Bartholomew's Notes

News reports from the Powys County Times and the Stornoway Gazette note the beginning of campaigning in Wales and Scotland by George Hargreaves’ Christian Party, which I recently blogged on here.  In the Western Isles, Tom Selfridge is promising to protect the islands’ “unique culture” by ending the Sabbath ferry service, while in Wales Jeff Green is railing against homosexuality.

Another figure associated with the Welsh Christian Party is David P. Griffiths, who coordinates the North Wales region. In 2007, Griffiths led the campaign – endorsed by Christian Party leader Hargreaves – to have the dragon removed from the Welsh flag. The Daily Post reported that:

…Party manifesto coordinator Rev David P Griffiths, from Colwyn Bay declared it an “outrage” for various government, housing and tourism bodies in North Wales to associate themselves with a symbol of defeat and Satan – the dragon.

They want the traditional flag replaced by the Cross of St David.

Griffiths runs a Pentecostal ministry called the Sons of God, and he’s not very keen on rival Christian groups, whom he attacks with Landoveresque old-school crankiness:

Apostolic Church (Wales), Elim & AOG along with “Alpha Course” Churches all have come under the wing of this new “Emerging Church”!

…Amazing as this may seem – we have the evidence – we have the testimony – indeed the concrete truth to show that these once great movements have joined the new One World “Church” – the counterfeit “Church” of the end-time Antichrist! They stand alongside the many “Alpha Course Churches” sinking in the mire of unbelief and unrepented of sin! 

…Use of NASV on website, Unusual Activities: Disco Dancing, Hip-Hop, Slow Dance, Cheerleading, Rock’n’Roll and Streetdance to contemporary Christian music likely to be copyrighted and likely to embrace devilish drum beats!

…Elim Bible College, where I believe the god operating was one of mysticism and learning – the Egyptian god Thoth.

…Nicky Gumbel himself in Alpha Questions of Life p.24 admits an affinity with spiritualist F.J.A. Hort whom with Westcott helped produce a text falsely described as “original” that has infiltrated right into the heart of British Church life today and is now through Wycliffe and the United Bible Societies manoeuvring into developing countries to turn them away from the true texts of Antioch to the false codices of Egypt thus introducing these nations to a counterfeit “Holy Spirit”! Gumbel declares Hort to be one of the greatest textual critics!

And so on. Griffiths is particularly obsessed with Arthur Samuel Peake, an early twentieth-century Bible scholar based at Manchester University:

The Pentecostal denominations of Britain are dominated by the intellectual anti-Christ that primitive Pentecostals need to take notice that the movement your forefathers sacrificed for are being taken away from you! – a comment that in the past has brought rejection towards us – but now is being proven time after time again. I was told by God to refuse the Manchester University Degree in Theology and Christian Ministry offered through Elim Bible College. God said this would affect the anointing. God said this was a degree of the flesh and the Assemblies of God themselves in their Redemption Tidings of 1924 warned about the attack of the Higher Criticism of Germany coming through Manchester University. The Assemblies of God (when the movement was one of the Holy Ghost, a movement so powerful, a movement described by Dr. Roy Harthern as a free flowing movement) magazine described the Manchester University approach as being one of the raising of the swelled head of the Higher Criticism of Germany. Within this blasphemy comes a questioning of the very Word of God our forefathers died for, an approach pioneered by Professor Peake, Rylands Professor of Exegesis, University of Manchester.

Fortunately, although God told Griffiths to leave Manchester University, he managed to get a PhD from elsewhere, via a revivalist named Dr Stephen Houston, Overseer of the Pentecostal Holiness Church Great Britain & Ireland. Houston is UK-based, although his website notes links with US figures such as C. Peter Wagner and the Prosperity preachers Jerry Savelle and Jesse Duplantis (Griffiths, however, is hostile to Wagner, accusing him of using “the NKJV published by New World Order commercial publisher Thomas Nelson” and denouncing him for his support of Todd Bentley).  The official accounts for Griffiths’ Life Changing Ministries International also mentions the George Jeffreys School and Bible College, which uses teaching materials by Bob Weiner – Weiner headed the controversial group student Maranatha in the 1980s, which I blogged on a number of times a few years ago (e.g. see here and here). The document also mentions links to Trevor Newport, whom I blogged here.

The Christian Party is part of the Alliance for Democracy, alongside the English Democrats and Veritas.

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