Bartholomew's Notes

Dark Christianity draws attention to a curious email, supposedly from Jim Bramlett:

Dear friends:THIS IS EXTREMELY SERIOUS.

Minutes ago I spoke with friend Dr. Norman G. Marvin, M.D. and he is so concerned at what he has learned about Barack Obama’s family in Kenya that he is calling a special prayer meeting in his home to pray against the witchcraft curses attempted by them against John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Dr. Marvin sent me the below e-mail from Flo Ellers. Flo is credentialed with the International Fellowship of Ministries which is based in Washington State. She is also a member of EndTime Handmaidens and Servants of Jasper, Arkansas.

IF YOU KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, PLEASE PRAY TODAY AND CONTINUALLY THAT ALL SUCH CURSES BE BROKEN AND SATAN’S PLAN FOR AMERICA BE DEFEATED, IN JESUS’ NAME. PRAY AND COVER MCCAIN AND PALIN WITH THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, IT IS TIME YOU LEARN!!!”

and:

“Bree Keyton went and visited Obama’s tribal people and she found out Obama is 75% Arab and his family are Muslims. Odinga is strill trying to become the President of Kenya. If he does, he will make a law forbidding all public preaching and institute Sharia Law. Bree K. said Odinga has made a pact with satan.

Bree K. also said when Obama visited his tribe in ’06 and as late as Jan. ’08 he went to every elder’s home which has a “shrine” inside to worship the genie and asked for their blessing. She was told Obama and Odinga were both “destined” before they were born to be president/leader of their nation. They say “he is the chosen one”. She said Obama’s grandmother sacrificed a black and a white chicken to the “goddess of the river” so both whites and blacks will vote for Obama. All Islam loves and worships Obama. The world is mesmerized by him. Oprah’s 200 million followers are out to elect Obama. Also, Dick Morris of Fox News was sent to Kenya to help Odinga run his campaign! I find that unbelievable.

The occultists are “weaving lazy 8’s around McCain’s mind to make him look confused and like an idiot”. Bree K. said we need to break these curses off of him that are being sent from Kenya.”

So who are these characters? Bramlett is an associate of Pat Robertson and the late Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ; he has been preaching that “we are in the the last days” for nearly forty years now. Norman G. Marvin is an exponent of “glyconutrients” (Corpus Callosum casts a sceptical eye over these here). I’ve blogged on the “EndTime Handmaidens and Servants” previously; the organisation has links with “Mama and Papa Olangi”, two Congolese evangelists whose church has been linked to the exorcism of “child witches”, and with C. Peter Wagner’s “Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders” (the Council is discussed in an interesting article a few days ago at Talk to Action). Ellers has her own website here; she is of Native American background (Tlingit from Alaska), and in 2005 she was among a group of Pentecostal Native Americans who presented a “Proclamation of Forgiveness” to a White House official. She explains:

Dr. Ellers was asked to be the Native American representative during the “2nd Washington for Jesus” rally in 1996, where 500,000 Christians gathered at the Washington Mall in WA. D. C., to pray for this nation. She was given, along with the other speakers, 10 minutes to address the nation. As she prayed, the Holy Spirit inspired her with what later became known as the “Proclamation of Forgiveness”…Recently, Flo sensed the prompting of the Lord to present this document to President Bush so she worked with State Senator Greenleaf of Pennsylvania and he helped facilitate a presidential appointment with Mr. Rubin Barrales to present the “gift of forgiveness” to the Nation’s Chief. She, along with her team believe once the President of the United States accepts the forgiveness, heaven will record this prophetic act and as a result revival will break forth in America.

She has also been endorsed by Morris Cerullo. Bree, meanwhile, has had a career which includes appearing

on the television program “The 700 Club,” at the National Right to Life Convention, TBN, the International Counter-Cult Conference, the National Full Gospel Businessmen’s Convention, and the international TV show “It’s Supernatural” with Sid Roth.

Looks like another job for Bishop Thomas Muthee…

(Hat tip: Bulldada Newsblog)

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A press release announces The Judeo-Christian View:

Over 325,000 rabbis, priests and pastors in every Jewish and Christian congregation in America just received the award-winning documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West on DVD, according to the publisher of a new periodical for clerical leaders, The Judeo-Christian View, which included the film inside the first issue…Dr. O’Neal Dozier, General Publisher, said the next issue will be The Judeo-Christian View on “The Free Exercise of Islamic Violence.”

As expected from Dozier, the “periodical” is not exactly the most nuanced publication out there:

“Same-Sex Unions and Child Sacrifice” are, of course, the two vices of Barack Obama; “Child Sacrifice” is abortion (the publication puts a picture of Anne Frank next to a fetus), while gay rights, rather than being a mark of western freedom, undermine the fight against Islam:

Our nation faces a fork, a divergence between the high road and the low road — and you and your congregation could very well determine the direction we take. The high road upholds America’s peaceful tradition of Judeo-Christian tolerance and morality. The low road marches us toward militant secular-paganism, militant Islam, or both…the Free Exercise Clause means anything, religious leaders indeed must freely exercise those rights to inform their congregations where both the Bible, Judeo-Christian tradition and the politicians stand on matters of ethics, morality and public policy. If we do not, the “Mullahs of Secularism” – or perhaps the mullahs of militant Islam — may one day forbid Torah references to the Children of Israel as G_d’s Chosen, Gospel preaching of the Messianic hope, or Judeo-Christian teaching on tolerance and morality…The USA, Israel and other western societies simply cannot afford to promote sexual immorality, venereal disease, infanticide and population decline.

According to the press release, there is also a petition:

“Full embrace of homosexual unions by our nation and the next administration would tell violent Islamists that the infidel USA has expressly rejected once-shared Abrahamic, Mosaic and Christian teaching regarding ‘sodomy’. So too would flagrant ‘gay integration’ of our overseas military forces [a policy Obama supports]. We advocate “love the sinner, hate the sin”; militant Islamists would murder our fellow Americans for sexual error, as well as us for offering them hope and forgiveness!”

This is of course humbug: we know that Dozier doesn’t really care less if “violent Islamists” think less of the west due to liberal sexual mores.

And actually the “Judeo” part of his View is bogus, too. Here’s Dozier last year, explaining why a mosque should not be built in Florida:

…”I said that Jesus Christ is the only Way,” says the pastor. “I quoted the verse there [John 14:6] … Therefore one cannot be saved outside of Jesus Christ. I said that Islam cannot get one to heaven.”

Surely, then, this must also apply to Judaism?

However, despite the crudity, obvious opportunism, and muddled thinking, Dozier can boast a number of signatories to his anti-sodomy petition:

Clerical signers include: Rabbi Herzel Kranz from The Jewish Center of Silver Spring, Maryland; Rev. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Father Frank Pavone, Roman Catholic head of Priests for Life; Rev. Rosemary Schindler, San Francisco Board of the Anti-Defamation League and member of the Oscar Schindler family (of Schindler’s List); Dr. James M. Hutchens, Brigadier General and Deputy Chief of US Army Chaplains (Ret.); Rev. Ben Kinchlow, former co-host of The 700 Club; Dr. Bruce Fong, president, Michigan Theological Seminary; Dr. Kenneth L. Hutcherson, Antioch Bible Church, Kirkland, Washington; Dr. Erwin Lutzer, senior pastor of Moody Memorial Church, Chicago; and Rabbi Yehuda Levin of the Rabbinical Alliance of America of Torah Loyal Jews and The Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada.

I’ve come across a few of these names previously: James Hutchens runs the Christian Zionist outfit “Jerusalem Connection“; Kenneth Hutcherson has links with anti-gay Christian militants in Latvia, and he addressed a church there under the guise of the US’s “Special Envoy for Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief”; and Yehuda Levin has complained bitterly about gay pride events in Jerusalem (“Israel will be the Holy Land or the homo-land”), and about the Washington Holocaust Museum’s inclusion of a display about gay victims of the Nazis.

Dozier himself was kicked off Charlie Crist’s Florida campaign committee in 2006 when his enthusiasm for anti-Muslim comic strips came to light; this was despite Dozier having a received a message from God approving Crist’s candidacy for governor.

Meanwhile, we might ask where Dozier got the funds for his mass mailout, as well as 325,000 copies of Obsession.

(Hat tip: Richard Silverstein)

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Two Daily Mail articles appear to have gone missing, concerning links between two British politicians and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. I suspect strongly that the reason is nothing to do with the main story about the politicians (which is being widely reported), but rather because of some of the background material about Deripaska and his former associate/present opponent Mikhail Cherney.

The first article, with a headline best not repeated, has disappeared altogether, while links to the second – “Mandelson heads to Moscow to meet Russia’s business leaders” –  now re-direct to a similar article entitled “Top Tory Osborne admits he met Mandy’s Russian tycoon five times – but denies he asked for a dodgy donation”. I’ve seen bits of the first article reposted elsewhere, and it repeats serious – albeit old – claims about the period during which Cherney (or “Mikhail Chernoi”) and Deripaska worked together.

As is widely known, Cherney and Deripaska have been locked in a bitter feud for some time, with the Israel-based Cherney pursuing Deripaska through the London High Court. However, back in the 1990s the two men were allies, and they became preposterously rich in the “Aluminium Wars”. This was during a period in which ruthless gangsters were making fortunes, and by bad luck the two honest businessmen came into contact with some rather dubious characters. Also unfortunately, a journalist who had written pieces critical of Cherney and his brother was killed by persons unknown in 1997. Inevitably, this kind of thing has led to questions; Cherney now has some visa problems with the USA, and he has been the subject of many investigations, all of which have floundered (in one case, Israeli police investigator Moshe Mizrahi was forced to resign amid claims of a “witch-hunt” of wealthy Russian-Israelis). Cherney is a generous philanthropist, and among other causes he sponsors an organisation called the “Jerusalem Summit”. This outfir brings together brings neo-conservatives like Daniel Pipes and Baroness Cox with Christian Zionists such as Mike Evans and members of the Israeli right like Benyamin Netanyahu, and this is why he caught my attention. I have a fuller profile here.

It looks to me very likely that one or other of the two men made a complaint to the Mail, and it’s probably over old stuff which has long been in the public domain and reported in other newspapers. However, given that the Mail had a £4 million libel bill back in March, one can appreciate the paper’s caution.

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A bit of politics for a change: Hugh Muir of the Guardian has a third diary piece concerning members of the Swinton Circle (see my previous entries here and here for background):

… They have looked at their group as led by Alan Harvey, a former National Front activist and founder of the Springbok Club. Many just don’t like it. “Alan Harvey was removed as chairman by the committee in August as he brought a personal feud into a Circle meeting on 22/7 and his conduct was deemed unbecoming of that of a chairman,” says the latest newsletter. “He has subsequently been suspended as a member as he attempted to sabotage the meeting held on 3rd September as he contacted the speaker to say that it had been cancelled which was manifestly untrue. He has also sabotaged the Circle’s website. Fortunately his attempts to stop the meeting going ahead were unsuccessful. AGM should have a discussion on all these events and decide on further action.”

This announcement has been reposted on a discussion board run by a group of Harvey’s political opponents (my previous postings on the subject have also reappeared there, although with certain bits of information curiously removed – in particular my reference to the location of a Right Now! conference as being at the Mark Mason HQ in Piccadilly).

Harvey himself has a rather different take, and he claims that he was trying to keep extremists out. His lengthy account appeared in the comments section of my blog and elsewhere. Here’s an abridgement:

As you are probably aware, a quite scurrilous attack has been made against me in the so-called London Swinton Circle Members Circular No.69, which contained many factual errors. I believe therefore that I have the full right to defend myself in this matter.

I have been a member of the Committee of the London Swinton Circle for the past four years, being elected Chairman following the resignation of Sean Pearson in January 2007. During that time I have steadfastly endeavoured to uphold the Constitution of the LSC and to advance its cause. I have, however, become increasingly concerned by the fact that no proper AGM has been held for the past couple of years, and neither were Committee members being replaced when they died or resigned. If I have made an error as Chairman then it is that I never voiced my concerns in this regard strongly enough. For the past couple of years, therefore, the LSC has been run basically by the only two remaining active members of the Committee, Mr. Allan Robertson, the Organiser, and myself. This arrangement seemed to be working very efficiently however, and as no-one raised any objections there seemed no reason change the situation…All this was to change alas at the last LSC meeting of 22nd July 2008, which was addressed by Cdr. John Muxworthy RN of the UK National Defence Association. Incredibly all three of the undesirable individuals who we thought we had got rid of turned up – completely uninvited and unwelcome…The question before you therefore is whether you wish the LSC to become a mere appendage of the BNP – or whether like me you wish it to remain loyal to true Conservative and Unionist principles. I trust that I can rely upon your support.

Yours sincerely,

( Alan Harvey – Chairman, the London Swinton Circle )

The Swinton Circle website, which, as inferred by Muir’s piece, remains under Harvey’s control, carries a notice that

…The planned Emergency General Meeting of the London Swinton Circle, at which the crisis resulting from events of July 22nd will be discussed and appropriate decisions taken, is now planned for December 2008. After this EGM it is anticipated that normal regular activities of the organisation will be able to be resumed.

Just last night the Springbok Club (which is profiled by Johann Hari here) held a “joint meeting with the London Swinton Circle, at which the guest speaking will be a visiting long-standing overseas supporter” (for some strange reason,  a number of Springbok speakers are not identified by name on the website). Untangling the Swinton Circle from the Springbok Club will prove difficult without Harvey’s cooperation – indeed, the Swinton Circle website url contains the phrase “~springbok”.

According to a posting on a second discussion board, a Swinton Circle meeting was planned for September with a certain Christopher Luke replacing Harvey as chair. He writes that “I can assure Ken and others that the Committee of the London Swinton Circle have taken action against Mr Harvey to hopefully prevent him misbehaving again.” Luke, by the way, is an exponent of British-Israelism (here: “the Union Flag is no ordinary flag: it has a profound Biblical significance and is the banner of God’s Covenant People: Israel Britain”) and, although based in the south of England, he identifies strongly with Northern Ireland Unionism (although he was recently expelled from his Orange Lodge, an incident which moved him to poetry).

Meanwhile, there is no news on Michael Keith-Smith’s threatened libel suit against Alan Harvey, details of which remain obscure.

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Jewcy has an article by Karl Pfeifer which draws attention to a development in Hungary that doesn’t appear to have made the English-language press:

The right wing daily “Magyar Hirlap” reported on 10.10.2008 on the unveiling of a statue of catholic bishop Ottokár Prohászka (1858-1927): one of the leading ideologues of the “Christian course”  in the years  after the 1st World War. Prohászka  advocated antisemitic discrimination, the so called numerus clausus restricting the number of Jews admitted to institutes of tertiary education to 6 percent of all matriculants.

The current vice president, Sándor Lezsák, apparently took the opportunity of the unveiling to complain that discussion of Prohászka had been suppressed due to “spiritual terror”, and that he had simply “raised his voice to drive back the cosmopolitan-parasite class”. The Archbishop of Kalocsa- Kecskemét, Balázs Bábel, shares Lezsák’s enthusiasm:

According to the catholic daily “Magyar Kurir” the catholic archbishop Balázs Bábel said in his speech when unveiling the statue of Prohászka, that he was educated in the doctrine of Ottokár Prohászka, and that as seminarist, he was “witness to the shameful event when in 1945 at the instigation of Mihály Károlyi (democratic Hungarian politician) the poet György Faludy and his communist comrades destroyed the statue in the Karolyi park”….

According to the catholic daily a journalist asked the bishop whether he found it acceptable that in the Budapest Holocaust museum the picture of Prohászka is located near the picture of Hitler accompanied by the text: “one of the leading persons of the antisemitic ideology”.

Archbishop Bábel answered that he “will not visit the Holocaust museum until they change the text and the setting”.

Pfeifer points out that Bábel was born in 1950, and that Faludy only became communist at a later date. And that the original statue was removed in 1946, not 1945.

Bábel’s regard for Prohászka has been known for a while; it is addressed in a 2006 interview in English here:

Recently, three intellectuals – Peter Buda, Csaba Fazekas and Gyorgy Gabor, accused you in the literary weekly Elet es Irodalom of opposing freedom, because you praised Bihsop Ottokar Prohaszka at a commemoration, who at the beginning of the 20th century talked of the Jews as “a rats’ army,” and an “immoral, infiltrating minority.”

The writers know neither me nor Ottokar Prohaszka, and I did not say any of the things they accuse me off. Furthermore, I emphasised that Prohaszka opposed the representatives of the feudal Church of the time. Further, the antisemitism of the early 20th century is not comparable to that of the 1940s. Criticising the Slovaks, the Vlahs, the Jews and the Hungarians was part of the public discourse of the times. I know Prohaszka well from his books, and he would have opposed the inhumanity committed against the Jews during World War II. So it is ahistorical and false for the Holocaust Museum to present Prohaszka as an ideologist of fascism.

Moshe Y. Herczl’s Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry (p. 235) gives us a representative diatribe from Prohászka’s works:

Jewish morality is anathema to Christian civilization, and this curse will completely obliterate Christian civilization if the latter does not succeed in removing the poison…there is no such thing as Jewish morality, and consequently Jews have no knowledge whatevet of the concept of “moral values.” Thus, the main qualities of the Jew are unlimited egoism, crushing his fellow man – pressuring him mercilessly and drinking his blood. A Jew is unable to distinguish between good and evil…The Christian nations must not give the Jews equal rights; they must defend themselves from them and must constantly get rid of them, at every opportunity and in any way they are able.

Gosh, how could anyone confuse this kind of “criticism” with something from the 1940s?

Having said all that, though, there is – as with Martin Luther – probably rather more to Prohaszka’s long-term popularity than simply his anti-semitism; a Hungarian museums website describes him as the “apostle of Hungary”, who “made his diocese well known in Hungary as the location of the bishop’s new social and spiritual movements”, and as “the man who dedicated his life to serve people by doing a variation of social work, serve church and do scientific work.” The scholar Leslie László apparently assesses him as a paternalist motivated by “passionate love for his own Christian Hungarian people”. Of course, the fact that he was anti-Communist has probably helped his reputation in recent years as well. The circumstances around the unveiling of the new statue, though, do not look encouraging.

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A somewhat lacklustre performance from Walid Shoebat, the former computer programmer turned professional anti-Muslim polemicist and conspiracy theorist. Shoebat, whom I’ve blogged ad nauseum over the past few months, was giving an interview about the upcoming election on God’s Learning Channel, a Christian Zionist outfit that covers the southwest of the USA. Semi-slumped in his chair and looking tired, Shoebat held forth on Barack Obama, complaining more than once on the injustice that no-one makes a fuss when someone says “Hilary Rodham Clinton”, but for some reason going on about Obama’s middle name results in criticism.

The supposed “expert” on Islam also lazily worked through some anti-Obama talking points culled from right-wing media outlets, unashamedly cribbing from a couple of sheets of A4 he’d brought with him (at one point simply reading a passage from a Stanley Kurtz article).

Two candidates for most OTT pronouncement:

(1) Shoebat explains why Obama is pro-choice:

Of course, because there’s nothing better Islamists want to do than have Americans kill their own children, so it’s not a problem for him.

(2) Shoebat explains Islam’s plan for Obama:

Islam could not defeat us by destroying the twin towers. But they are able to defeat us by sneaking in their man.

The interview has been placed on YouTube by an anonymous Canadian source called “LeaveIslamNow“, who appears to be unaffiliated to either Shoebat or the TV programme (looks more like some kind of Catholic traditionalist). “LeaveIslamNow” has a handy list explaining why Obama is the anti-Christ (actually this has been around the net for a few months). It includes the observations that “He will come mounted on a white Female horse (Obama mother is white who had 6 African husbands)” and “Barack Hussein Obama is the King of the South predicted in the Bible. (Daniel .11, Kenya is south of Jerusalem)”.

Shoebat was recently at the Little Country Church at Redding, CA, giving one of his apocalyptic “prophecy seminars“; he’s got an appointment at Berkeley coming up, courtesy of Berkeley College Republicans and California Patriot.

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The Chinese Peoples’ Daily is gleeful over a conference in Ukraine apparently devoted to attacking Falun Gong:

A two-day international roundtable “Information Extremism: The Truth and Falsehood of Falun Gong Cult” ended on Tuesday, or October 14, in Kiev, Ukraine. Participants from various countries were unanimous in the view that the “Falun Gong” is a well-organized evil cult with great destructive power, which has wrought havocs to society and general public; it is a cult organization with an intrinsic tendency of potential violence.

Alas, the journalist’s English-writing skills are less than adequate, and working out who was actually there is rather tricky. For example, the report mentions

Griss Fridrih, president of the Federation for European Sectarian Research…

That’s actually Friedrich Griess of the Fédération Européenne des Centres de Recherche et d’Information sur le Sectarisme (FECRIS).

…Markovic Arnold, director of the Superstition Hotline Clinic in New York City, the U.S.,

That would be Arnold Markowitz of the Cult Hotline & Clinic.

…Bokin, director of the Russian State Religion Relations and Law Studies Institute

That’s Igor Ponkin of the Institute for State-Confessional Relations and Law (ISCRL) (Ponkin, an Orthodox nationalist, was recently in the news calling for goth and emo music to be banned).

A Spanish translation is even worse, giving us “Glis Fuderih”, “Markovich Arnolid”, and “Botin”.

Other “experts” mentioned are (links added) “Lipovskaya Natalya Anatolevna (f), a doctor of national management from the Ukrainian Academy of Customs Science”; “Vershinin Mihail Valerevna, an expert from the State-owned Samara University in Russia”, “Leshinskaya Elena Albertovna (f), a researcher from the Ukrainian Academy of Education Sciences”.

If we take the People’s Daily‘s word for it, the conference appears to have consisted of diatribes against Falun Gong that fully endorse the Chinese government’s perspective that it is “evil” and should be suppressed.

(Hat tip: Cult News Network)

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Despite a heart operation at the start of this month, Pastor John Hagee has found the time and energy to knock off a new book: a predictably opportunistic tome entitled Financial Armageddon. Christian Retailing has the background:

To be released Nov. 11 by Strang’s current events/political imprint, FrontLine, the book was written in less than three weeks after the recent banking crash.

In Financial Armageddon, Hagee—senior pastor of 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio—addresses the origins of the global oil and economic crises as well as how readers can protect their personal finances.

Amazon provides the blurb:

…In Financial Armageddon, successful businessman and pastor John Hagee addresses the subject of global oil and economic crisis head on, demonstrating clearly that God has much to say about both the current oil and economic crises and our personal finances in general.

Christians like every other American should know how these issues are going to affect their personal finances. But even more important to consider as Christians is this: What does God have to say about global events affecting America and the world, and what advice does He give to His children for avoiding the devastation of financial collapse? God has already revealed the information we need to understand how Bible prophecy intersects with world events, and has given us an investment manual for knowing how to manage our personal finance. It is the Word of God! As you read, remember that God has promised to bless His people. Rest assured that God is in control. You can have peace and financial security even when the world seems to be collapsing around you. Rather than hit the panic button, concentrate on finding ways to glorify God in the way you live. Trust our Heavenly Father He will never let you down.

Hagee has been predicting an economic meltdown for a long time. If his new book is true to form, it will not be not be a measured discussion of the need to avoid excessive debt; instead, get ready for a baroque conspiracy theory about how the world’s financial system has been manipulated by the Illuminati for the benefit of the Anti-christ’s New World Order:

The Illuminati were a super secret organization of international financial power brokers in Europe, who had as their goal a worldwide economic power, and they would rule the world through economic wealth…

Now here are the four things that have to happen before the New World Order can come to power. One, there must be the destruction of the economic system, the monetary system.

It may be shocking to you but I believe that America’s economic problems are not created by market conditions, they are planned and orchestrated to devalue and to destroy the value of the dollar.

It was done by an unseen government that I’ll discuss later in this message.

…Our economic destiny is controlled by the Federal Reserve system that is now headed by Alan Greenspan.  Think about this.  It is not a government institution.  It is controlled by a group of Class A stockholders including the Rothschilds of Europe and the David Rockerfellers of America…

(Hat tip: Religion Blog of the Dallas Morning News)

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From the T.D. Jakes Devotional and Journal (Day 233):

Isn’t a hero someone who puts himself at risk to help someone else?…I wonder if some of the men and women whom we say “failed” actually tarnished their records by having the courage to climb high enough to take the risks that others would not be willing to take…in order to help others.

From the Lusaka Times:

RENOWNED American televangelist TD Jakes who was expected in Zambia and was scheduled to officiate at the Africa Global Summit has postponed his coming for fear of a mysterious disease that was reported last week to have killed some people.

Efforts by summit organizers to reassure Bishop Jakes and his team through the ministry of Health, Foreign Affairs and American embassy in Zambia that there was no such a disease in the country proved futile.

Apparently a Zambian woman died last month of a rat fever, and she passed the disease on to medical staff in South Africa. According to an earlier report, Jakes had planned “to meet the presidential hopefuls in an effort to maintain the prevailing peace ahead of this month’s presidential election.” He had been invited by Nevers Mumba, an evangelist and former Vice President of the country.

Many commentators to the Times website are rather scathing:

Am shocked that he has refused to come. When God sent Jonah to go preach, Jonah hid and ended up being swallowed by the fish and then he finally went…

“You will walk on snakes and the poison will do you no harm……”.A man of God lives by the words of scripture but what TD Jakes has done just confirms that he reads more of news papers than the word.You shall know them by their fruits…

 you can imagine the so called imitators or followers of Christ scampering away on the suggestion of a “mysterious” disease. These are faith healers by the way. This is the breed of people in the likes of Nevers Mumba. You shall know them by the fruit of their works. Watch your money when you are buying these tickets for TD Jakes & his circus clowns.

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Much of the discussion over Sarah Palin’s “anointing” by witch-hunting Pastor Thomas Muthee has focused on what this tells us about the VP candidate; however, the resulting scrutiny also now has had unhappy consequences for the Kenyan evangelist, as journalist Zoe Alsop, writing for Womensenews, tracks down Mama Jane Njengu, the supposed “witch” whom Muthee boasts of having run out of town. It seems Muthee’s account is disputed by his victim; and his fellow-pastors are not impressed.

Alsop explains:

Muthee claimed that police rescued Mama Jane from a lynch mob at the time, and then whisked her away for good after gunning down a pet python they mistook for a demon.

But some residents of Kiambu were somewhat skeptical of Muthee’s claims.

Not least among them is the herbalist Jane W. Njenga, a pastor with the African Mission of Holy Ghost Church, who is best known as Mama Jane.

She says she didn’t own a pet python and she’s never left her compound, located about a half-mile from Muthee’s immense new church…Robust and topping six feet in the trademark shiny white robes of her church, Njenga is undeniably still in town.

Njenga also claims that Muthee “took a loudspeaker into the street and he told people to pray for seven days that I would die”.

The story has been picked up (without acknowledging Alsop’s work) by the UK Daily Telegraph, under the headline “False claims exposed of Kenyan pastor who protected Sarah Palin from witches”. It includes this detail:

…Rival pastors in Kiambu now denounce Muthee for his treatment of Mama Jane.

“You cannot make personal gain on crucifying a woman,” said an ally of Mama Jane, Pastor Gideon Maina. “As a man of God, you don’t make your name by stepping on other people’s names.”

Muthee has been endorsed by C. Peter Wagner, leader of the Charismatic “New Apostolic Reformation”. A couple of months ago one evangelist for whom Wagner prophesized a glorious future withdrew from public ministry following an affair.

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