lunacy in the church II

Fake glory clouds, fake angel feathers, fake demon fighting. When the church is such a sick joke, is it any wonder the world finds itself in the handbasket to Hell?

a bit of music--Mrs. Jynx: Kites

Loren Cunningham's twisting of Jeremiah 27:5

I guess it could be said that I should have started at the beginning of this video in looking at what Cunningham says in this video. Maybe, but what came in those earlier posts was what drew my attention first, but I'll go back and catch a few things from the beginning, and hopefully that'll help, too, because it's pretty clear Cunningham is just making stuff up and not really dealing with what any passage is saying.

This transcription begins at the beginning of the video.

Turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 27 and verse 5. It says in God's Word, “I have made the earth, the men and the beast that are on the face of the earth by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and I will give it to the one who is pleasing in my sight”. Now God is saying, first of all, that he made the world. Because he made it, he has ownership of it. And he's not talking just a part of it, he says it's his. And he goes on to say, “I will give it to the one who is pleasing in my sight”. We note that in this particular portion, Jeremiah is talking to the children of Israel, and he was saying to them as a warning that God is giving charge and giving dominion over to Nebuchanezzar against them. Now this was strange for the people of Israel, because they knew the Abrahamic covenant. You'll find it in Genesis chapter 12, where in verse 1, “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from the your country, from your relatives, and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great. So you shall be a blessing. And I bless those that bless you, and the one that curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”. Now the children of Israel, they all love the first half of that covenant. Gods says “I will bless you”. But it was the second part that they wanted to forget, “So that you may bless all the families of the earth”. And they were clinging to the first, the promise, without the condition. And here God is saying, “I'm going to turn this over to Nebuchanezzar, and I'm going to turn you over to Nebuchanezzar”. And God uses even the unrighteous governments to chastise the righteous, or his people, and this was the case here.

So, Cunningham points us to Jeremiah 27, and whereas he takes one verse out of context and tries to build up the story around it without reference to the context, let's add the context.

In the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the LORD. 2 Thus the LORD said to me: “Make yourself straps and yoke-bars, and put them on your neck. 3 Send word to the king of Edom, the king of Moab, the king of the sons of Ammon, the king of Tyre, and the king of Sidon by the hand of the envoys who have come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. 4 Give them this charge for their masters: ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: This is what you shall say to your masters: 5 “It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the men and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomever it seems right to me. 6 Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him. 7 All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson, until the time of his own land comes. Then many nations and great kings shall make him their slave.

8 “‘“But if any nation or kingdom will not serve this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, declares the LORD, until I have consumed it by his hand. 9 So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your fortune-tellers, or your sorcerers, who are saying to you, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon.’ 10 For it is a lie that they are prophesying to you, with the result that you will be removed far from your land, and I will drive you out, and you will perish. 11 But any nation that will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on its own land, to work it and dwell there, declares the LORD.”’”

12 To Zedekiah king of Judah I spoke in like manner: “Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people and live. 13 Why will you and your people die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence, as the LORD has spoken concerning any nation that will not serve the king of Babylon? 14 Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are saying to you, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon,’ for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you. 15 I have not sent them, declares the LORD, but they are prophesying falsely in my name, with the result that I will drive you out and you will perish, you and the prophets who are prophesying to you.”

16 Then I spoke to the priests and to all this people, saying, “Thus says the LORD: Do not listen to the words of your prophets who are prophesying to you, saying, ‘Behold, the vessels of the LORD's house will now shortly be brought back from Babylon,’ for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you. 17 Do not listen to them; serve the king of Babylon and live. Why should this city become a desolation? 18 If they are prophets, and if the word of the LORD is with them, then let them intercede with the LORD of hosts, that the vessels that are left in the house of the LORD, in the house of the king of Judah, and in Jerusalem may not go to Babylon. 19 For thus says the LORD of hosts concerning the pillars, the sea, the stands, and the rest of the vessels that are left in this city, 20 which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon did not take away, when he took into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem— 21 thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels that are left in the house of the LORD, in the house of the king of Judah, and in Jerusalem: 22 They shall be carried to Babylon and remain there until the day when I visit them, declares the LORD. Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.”

So, what would be my problems with what Cunningham says about verse 5?

First, look at the people and places to whom Jeremiah is delivering this prophecy. “2 Thus the LORD said to me: “Make yourself straps and yoke-bars, and put them on your neck. 3 Send word to the king of Edom, the king of Moab, the king of the sons of Ammon, the king of Tyre, and the king of Sidon by the hand of the envoys who have come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah.” Cunningham says “ We note that in this particular portion, Jeremiah is talking to the children of Israel...”, but at this point in Jeremiah 27, the prophet isn't talking to the children of Israel at all. Starting in v 12, we get Jeremiah addressing the king of Israel, and then later the priests and people, but before that his words are directed toward the kings of 5 other nations: Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon.

Next, there is Cunningham's contention that this judgment is coming on Israel because they like the first part of the Abrahamic covenant about God blessing them, but didn't like the other part of the covenant about blessing the other nations of the world.

Now, where does this chapter say anything like that? To put it plainly, it doesn't. Cunningham is just trying to shoehorn his own ideas into this passage.

Shifters: Judgments excerpt

If Grahm Oakroot had not known the meaning behind the memorial, he might have though it to be a place of beauty and tranquility. On the low mound of manicured green, thousands of small white stones were arranged in concentric circles radiating from the top of the mound to the trees near the base of the mound. The stones were interrupted by numerous narrow paths of white stone that meandered among the circles. There was an artistry to it, a combination and unity of elven skill and natural beauty, that was moving even without any knowledge of what the memorial represented.

But for Grahm and any other elven kin who visited this place, there was little peace to be found, and the beauty was merely a disguise. They knew the truth behind this scene. Each of the thousands of stones represented an elven person who had been killed or injured during The Kinslaying.

He walked along a path, his eyes occasionally settling on a stone as he passed it by. There were no names on the stones, because the memorial wasn’t designed to focus the visitor’s attention on a particular person, but to remind them of the overwhelming number of people affected by that great, tragic event. The maimed were not lesser victims then the murdered, the aged no less a loss then the child not yet old enough to crawl. Here, all were remembered, and all were mourned.

And it was overwhelming. One of those stones represented Grahm’s older brother, a guard who had been cut in half. Another represented a cousin and her daughter, a mere child who had learned to walk only months before. And he knew of many others who were represented in this beautiful, dismal memorial. In a sense, the knowledge of those few individuals gave the entire number an almost unbearable weight. The memorial made it easy to think of what those few suffered, and multiply that suffering hundreds of times, or even thousands of times.

He reached the top, and stopped. Few people visited the memorial at any one time. It wasn’t a place his people came to picnic or relax. He saw three individuals and two couples walking along the paths, proceeding slowly and quietly. The only sound he heard was the singing of a bird somewhere among the trees.

One of the individuals, a woman, approached him. For numerous reasons, he breathed in sharply, recognizing her, glad that she had come as she said she would. Even for his people, she was a small woman. When she stood before him, the top of her head did not even reach the top of his shoulders.

“You’ve come.” he said in greeting.

Her downcast face finally looked up at him, and her eyes and face were like a bolt into his heart. How long had he loved The Hummingbird, Aevra Magaelor? For years, since he had been a young man, the child of a worker at her father’s vineyard, and she had still been a young lady, vibrant and curious and ever in motion. Her smiles had been art to him, her laughter music, her voice poetry. He had loved her quietly, almost hopelessly, until he had become a soldier in Dorondora’s army, and he had thought that someday he might have something to offer to his beloved and her family.

“I’ve just come from The Healing Arbor, where I visited Orlyn” Her voice was heavy, weary. The poetry was still there for him, but it was subdued, and spoke more of despair now rather than joy.

“How is she?”
Her sigh was loud and heavy. “She has hidden herself away in the darkness again, refusing to come out.” She shook her head, and sighed again. “I pity what has happened to her, she still struggles to deal with her deformity.”

Orlyn was another person represented in this field, and one that represented a particular cruelty that The Kinslayer had shown in her rampage. The creature had captured the elven woman, but instead of killing her, The Kinslayer had severed her legs at the knees. The fact that she had lived was itself notable, because of the pain and the amount of blood she had lost.

But it was a bittersweet survival.

“We are a people who value beauty.” Grahm said. “Perhaps in an unhealthy way.”

“She is not ugly.” There was some heat in Aevra’s voice.

“I apologize.” But the truth was, Orlyn was now not considered beautiful. It might have been an unfair judgment, but it was still the truth. Feminine beauty was greatly valued among the elves, and it was often determined by a grace in movement and a straight, confident bearing. A woman with physical handicaps and deformities was simply considered unsightly, barely tolerated in everyday life.

“I pity Indrin most.” Aevra said after a moment, the momentary anger replaced by sadness. “The child is in a bad place, unable to help her mother when she’s in one of her moods, and is herself in no small amount of pain. The poor girl tries to be brave when her mother is like this, but…but she shouldn’t need to be that way. Orlyn and…him, they should be there to give their daughter strength.”

 Grahm didn’t know how to answer her. He knew the “him” she was referring to, though his name could no longer be mentioned among their people. Kholar Oreidin, the exile, the traitor, now Thrice-Exiled, his name stricken from any mention in elven culture, his accomplishments annulled, his existence negated. If only it were so easy, but simply declaring it to be so doesn’t mean that he had never been Grahm’s friend, that Grahm had never introduced him to the Magaelors, that he had never married Orlyn, or that he had never fathered their daughter Indrin.

“Will you walk with me?” Grahm finally managed to say.

“I do not want to walk.” Aevra replied, and a bit of life came to her serious face. “I want to know what I can do to pay back the Kinslayer and the Thrice-Exiled.”

That’s what Grahm feared this meeting would be about. “Very well. The truth is, we still have no idea where Kelizza Tanufiel is. She has disappeared. And Kholar…”

“Do not speak that name!” Aevra’s voice was loud and sharp.

“My apologies. He is…there are many rumors about him, and it is difficult to tell truth from fiction. We have simply not been able to learn where he is as of yet.”

“How many years has it been?” Aevra said, her face now twisting as she tried to not weep. “We have…we have waited, and waited, for any kind of justice, or vengeance, or retribution. Every time I look at my sister, or remember poor Tassra, I think about the nightmare that attacked us, and the man who did Orlyn more harm then any aberrant creature ever could. She bears the shame of his exile, and she has nowhere to hide from our people, like he apparently does. No one has forgotten whose wife she was, and no one has forgotten who Indrin’s father was. They both live with that burden, and it is crushing them both. I want there to be a day when I can tell them that those who have hurt them so badly have paid for what they did.”

She managed to control herself, and for a moment her face took on a look of anger, perhaps even hatred, before resetting into a stony calm. “I have never been a fighter, and know little about using normal weapons. But these times have made demands on all of us, and I now have the means to do more than just look on and wait for our justice to be carried out.” As she was speaking, she started pulling up the sleeve to her right arm, and showed Grahm the mark that now surrounded her wrist.

It was not a normal tattoo. It was in the shape of several jagged black and yellow lines, like bolts of lightning, but it was not set in her skin like ink or dye. Even in the moment she showed it to him, he saw one bolt lash out, splitting into two forks, then retreat back up to her wrist.

“What have you done?” Grahm's concern for his friend turned into a sick fear. He knew what that mark represented.

“What I've had to do.”

“What did you...What did you give up, in order to...”

“To gain this power?” Her laugh was barely a whisper, and filled with scorn and pain. “You know that The Marked must sacrifice something in order to gain such powers, do you, now?”

“What was it?”

Aevra was silent for a long moment, then simply shrugged. “It is not important. I am not here to cry on your shoulder about what I have lost. I am here to make use of what I have gained. We Marked may be looked down upon, but we are also needed when you find and attack the shapeshifters. We know they are weak against lightning, and that is a power I and a few others possess. You need me, and I will fight with your people.”

In what was already the worst few minutes of his life, this last bit of news still shook Grahm. “I cannot allow that.”

“You have no choice, and I will not be treated like a child by you, Grahm Oakroot. I have this power, and I will use it. I will be there when we find The Kinslayer, and I will laugh as she is slain by our team. I will be there when you find The Thrice-Exiled, and when we have slain him, and I finally be able to tell my sister that her tormentor has found justice.”

a look at faith healing tricks

This show is very interesting. Brown trains a guy to pretty effectively act like a faith healer, showing him the tricks faith healers use to fake healings. For example, the leg lengthening trick is quite popular still, even though it has been shown to be a fraud many times.

There is some language in this show, and of course the whole thing is about tricking people with the fake faith healer's performance.

Loren Cunningham's mocking of the Bible

There is something else about the part I transcribed from this video that bugs me.

The Bible is clear to say that all of the earth and the fullness thereof is mine, saith the Lord. He says also that the silver and the gold is mine, saith the Lord. But how does it end up in the devil's pocket? There's gotta be a reason. It's because we as Christians are not ruling in the power of Christ as we are intended to do. Now I would like to make a very clear application on this in practical terms. The Lord said “Occupy until I come”. When an occupation army comes in, what do they do? They don't run up in the hills and hide out. They take over! They take over, if necessary, in the schools, so that no philosophy will be taught that is counter to their particular position. They also take over the banks and the wealth of the nation. They take over the, if necessary, even the churches, to make sure nothing is said that will not go against what they are trying to do. They take over, of course, the military, and all the other aspects of life that they need to control. They take over. Now Jesus said “Occupy until...” And there is certainly a view that says that we, the body of Christ, are really under the hand of Satan in this world and we're going to squeak out and maybe slip out in such a way that nobody will notice because we're so weak when it happens. But I don't believe that. I believe God is wanting a glorious church, a strong church, to go out and triumph. And I like to put it in a way that maybe even in the exaggeration you'll get the impact a little better, that if we work hard enough, sure, there will be an Antichrist, because the Bible says so, but he can hold his international convention in a phone booth. You see, instead of trying to picture the greatness of the Antichrist and what Satan is going to do, let's see the greatness of Jesus through His church according to what we do in faith ruling and reigning with Christ.

It's where he's talking about the Antichrist. "And I like to put it in a way that maybe even in the exaggeration you'll get the impact a little better, that if we work hard enough, sure, there will be an Antichrist, because the Bible says so, but he can hold his international convention in a phone booth.  You see, instead of trying to picture the greatness of the Antichrist and what Satan is going to do, let's see the greatness of Jesus through His church according to what we do in faith ruling and reigning with Christ."

He claims this is some kind of exaggeration to make a point, but it's simply mocking.

The truth is, God is the one who has told us things in the Bible about the end times, how difficult those times will be, how evil mankind will be in the last days, and the nature and power of this last ruler. To mock those things, as Cunningham mocks the idea of the Antichrist here, is at best unwise.

This kind of mocking is a common thing I've seen in the writings and speakings of dominionists. Johnny Enlow is extreme in his denunciations of anyone who has a "defeatist" view of the end times, saying they are part of a Leah church that is saved but only tolerated by God, while he and people like himself who want to take over the world are a part of a Rachel church that God is infatuated with. Outside of being extremely creepy, his use of Rachel and Leah is both problematic as a metaphor, and is also a metaphor without any biblical support.

"Defeatist" is the kind of word often used by these dominionists to label and dismiss others, and while Cunningham doesn't use that word in this video, he brings up the idea, "And there is certainly a view that says that we, the body of Christ, are really under the hand of Satan in this world and we're going to squeak out and maybe slip out in such a way that nobody will notice because we're so weak when it happens".

The Gospels record an interesting exchange between Peter and Jesus, for example here in Matthew 16

21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

I don't think even Cunningham would have the gall to call Jesus "defeatist", but it wouldn't be too difficult to see him in Peter's sandles.

Victory for Christians often doesn't look like what the world would call victory.

Romans 831 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The phrase "...we are more than conquerors..." cannot be rightly understood except in the context of "...in all these things...", and "these things" are tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword. And we are more than conquerors when those things happen to us because nothing can "separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord", so even us being more than conquerors is a gift that God gives to us.

Nowhere does the Bible tell the church to go out and conquer the world, to take over nations and societies and impose its will on the whole world. Few visions should be more terrifying to all right-thinking Christians than of a cabal of religious people disguising their ambitions for power behind a cheap facade of christianese ideas and rhetoric. In fact, look at Paul's description in the Romans 8 verses above, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

The day will come when Christ will return, and by all that I've seen in the Bible, it will be a day of conflict. The world didn't welcome Christ at his first coming, and they will greet his second with open rebellion that He will quash. But until then, we are as sheep among wolves, the world will regard us as sheep to be slaughtered, and even in this day many fellow believers are being slaughtered. Remember the words of Jesus recorded in John 15:18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you."

So, the Bible treats the Antichrist in a serious manner, and even Cunningham acknowledges that the Bible says that there will be an Antichrist, but then he mocks and dismisses what the Bible says about it, trying to substitute it for his own made-up dominionist ideas. Not good, YWAM, not good at all.

a bit of music (and dancing)

And, what the heck, let's throw in the original, too, 'cause it's loads of fun!