Lunar Skeletons

At his blog, Greg Laurie mentioned that he was on television today talking about the Jesus Movement.
Yes, my wife and I remember when Greg Laurie had hair.

And, yes indeed, Chuck Smith was one of the key figures, but there were many other "key figures" as well, who don't necessarily get television time nowadays. There was Lonnie Frisbee, who led Greg (and my wife) to Christ, who helped to kick start the growth of Smith's church in Costa Mesa, and who was the one who started Greg's church in Riverside, California; and there was Duane Pedersen who ran the Hollywood Free Paper, who coined the term "Jesus People"; and there was Arthur Blessitt who carried a cross around the world; and Linda Meissner who started the Jesus People Army in Seattle; and there were also Jack Sparks, Jim Palosaari, David Berg, Ted Wise, John Higgins, Kent Philpott, David Hoyt, Glenn Kaiser, Brant Baker, and many other people as well.

The very last thing anybody should think is that the Jesus Movement was somehow the exclusive franchise of Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel. It most certainly wasn't.

It was His revival, and it wasn't just happening in a couple of places in SoCal. It was happening in many different places across the country and overseas.

Labels: America, revivalology

The Black Swan
Psalm 104:4

It was a large black swan
That appeared in the sky
Flying overhead at the dawn.
Amazed at it, we could espy
That near to us it would land.
We checked our birding books
But we could not understand
For what is black but rooks?

O'er the placid water it glided;
Landing, it gently settled down.
To see it, ourselves we guided;
By the pond's edge we were bound.
It tucked its great black wings
And swam near us with easy strokes;
Most birds we know will gladly sing—
Now, what a shock. This one spoke!

"You silly men, why stare at me?
For not all swans are white.
Gaze at the stars and what you see
Should give you more insight.
Do you think that the Heavens above
Are awed and bow to your decrees?
Compare the stars, for their Maker loves
And enjoys to create diversity.
Your smallish limits have I broken,
And your foolish ideas I have flung,
But each star above me does betoken
How each will differ from each one:
One star is bright, and another dim,
And their colors' glories vary,
But they all do testify to Him—
Look! Their light His voice does carry.
And though mere bird I am, I testify
To the same things here, down below,
For by my sight I have much defied
Everything your silly books do show."

And with saying that, the black swan
Stretch his wings to take his flight,
And more fleet than a mourning dove,
Never to come back, he left our sight.

Labels: poetry

I am currently reading Brian "Head" Welch's autobiography entitled "Save Me From Myself". I might review it later, but one thing for sure, it's less disturbing to read than "The Faithful Departed" by Philip F. Lawler.

Brian Welch's website is here.

Labels: meringue

Melinda At Starbucks
§ 2.6.6

Coming back with my beverage and scone, I sat down. And while Melinda and I were talking, a man, grim-grinning and wearing a long black trench coat, hurried through the entrance. As he did, he passed through the corner of my vision. Then I heard some of the customers waiting in line making a noise of protest, and I glanced over to see what was happening. Melinda herself turned around to look.

The man had pushed people out of the way and was now standing in front of the counter. He was pointing what looked like an automatic pistol straight into the face of the employee, who had the whispy beard, dreadlocks, and was wearing a white bandana.

"Give me the money, NOW!" the gunman shouted. The young employee had his hands up; his face was white with terror, almost whiter than his bandana.

"Yes. Yes. Please don't hurt me." He pleaded, agitated, as he began to fumble through the till trying to fetch the few dollars it contained to give what the robber wanted. The other employee behind the counter also had her hands up and had backed away. The atmosphere in the room felt like a rainstorm of knives, and the customers at the tables in the cafe were too frightened to move or say anything.

The MOONBAT‡ comrades were nonplussed by this turn of events at first. But as the robber was stuffing the bills into his pockets, it was at that point that one of the MOONBATs starting taunting the poor employee with the dreadlocks. "Give him more cash, bourgeois trash! Give him more cash, bourgeois trash!" And several others began to join in.

I was astonished at the puerility of such behavior, especially in the middle of an armed robbery. The only reason for it that I could see was their desire for a business venture to get robbed, perhaps from some silly notion that it somehow constituted a form of "class struggle."

But what happened next was pure horror. There was no way to prepare for it. The robber, startled by the sudden taunting, turned around, and as he did, his gun went off. Next, a young MOONBAT at the table slumped backwards, falling over his chair with a loud crash. For a split second, nothing happened as the people in the cafe choked before they could scream. Without saying or doing anything more, the robber ran out the door. Melinda and I sat there at our table watching all this unfold before our eyes, but we were too stunned to move or to speak.

"Did you see that," Melinda finally gasped. "Yes," I said as I tried to think and to get a grip on myself, "we need to get an ambulance and quick."

Melinda got up and ran to the MOONBAT lying on the floor. Blood was spurting from out of his chest on one side. And I got up and went to the counter. "Please, call 9-1-1. Someone…" I said to the young lady who was standing there. Apparently she still had her wits about herself and ran to the main check out registers on the other side of the store. "I'll get the phone…" She said.

Melinda was now kneeling and bending over the poor fellow on the floor. It looked to me like she was trying to staunch the bleeding from his chest. She had grabbed a large wad of napkins from the nearby condiment counter and had wadded them up and was pressing them on the fellow's chest.

Some of the stunned customers also started to walk around the cafe in a daze. I hoped none would be so foolish as to attempt to follow the robber. And the young guy in the dreadlocks stood there behind the counter for several minutes, too shocked and horrified to move. He just stared at the poor man bleeding on the floor.

"Please, dear God, don't let him die…" I could hear Melinda plead behind me, as I walked to the back of the counter to see if there was anything that could be used to help with the bleeding. "Do you have any towels?" I asked the young man with the dreadlocks. He could only stand there staring, paralyzed, and unable to speak.

Finding nothing handy, I turned around, and Melinda now was starting to give the man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, while holding the already bloody wad of napkin against his chest.

The other MOONBATs were standing around, moaning and distraught. One of them, perhaps the fellow's girl-friend, looked completely besides herself, frozen, pale and white with shock, and ready to faint as she held her hand over her mouth.

One of the store clerks came back and said they had gotten a hold of the police. But it seemed like it took forever and ever before they and an ambulance arrived. The police rushed in first and began clearing everybody out of the cafe and the rest of the store. The firemen-paramedics were only a few seconds behind them. And one of the policemen moved Melinda out of the way and took over keeping the poor MOONBAT alive. The young man, lying on the floor bleeding, was barely in his twenties, and he looked bluish pale and in shock, not speaking but was still alive, from all I could tell.

Soon the policemen had hustled everybody out of the premises. Melinda sat down next to me, her maxi-dress everywhere stained with blood, as we were interviewed along with the others. And I thought about the gunman: He looked like that grim man, but only older, whom I had seen in the crowd who got on the ferry that awful day, long ago, when Laura Niessmer died. I also remembered that the man on the ferry wore the same sort of long, dark trench coat. But that had been many years past, and therefore I couldn't be sure who he was.

We sat outside beneath the black umbrellas set up over some outdoor tables Borders had in front of the cafe. Several Seattle police cars were now parked in front, with their blue and red lights beaming across the walls, back and forth in an incessant rythmn. Of course they wanted to take information from each of us who had been in the cafe. The paramedics, who all the time talked with otherworldly calmness as they did their work, by now had bundled up the victim and had moved him on a gurney out to the ambulance, which after a few seconds had sped away with sirens blaring.

It wasn't until much later that I found out that the poor man had managed to survive the gunshot. The bullet had missed his heart and narrowly missed his spine.

‡ Visionary in its quest to ameilorate world poverty and hunger, eager to ensure that the transcendent mysterion of ethical values will penetrate future joint global ventures, and having begun in rainy Seattle, the Multicultural Organization Of National Basic Attitude Transformation strives restlessly at the vanguard of human history.

Labels: Starbucks

The Sneeze

It was a sneeze so loud
That awoken the dead
And the drowsy revenants
In their coffins
Lifted their heads
With baffled wonderment
At the sound.

A sneeze, truely it was
Of such astounding volume
That the lowriders grew envious
Because their boomboxes
Could not equal it
In renown.

Ah ah choo oooooooooooo
The Universe collapsed
As the air rushed back
To its place.

Not since Adam
In his garden and grace
With pollen and runny nose
Has there ever been
A sneeze heard
So great.

For as such as it was,
All Heaven confessed
It deserved a double portion
Of blessing, and thus—
It is true—
I heard from above
The muted words
"God bless you."

Labels: poetry

Todd Bentley has gotten the attention of the news media. None other than sleaze-meister Geraldo Rivera has jumped in on the Lakeland story; MSNBC also did an interview, and a Nightline segment is planned. But if I were Bentley's advisor, I would tell him to be extremely cautious in dealing with the news media. They are not his friends.

Most news media people don't have any faith, and they're not in the least bit interested in repentance and submitting themselves to XP. So even if they were to stumble into the real thing, they wouldn't necessarily recognize what it is even if it crawled up their noses and out their ears. Probably Geraldo's entire concept of revival is limited to whatever fits into the standard Elmer Gantry paradigm. And I surmise that he is looking for another vault to pry open, hoping to find something nasty or sensational.

Anyhow, the Charlotte Observer published an interesting transcript of their telephone interview with Bentley. The occasion of the interview was his holding a meeting in Concord, North Carolina, back around June 18th.

On the other hand, I would say the general MSM reaction is typified more by this article in the Washington Times by Julia Duin.

And the Internet noise regarding Bentley has reached, over the last couple of weeks, a level of shrillness that is now deafening: For googling on "Todd Bentley" now gives 566,000 hits, and of these a whopping 9,900 come up by qualifying the search using the word "heretic." By way of comparison, using "Greg Laurie" (who's been around much longer) only rings up 166,000 hits, and of these only a measly 937 come up using "heretic." Therefore, allowing for the proportional difference in net presence, this works out to mean that Todd Bentley is 3.10 times more heretical than Greg Laurie. Although this ratio tends to bounce up and down, it seems to stay in Bentley's favor.

Well, actually what it proves is that there are now a lot of people on the web yelling their heads off, shouting one thing or shouting another, but accomplishing nothing.

Labels: blogology, revivalology

Vote for Nixon

Vote Nixon the Undead, what more need be said?
If the gov is a brick, then you must vote Tricky Dick.
Though a vampyre he might be, yet the answers he sees,
For if spending be lax, he will cut all our tax;
And if Congress has qualms, he will use all his charms,
And call out instead, "Just off with their heads!"
Should the Courts give him trouble, he'll work on the double
To make sure they're impaled, on spikes on a rail.
So if you want what is best, what choice is there left?
To really get things done, Nixon's the One!

Labels: poetry

Melinda At Starbucks
§ 2.6.5

Standing in line at the counter, I looked to see if they had any of my favorite scones in the display case. Sure enough, they did; one cranberry-orange scone was left.

As I waited to order, I noticed Vincent got up from the table where he was sitting with his comrades, many of whom I recognized as being from the Semi-renegade Trotskyite Wing¹ of the MOONBAT² party. He got in line behind me as if he were going to order something for himself.

"I'd be careful I were you," I heard him say behind me. I turned around to look at him.

"Excuse me, did you say something?" I asked.

"Yes. I said 'I'd be careful if I were you.'" He responded with icy coolness.

"Oh, really? Careful about what? Could you explain?" I said, trying to be polite.

"Well, it's just that things happen when Melinda is around," he said.

"Oh. What things?"

"You have a scar on your neck. Where'd you get that?" He said in a low voice.

I put my hand on my neck. "Oh. I got this at Starbucks a while back," I said while not trying to mention the explosion. I also knew he was referencing Finigan and how he blew himself up during the time he was living with Melinda.

"Yeah. I see. You got hurt," he responded.

This was making me nervous, for his meaning had sinister undertones and not that he was solicitous regarding my health. So I decided to parry.

"You're a Trotskyite, Vincent, right?" I cheerfully asked.

"Er. Yes. Comrade Trotsky was an astute social critic of the bourgeois establishment and understood the need for permanent world-wide revolution," Vincent responded with complete sincerity

"Well if that is so, how is it going to work out for you once Moamar Ben Fayd finds out that dear Trotsky was Jewish?" I said, looking Vincent in the eyes directly.

"You're lying," Vincent shot back, sounding a little unnerved.

"Well, if you don't believe me, go check out Google, the Sublime Oracle of All Truth and Wisdom. Or check out the Wikipedia…hey, doesn't the MOONBAT party spend a lot of time editing Wikipedia anyway?" I said, with a smile.

It was now my turn at the counter, and so I turned around, ignoring Vincent who was now fuming. I ordered myself a delectable cranberry-orange scone, along with a large, skinny, 3-pump mocha, with a dash of hazelnut syrup to give it an extra bit of deliciousness. Even though it was Seattle's Best Coffee and not Starbucks, I figured I could live with that.

I was concerned about Vincent, but I was not about to show it.

¹ While they are not officially recognized by the MOONBAT party by-laws, the Trotskyite fellow travelers have proven themselves useful in cases where plausible deniability is needed.

² Believing that it is vitally important to garner grassroots community support, the Multicultural Organization Of National Basic Attitude Transformation has provided many valuable services free-of-charge for the masses of Seattle.

Labels: Starbucks

Melinda at Starbucks
§ 2.6.4

"You were warned? What do mean? By whom?" I said with puzzlement.

Melinda responded, "I'll tell you in just a minute. But first, I need a mocha."

The MOONBAT† comrades were still talking among themselves at their tables, drawing plenty of attention from the other customers in the Border's cafe. Ignoring them, Melinda got up went to the counter and ordered a triple-shot, skinny, half-pump mocha with no whip, along with a chonga bagel. This was new. I didn't know she liked bagels, or that she ever drank Seattle's Best Coffee. It was a bit of a shock.

The comrades paid her no attention, deliberately so, although I did see Vincent give her a cold look. She came back with her mocha and chonga bagel, and as she unpeeled the small container of low-fat cream cheese to spread on the bagel, she started talking:

"Well, to answer your question, it was at the first day of the reunion for the St. Dominic alumnae. The reunion was being held at the Coeur d'Alene Resort."

"Yes, I've been there at the Resort on occasions, many years ago," I said, watching as she munched on her bagel while sipping her mocha. "It's nice but kind of spendy."

"Sister O'Leary—she was my Latin teacher at St. Dominic's—came up to me just before we were sitting down for the luncheon, and gave me a big hug. I was a bit surprised at this, because in the past she was a pretty stern teacher."

"She warned you?" I said.

"No…er…whot maxactly," responded Melinda, with her mouth full of chonga bagel.

At this moment, I realized what a truely odd moment it was. Here was Melinda, chomping away on a chonga bagel, dressed in a lavender colored 1970-ish Granny maxi-dress, like something out of an old Lawrence Welk rerun. I never thought I would see such a sight.

Swallowing and taking another slurp of her mocha, she continued by saying "Sister O'Leary is retired from teaching, and she is now living as a semi-recluse in the St. Teresa of Avila Convent of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Athol, Idaho.

"Discalced? I guess that means they go without shoes. Right?" I asked.

"Huh? Oh, er, not exactly. Well, sister O'Leary told me that she was very glad to see me. She said she was expecting that I would come. 'You were my best Latin student', she said. 'And I had a strange dream about you a week ago. I was sure you would come,' she told me."

"Oh, she did?" I said, as I thought back on the odd dream that I had about Melinda, back when I fell asleep in a particularly boring part of the recent MOONBAT Party conference.

"She said," Melinda continued, "that she dreamt that she was talking to St. Lucy. Then I come walking up. Sister O'Leary said that my eyes were missing, and that instead all I had were empty eye sockets."

"Ouch. That's kind of grisly." I exclaimed.

"Next, St. Lucy goes and plucks out her own eyeballs, places them in my hand. 'Here, use these, you'll see better', she said, or that's what sister O'Leary said she said. So, according to her dream, I took the eyeballs and stuck them in my head and said 'oh, yes, that's so much better.' Next, sister O'Leary tells me that St. Lucy was saying 'Now, keep your eyes peeled and on the lookout, for you'll see things differently now.'" Melinda took another sip of her mocha.

"Wow. That was strange dream," I said, "and were you still wearing the biker outfit I last saw you in when you went to Coeur d'Alene?"

"Oh, No. I had changed into something nicer, gothic in fact: black dress and stockings, with purple lipstick and dark blue eye shadow," Melinda responded just before taking another bite of her chonga bagel.

"Didn't sister O'Leary find that a bit unsettling?" I wondered out loud. Also, watching Melinda eating the bagel was starting to make me hungry for a cranberry-orange scone.

After swallowing a mouthful of chonga bagel, and taking another sip of her mocha, Melinda continued, "No. She's accustomed to such things. Usually when parents send their daughters to St. Dominic's, they're already on the wild and crazy side; but the sisters have plenty of talent for straightening things out. So they're used to the out-of-the-ordinary."

"But you said you were warned. What does this have to do with sister O'Leary's dream?" I asked.

"Oh. Yes, as I was going to say: Vincent's changed. I can tell. Before, he was just a plain old, run-of-the-mill, conceited, lecherous popinjay, always trying to get into my pants. But I've never before ever heard him being so downright hateful. That's not the Vincent I used to know. He's changed," She said as she leant over the table to speak in a more subdued tone of voice. She didn't want Vincent to hear his name being mentioned.

"Well, I don't know Vincent all that well," I said. "But I must say I really didn't expect him to be on the side of annihilating all the Jews living in the state of Israel. Has he ever expressed opinions like that before? …oh, could you excuse me a moment? I'd like to go over and order a scone. I'm getting kind of hungry." I got up to go to the counter.

† It is hard to underestimate the importance of the Multicultural Organization Of National Basic Attitude Transformation as a progressive and avant-garde political movement in the Pacific Northwest. Its influence is everywhere and spreading. Several prominent actors and movie producers have joined its ranks in recent times.

Labels: Starbucks

Melinda at Starbucks
§ 2.6.3

I was a little stunned at Vincent's answer. "Isn't that an obliquely polemological stance?" I responded.

"Not at all, it's a very progressive stance…" Vincent replied with an insouciant cockiness, though he was a little confused on the meaning of the word 'polemological'. "After all, the Israelis are oppressors and the implementors of Western Imperialism. They control everything, and their bogus Zionist entity merits annihilation. They have a chance to get out of Palestine; they should take it while they can."

It was apparent that Vincent was already bored by the conversation with me, for he turned his eyes to Melinda and asked, "why didn't I see you at the MOONBAT conference?"

Melinda didn't respond for a second. "Well…Vincent, I was at my high school reunion in Idaho."

"You should have been there. We had a big memorial for Finigan. Remember him? The Hero?" Vincent rejoined.

Melinda was disturbed by the mention of Finigan, and curtly answered with "Yes, Vincent, of course I remember him."

"Yeah, he was a good man, dedicated to the Revolution. I would have thought that some of that dedication would have rubbed off on you for all that time you were living with him. It's too bad it didn't." Vincent was now talking with cold steel in his voice, or more like steel with a thin covering of velvet. It almost sounded like a veiled threat to me.

"Finigan was always kind to me…" Melinda said.

"Too bad he's dead, isn't it?" Vincent answered, "Well, my friends are probably wondering why I'm talking to a slacker, so I'd better get back." And with that, he turned around and went back to the table, where the MOONBAT comrades were talking loudly about Canada.

"Yowza." I said under my breath.

"He's changed," Melinda answered, "but I was warned."

Labels: Starbucks

Fertilizer Runoff

Before I die
I wonder if I
Should go and see
the Salton Sea.

Labels: poetry

Some Enlightened Common Sense Discernment Regarding Revivals

A. Always begin with healthy skepticism

Skepticism is a highly prized value, a viewpoint polished to a high degree of refinement by those marvelously smart Enlightenment philosophers. And they were a very skeptical. And as we well know, one of the beatitudes says something along the lines of "blessed are those with healthy skepticism for they shall never be deceived." Ignore those places where there is this funny emphasis on "being like children." If Christ marveled at and commended faith, it only goes to prove that He didn't have the proper Enlightenment skepticism. But what can you expect? It was only the 1st Century, and people were primitive back then.

B. God has a way of proving Himself true in time, but the Enemy never does.

Maybe back in 1906 people were forced to wait it out for ten or twenty years to see the final results. But today we've got the Internet and time has compressed itself, which means that revival discernment has speeded up to levels hitherto not available in the past. So if the clock runs out in the next ten or twenty minutes, consider it as all settled. But we can all be thankful for this, because, after all, in this hectic day and age where everything is 365/24, everybody wants answers and they want them now! now! now! Thanks to the Internet we can have them in mere nanoseconds.

C. Consider the past fruits of anyone or any group working the miraculous in the name of Christ.

And of course only godly people always get everything absolutely right the first time around. There is no such thing as growth in the understanding and knowledge of God, or learning from your past mistakes. You have to hit the ground running and any stumbling is not allowed. Therefore, to bring about revival, God doesn't use any ministries that aren't the flawless pink of immaculate perfection from the get-go.

D. Real miraculous works from God are often imitated by the Enemy.

The Devil has tremendous power as we all know. There is not a miracle he can't perform, and he is Johnny-On-The-Spot about doing them too. On the other hand, miracles from God are a very iffy proposition. And you can never be all that sure that He will show up, if ever, and miracles with Him are few and far between. And talk about vague! His miracles are so vague and half-baked, that you can never be completely sure that you're even seeing one. So when it comes to the miraculous, all bets are on the Devil. So beware.

E. Any appeal to spiritual beings apart from the members of the Trinity is dangerous.

Remember all those holy angels you've read about in the Bible, who seem to show up at the strangest times with important messages from God. Well, we are sorry to report but because of the recent financial crisis in Heaven, all those angels have been laid off from their jobs. Consequently, being unemployed, they are out looking for new work. So be careful on whom you entertain. They're a dangerous lot. It is rumored that a couple of them even destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and that another one even staged a prison break.

F. The whole counsel of Scripture matters, not just a verse here and there.

Especially don't pay overmuch attention to those funny Bible verses about knocking, asking, seeking, and finding. And the stuff about moving mountains isn't very good either and should be taken with a grain of salt. And goodness gracious, don't ever put them together to arrive at something other than sensible conclusions. Remember, keep everything in context with a good dose of modern thinking, otherwise you might go overboard and actually believe some of them. You do have your respectability to uphold.

G. God’s revivals and miracles are not chintzy.

The definition of chintzy depends a lot on who is doing the defining. So be careful: anything that doesn't conform to the Sanhedrin's definition of "kosher" is ipso facto "chintzy". For example, eating food with unwashed hands is definitely chintzy. One preacher we know about was very chintzy in this regard. Disgusting!

H. Novelty is not of God.

Therefore, please ignore those parts of the Bible where "creating new things," or "new wine," or "new wine skins" and so forth are mentioned. You can't possibly take them too seriously, and they can only be understood by highly trained experts. Remember, before all else, that there is nothing new under the Son…er, Sun. This is a universal principle of Science.

I. If a movement, revival, or series of miracles “feels off,†the Holy Spirit may be trying to warn us.

By all means pay very close attention to your feelings. They are absolutely important in every respect. Anything remotely unusual is suspect (tinglies are especially bad). God is entirely without imagination, has no sense of humor, and never does anything even slightly out of the ordinary. And He never tries to do anything that you can't anticipate ahead of time. If you feel in the least bit surprised, turn tail and run because it's a sure-fire sign of a phony revival.

J. We Christians are to seek Jesus, not signs and wonders.

As we all know, there was this certain well-known ministry that was too much into the signs and wonders trip. The preacher involved was doing them all over the place and at the wrong times (ignoring the Sabbath)—things like healing the sick, walking on water, commanding the wind and waves, giving sight to the blind, casting out demons, cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, and even going so far as giving authority to others to do the same sort of excessive stuff. Obviously, he had a very unbalanced ministry, which made him very suspect. Therefore, it is only sensible to avoid this sort of crazy extremism. By the way, the preacher involved, the chintzy one mentioned before, came to a very sorry and gruesome end. But it just goes to show you.

K. Real revival breaks out only among the humble.

Stay away from all those maladjusted, body-pierced-and-tatooed, red neck, chintzy, uneducated, broken-hearted, depressed, alcoholic, drug-addicted, half-crazed, ruined nobodies who turn up at these phony revivals getting all excited and emotional. They can't possibly be humble.

L. Christ Himself warned that genuine faith would become a rarity in the Last Days.

This is absolutely true. Scientific knowledge and high-speed Internet communications in our modern, advanced era have rendered obsolete the sort of "taking things on faith" that was common in earlier, more primitive times. Accordingly, upon report of any revivial taking place anywhere, everybody's sensible first reaction ought to be to regard it as entirely bogus. Nobody wants to be considered a fool by ever hoping otherwise. Skepticism is a sign of spiritual advancement. Cherish and nurture it.

M. Most of all, before all else, consult the experts.

Revivals are very dangerous things. Therefore, ordinary folks are well advised to never get near one without first consulting highly-trained experts with specialized credentials in the field of revivalology. Many of these experts do make their services available on the Internet free of charge. Finally, any true revival from God will conform to the rigorous standards and protocols as published by the Apistia Research Society of Experts†, an important international association of university-educated academicians who do nothing all day but study revivals. And for certain they know what they're talking about and you can completely trust them. Therefore, before all else, protect yourself and never do anything without expert assistance.

† Never accept anything that does not have on display the Official A.R.S.E. Certification of Revival Adherence to Protocols, a dependable seal of assurance.

Labels: parody, revivalology

L'Affaire Bentley

My friend Surfer51 had been blogging recently on Canadian preacher Todd Bentley and what's going on in Lakeland, Florida.

I really don't know anything about Todd Bentley, and so I can't comment about him. But what I do know is that depending on the Internet is not the best way to understand what's going on when it comes to revivals or miracle services. And worst of all would be to depend on what the mainstream news media reports about this kind of thing. Through the years it has always been the case that the new media is the least capable of understanding revivals¹. So I must say that a person actually has to be there to truely find out what's going on. There's no escaping that. This is why talking about the services at Shekinah Fellowship can't convey very well what it was about, and therefore I seldom discuss Shekinah here on Lunar Skeletons. One had to have been there—that's all I can say². Now if the Internet had existed back then, in the early 1970s, I am sure that there would have been a hundred-thousand different opinions about Shekinah from ten-thousand different bloggers.

Now I don't think Todd Bentley will ever find his way up here, to where I am, in this out-of-the-way place I call "Land-In-Between." If there was ever a place in the United States that I would call a total spiritual desolation, a howling desert and a barren wilderness, it is here. And I am stuck in the middle of it. Now while news about Lakeland is interesting, still, I am tired of merely hearing about what's happening in some far away state or in some other country. My desire is that something would happen here.

And the other thing I know for sure is this: if ever the power of God shows up on the scene to touch people's lives in a big way, by healings or miracles or the casting out of demons, you can bet your sweet bippy it's not going to be "ordinary," and it might even look a little strange; and furthermore, there will be plenty of people in the institutional churches (or the Blogosphere) who will immediately denounce it all as evil. And the "discernment police" on the Internet will work overtime into the late hours of the night trying to destroy it. Such is the way that some people will react.

¹ A good example of this could be found by examining the contemporary newspaper coverage of the Azusa Street revival. And it would be a very interesting study of its own to examine the complex relationship between news media and Aimee Semple McPherson. However, the news media is only interested in spiritual revivals insofar as they can be mined as a source of sensationalism, or if journalists think they can detect in them any sort of political implications. In the end, the Numero Uno Priority of the MSM has been and always will be to sell advertising.

² I don't necessarily agree with his take on Bentley, but nonetheless I do want to give credit to Surfer51 for doing the difficult work of preserving the historical record about Shekinah Fellowship, which otherwise would have been airbrushed away. And believe me, there are plenty of people who would like very much to blot out the story altogether, for they have never been able to reconcile themselves to the fact that God often uses flawed and imperfect people to accomplish marvelous things.

Labels: America, revivalology

IDJIT

Well, on further thought, it occured to me that some bloggers on the Internet have such acute and powerful discernment that it's nothing less than astonishing. For instance, they could be all the way up in the Yukon, and yet somehow, miracle of miracles, they can sniff out what's going on spiritually in people's hearts as far away as Florida—and that without ever once leaving their keyboards and computer screens and actually going to Florida.

This is so remarkable that it takes my breath away, the more I think about it. Therefore I have coined a specific term describing this peculiar and extraordinary ability that the Internet seems to confer on certain people. I call the effect Internet & Discernment Jointly Interoperating Together, or IDJIT¹ for short.

In this specific case, Todd Bentley is neither here nor there—which is why I have the comment box turned off, since I don't want the Discernment Police who happen to google on "Todd Bentley" to come here and lard up things with tiresome ranting because I am simply not interested in it. Now if Bentley were coming to Land-In-Between, then maybe I might go and investigate for myself. Unfortunately, I don't have the inclination, nor the funds, nor the vacation time, to go all the way to Florida to spend several weeks watching what's going on. Therefore, I choose to withhold judgement about him, because I am not endowed with super-discernment antennae that can detect vibrations all the way across the country. I just have to be there myself in a very meatspace kind of way in order to decide. However, the case of Bentley does point up how IDJIT is such an remarkable phenomenon.

Indeed, the IDJIT phenomenon is so astonishing that even conversing with angels or having gold dust turn up in your Bible cannot compare with it. Thanks to the Internet and IDJIT, some people can now exercise an ability almost akin to ominiscience. For what amazes me the most is how some IDJIT practitioners can determine infallibly whether something is "from God" from a distance by merely reading other bloggers or going by whatever second-hand hearsay gets published on the Web. Without ever leaving their computers, they can probe to the inmost depths of things, detecting in advance what fruit will result; they can pronounce from great distances on the level of repentance and humility of the people involved; and they can with upmost acuity distinguish between false and true miracles; and they have utterly perspicacious insight on what God will and will not do in any given situation, especially when He is dealing with very messy humankind. There is nothing beyond their ken it seems.

On the other hand, it occurs to me that somehow all of this powerful IDJIT has led to some rather ludicrous results. A good example of this would be the treatment often done on evangelist Greg Laurie; and I mention Greg because he is the best example that I know something about, although, unlike Bentley, there is nothing in the least sensational about him. Yet googling on Greg's name will yield all sorts of IDP² dossiers alleging what a horrific, blood-curdling heretic Greg is. But this is not a surprise since the IDJIT smellfungus can detect the tiniest nosegay of heresy from twenty-thousand leagues away. And indeed these nitpickers are so smart they know how to use the old "cut and paste" procedures to assemble thoroughly incriminating montages on Greg. A little piece cut from here, a little piece from there, and lo and behold, you have enough to damn just about anybody. But when I look at their vaunted compilations, I can only laugh my head off³, because after having been there at Greg's church for about 15 years listening to him preach, I at least know him well enough to appreciate what complete rubbish these dossiers actually are. This comes from my having seen the big picture, from the actual experience of being there.

There are some things that blogging and the Internet just doesn't cut. To truely know you have to go. That's the way I see it.

Dire Dan once complained about the prevalent lack of discernment in the Church. Well, that may be. But as I was telling him not long ago, for some reason there is no lack of it on the Internet, where thanks to IDJIT, there's now so much discernment that it's coming out our ears and noses.

¹ The obsolete term for this, which occurs in some of the older technical literature, is IDAE or "Internet Discernment Amplification Effect."

² Internet Discernment Police.

³ The act of lolliating at something patently ridiculous.

Labels: blogology, revivalology

Some Lakeland Addenda

§1 Someone named Steve Hickey, who sounds like he was actually there in Lakeland, has a different view on the matter. Also, I notice that somebody has put in a Wikipedia entry for Todd Bentley. However, I do not regard the Wikipedia as being a reliable source of accurate information, especially when it comes to biographic entries for anybody who might be controversial, and so I would take anything there with a grain of salt…er, more like a truckload of salt. Sometimes the Wikipedia is hardly better than an agitprop tool, or a cheap way to conduct a smear campaign; and sometimes it takes the threat of a libel lawsuit to get the entries cleaned up (assuming someone can afford the lawyers). Nonetheless, that Bentley might have had a checkered past in his younger days may explain why some in the news media and the blogocracy have gotten interested in Lakeland.

§2 By every measure, Todd Bentley is turning into a sizable web event. As of this date, googling on his name gives 419,000 hits, which is way past the 155,000 hits that googling on "Greg Laurie" will return. And Greg has been around much, much longer. Furthermore, everybody has their opinion. For example, if I google search using the phrase "Todd Bentley heretic," that will yield 5,670 hits. On the other hand, if I were to google using "Greg Laurie heretic," that gives only 962 hits. Well, that proves everything, doesn't it? That Todd Bentley is worse than Greg Laurie.

But what do really I think? Well, I think what it proves is the ultimate absurdity of the Internet: all this high-speed networking, but so little trustworthy knowledge—and so little of anything of any real substance being accomplished. The bandwidth is clogged, and the noise-to-signal ratio is approaching infinity. What human being has the time to sort out all this confusion?

Thanks to the Internet, garrulousness has now been elevated to a level that threatens to destroy civilization—to paraphrase Neil Postman, we are blogging ourselves to death.

And furthermore, I really don't think I have any obligation to form, pronto quick, any opinions about Todd Bentley per se. It's his effect on the web that I have been noticing, and things are following well-worn patterns, accompanied by the usual overload of vituperation. So even if Bentley were a "man of God", and Lakeland, Florida, were the scene of a tremendous spiritual revival, you will never know it going by the Internet.

§3 As I said, I have no opinion one way or the other about L'Affaire Bentley. But let us suppose that all the naysayers are absolutely correct in their assertions that Bentley is phony baloney, and that the foofaraw in Lakeland, Florida, is bogus and will burn itself out in a short time—that it was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Well, what will it prove? Well, in my mind it will prove nothing surprising—it would mean business as usual continues in America, and nothing has turned around. For I am already convinced that this country¹ is rotting from the inside out and cannot last; and I am probably going to end up as just another statistic in the process of things falling to pieces. So if in the end Lakeland gets chalked up on the "comes-to-nothing" side of the ledger, along with so much else, well, then it's one more piece of evidence supporting my conviction. And who knows? Perhaps the "lampstand is getting removed" from here, and the light is in the processing of getting moved elsewhere. China maybe? Yet why should this be so shocking to anyone? We have been warned already about this possibility, and it's happened before elsewhere². For example, just consider Western Europe. The light there has already gone out, and it's all over but the shouting and the dreary end game of mere arithmetic and demographics. And since this country has been sowing to the wind for such a long time now, why should anybody be surprised when the whirlwind finally gets reaped?

§4 On the other hand, there is the other possibility. Suppose that Lakeland is the real thing. Can it last? The answer is maybe not; I wouldn't bet on it. In history there has seldom been a revival that wasn't stubbornly opposed by churches. Revivals can be refused, or even strangled in the cradle, especially if they don't come on the terms we expected. And now with the Internet, opposition can be raised to a level of shrillness that would have been unobtainable in the past, and it can be much more widely disseminated than was ever possible before. And I have personally seen a small revival destroyed, but this was back before the Internet and the blogosphere existed. Today things have been raised to mega-decibel levels—the Internet serving almost as the Demon of Cacophony—which would make it even more miraculous that any revival could survive such a deafening drumbeat of opposition. So if things were to fizzle out in Lakeland, that doesn't necessarily disprove it.

§5 Answering his critics, Todd Bentley speaks for himself. But I don't think this will change very many minds. Posting anything on the Internet seldom changes the minds of one's opponents.

¹ And the Church too. For example, try reading Schaeffer's "The Great Evangelical Disaster." Everything said therein is more so nowadays and in spades.

² Consult Ps. 9:15-16. God has a funny way of painting nations into corners.

Labels: blogology, revivalology

Concluding Footnotes

"Some Enlightened Common Sense Discernment Regarding Revivals" is a satire. I say this just in case some people can't figure that out.

And having written it, I am sure it will make plenty of bloggers pretty angry at me. Satires tend to do that. That's the risk I run. And there was plenty of satire elsewhere in what I wrote above.

However, for the sake that credit gets acknowledged, I will clarify that it is a parody based on this article by Dan Edelen.

Now on a different note, lately I have been feeling disgusted with the whole blogific scene, too much of which is big waste of time and where there is plenty of ego-stroking, self-promotion, and vanity. And there are days when I think the Internet might be near to becoming the worst thing to happen to Xnty since 313 A.D. And I am sure that had the Internet existed in their day, there would have been plenty of bloggers merrily shredding vulnerable and fallible people like a Lonnie Frisbee or a Brant Baker, who though stumbling badly yet answered the call of God on their lives. In a way, it's good Brant and Lonnie left the scene the time they did before the whole Internet monstrosity came into existence, because it would have murdered them in an instant.

In fact, had the Internet existed back in their times, without any doubt I am convinced that it would have annihilated William J. Seymour, Maria Woodworth-Etter, Evan Roberts, Smith Wigglesworth, John G. Lake, Robert Semple, Aimee Semple McPherson, Kathyrin Kuhlman, and a host of other people too many to list here.

Now publishing satire runs the risk of offending some people who expect everyone to kowtow to their opinions and who think nothing of vilifying someone like Todd Bentley at the drop of a hat. But it's what I had to say, and if people misunderstand it or don't like it, that's the way it goes. Yes, Todd Bentley might be weird, but there are days for me when the the Internet is even more irksome.

Labels: blogology, parody, revivalology