Bartholomew's Notes

From the website of MorningStar, the ministry of Rick Joyner:

50+ Joshua and Caleb Generation Gathering: April 3-5, 2014

You’re in your 50s or 60s or more. You love God with all your heart and want to live in your purpose at this most important time of your life. That’s what God wants for you, too… This gathering is specifically designed with you in mind, training, equipping, and affirming you more fully in God’s purpose for your life. Whether you are married or single, a man or a woman, you fit in.

A short list of speakers follows, headed by…

Mike Warnke – “I’ve known Mike for many years. When I first heard him speak, I thought he was the funniest man I had ever heard. We need humor, and we’ll need more of it as these times unfold. Yet we also need the other great devotion Mike has—saving the lost and delivering those who are in bondage.” ~Rick Joyner

That would be Mike Warnke, author of the most shameless and grotesque bogus “memoir” in evangelical history. Warnke’s 1973 book (which was ghosted by David Balsiger) was The Satan Seller, an absurd account of his supposed early years as a high-ranking Satanist, and it was the subject of a comprehensive and exhaustive debunking by two Christian journalists more than twenty years ago. Warnke made a religious career out of telling the most florid lies – and he contributed to a climate of “Satanic panic” that saw innocent lives blighted by false and hysterical accusations of Satanism across the USA and also in other countries (particularly, the UK).

Many people were under the impression that Warnke had disappeared from public platforms after his exposure, but although he’s no longer an evangelical “A lister” he’s maintained a presence on  the church speaker circuit, through his “Celebrations of Hope” ministry. And this is not his first appearance alongside Joyner: last autumn, he took part in Joyner’s HarvestFest 2013 (tagline: “the greatest move of God of all time is about to come upon the earth”), where the headline speaker was Reinhard Bonnke.

Warnke is not the first disgraced evangelist whom Joyner has attempted to rehabilitate: other associates include Jim Bakker (MorningStar’s Fort Mill base, where the “Joshua and Caleb Generation Gathering” will take place, is sits amid the ruins of Bakker’s Heritage USA), as well as the recently-deceased former “Kansas City Prophet” Bob Jones, and Todd Bentley (in late 2012, Joyner agreed with Bentley that the MP for Croydon, Malcolm Wicks, had died from cancer because he had opposed Bentley’s entry into the UK).

Joyner also endorses other fabulators: in particular, he regularly promotes Kamal Saleem, whose bogus “ex-terrorist” memoir is the direct lineal descendant of Warnke’s volume.

(Video H/T Christian Nightmares)

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