21 and 22 June saw Rick Joyner at a “Prophetic Conference in Berlin“, on the topic of “God’s Thoughts about Germany and Europe”. Joyner knows a few things about “God’s thoughts”, having last year warned us all that God was about to destroy the west coast of the USA with an earthquake. It should be recalled that Joyner is a major player in the neo-Pentecostal strand of the US Christian Right, with particularly close links to Jim Bakker, Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, and Alan Keyes.
The website for the conference has been put together by someone with English as a second language, but even allowing for that the opening pitch is somewhat strange:
The political landscape of Europe is shaken and about to get transformed. Berlin, Paris and Brussels play a crucial role in the political negotiations. After 70 years anniversary of the Wannsee conference a chapter of nationalism in Germany came to a closure. Now is a kairos time for the land and new things come up. We want to learn to hear God’s voice clearer and to receive guidance and direction in this important and critical time. We expect in this conference that prophetic knowledge, love and transformation for our city and nation are released.
The Wannsee Conference took place in January 1942 and was famously the meeting at which a number of high-ranking Nazis came together to discuss the logistics of the “Final Solution”. The notion that it represents “a chapter of nationalism in Germany” which is only now coming to a close is bizarre and grotesque.
The Berlin Conference was organised by Wolfhard Margies, senior pastor of Gemeinde auf dem Weg (Berlin’s largest church, reportedly), and Andreas Bauer, co-founder (along with his wife) of Jerusalemgemeinde Berlin. There is not much information about either man in English; the blurb says that Margies is on “the board of directors of the biggest association of charismatic churches in Germany which he has launched 25 years ago”, and that he specialises in counselling advice. I noted his involvement with European Christian Zionism back in 2006. Bauer, meanwhile, runs “a prayer house in Jerusalem/Israel” as well as his church in Berlin.
Joyner’s fellow-speakers in Berlin were Hombre Liggett and Don Franklin. Liggett, according to the blurb (link added), “is the founder and senior pastor of Church of the Harvest in Dover, OH which belongs to the MorningStar Fellowship of Churches”; MorningStar is Joyner’s neo-Pentecostal grouping. Liggett ran for Congress in 2010 and 2012; despite support from Tea Party groups and an endorsement message from Boykin, he failed to get beyond the primaries.
Franklin, meanwhile, is with Evangelistic Missionaries of Ignited Church in Lakeland. This is the church that in 2010 hosted the Nigerian Pentecostal bishop NE Moses, who had formerly praised followers of Helen Ukpabio for forcibly shutting down a conference on the problem of child-witch stigmatisation. Moses also took part in a ceremony in which Ukpabio was made into an “Apostle”.
Joyner has a particular interest in Germany and in World War Two; he claims to have been friends with the late Col. Eugene Bird, a former commandant of Spandau prison. According to Joyner,
Bird was… instrumental in helping to lead von Schirach, who was the head of the Hitler youth, Albert Speer, who was supposedly the greatest architect and engineer – they said his genius prolonged the war up to two years – and Rudolf Hess all met the Lord.
One might expect that a US colonel converting three high-ranking Nazis to Christianity would have excited some press attention, or at least been of interest to historians – however, Joyner is the only source for this claim (there’s nothing, for instance, in Gitta Sereny’s famous biography of Speer, despite interviews with Bird and Speer). But that’s just the half of it – Joyner also boasts that he was shown Hitler’s secret burial place (see here at 9 mins 25 secs).
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