The group's website carries a "de-baptism" form to facilitate matters.
• According to UAAR secretary Raffaele Carcano, more than 60,000 of these forms have been downloaded in the past four years and continue to be downloaded at a rate of about 2,000 per month. Another 1,000 were downloaded in one day when the group held its first national de-baptism day last October 25.
• Elsewhere, an Argentinian secularist movement is running a "Collective Apostasy" campaign, using the slogan "Not in my name" (No en mi nombre).
• Sanderson hopes rulings in other European countries will pave the way for legal action in Britain, since European Union directives require a level of parity among member states' legislation.
• The bus-side posters that hit London in January sported the message: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
• The scheme was in response to pro-Christian adverts on buses directing passers-by to a website warning those who did not accept Jesus would suffer for eternity in hell.
• Comedy writer Ariane Sherine, mastermind of the British bus campaign that saw a copycat version in Barcelona and other cities, said she backs the "de-baptism" movement but insisted the two initiatives were separate.
• Sanderson meanwhile remains resolute. "The fact that people are willing to pay for the parchments shows how seriously they are taking them," he said.

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