Do my Sideshow Barkers no Harm

I would say the drama continues, but it’s only drama if it makes you suffer, so I guess I can’t say that.

You will recall how I lost my old Facebook account, and the pastor of my old church, New Dawn Ministries, went on Facebook and said God cancels the accounts of people who go after men of God.

I thought I was done with the whole circus for a while, but this weekend I had lunch with friends who go to the church, and they told me that another pastor gave a sermon in which he told people they shouldn’t “like” things “haters” put up on Facebook.

You have to realize, this church meets in a room twice the size of a two-car garage. If you think they’re talking about you, they probably are. There aren’t a lot of targets to choose from.

My friends thought the sermon was ridiculous, and of course, so do I.

A young lady who used to be very close to them started chiming in on things I wrote. Her husband actually lived with the pastors for a while, and they helped him get his life together. It looks like the relationship has soured a bit.

She and her husband left the church a long time ago. I assumed they were just cooling off, but it looks like that is not so. The pastors pulled her out of a position she had held for four years, and somehow or another, things went south.

Now she has a lot to say. She doesn’t care who hears it. She said they mismanage the building fund and use it as a piggy bank. She complained about greed. She also said they had told people not to associate with her. She asked if they had done that to me, and I said they hadn’t.

Then I thought about the sermon. That was an effort to discourage people from communicating with me. So my answer to her question was wrong. They’re trying to get people to shun me.

She even thinks they got my Facebook account closed, which is possible, but they probably don’t know how to do things like that.

She referred to the pastor’s wife as the Facebook police. I thought I was the only one who had dealt with that.

It’s true that there are some people I don’t hear from now. But those people weren’t actual friends. Had they been friends, they would not have paid any attention to social pressure from people who run the church. The pastors can’t take friends away from me, but they were able to unmask people who only pretended to be friends. That’s a plus for me. I can’t always tell who is with me and who isn’t, so they gave me a hand with that.

I also found out that some people who appeared to be against me or neutral were actually for me.

So far, I haven’t gotten into the real purpose of this blog post, which isn’t about the microscopic details of a petty disagreement. The real topic is openness among Christians.

Long before I left New Dawn, I had two dreams that warned me about the upcoming problems. Rich Wilkerson, the pastor of Trinity Church, figured in both of them.

As far as I can tell, Wilkerson is totally useless as a man of God. I don’t think he ever thinks about helping anyone except himself or his family. I think his driving motivation in life is to accumulate money and become more famous. He’s like Mammon, wearing a flesh suit that used to be a man.

This explains his function in my dreams.

In the first dream, I went into New Dawn, and the whole church was dark. It was night, which is the time that belongs to the devil. There was only one light on in the church, and it was in the office. Rich Wilkerson was in there alone, counting money.

I told the pastors at New Dawn about the dream. Obviously, it was a warning that the same greedy spirit that ran Trinity was going to try to take over.

In the second dream, Rich Wilkerson followed me when I moved from Trinity to New Dawn. Again, it was night. I went into the church’s kitchen and saw him giving the volunteers orders, telling them what to do even though he didn’t run the place.

The meaning of this dream was that Satan would take people who volunteered at the church and use them to twist the pastors’ minds. They would come up with carnal plans that looked good to the pastors, and through these plans, the spirit would control the church. The kitchen is not the sanctuary; it’s a place where worldly tasks predominate.

I told the pastors about this dream, too.

I’m not the only one who warned them. A friend of mine stood up and told them they had to stay on the right course. I don’t recall everything they said. Another friend talked to them on the phone and told them they needed to listen to me, because I would help guide them.

The ironic thing about these dreams is that they could have helped the pastors, but in the end, they only helped me. The information God gave them through my two friends helped the friends. The pastors didn’t get anything out of it.

I’m still digressing.

I used to be somewhat cautious about what I said about preachers publicly. I had been brainwashed by the warped teachings on authority and submission, and by people who discouraged gossip without knowing what it actually was.

Now I will say just about anything, anywhere, as long as I believe God wants me to say it.

The Bible says we’re not supposed to touch God’s anointed. Crooks and frauds love to stand in the pulpit and repeat this, because it makes people afraid to expose them.

There are a couple of problems with the way people interpret the verse.

First of all, “anointed” means “authorized.” It applies to people who are doing what God authorized them to do. God never authorized anyone to teach the poor to give the church all their money. He never authorized anyone to teach the positive-thinking gospel. The characters who teach this nonsense aren’t anointed. They’re in rebellion. They’re wolves in sheep’s clothing. A number of them aren’t even Christians. They just like easy money.

Second, what does “touch” mean? If I disagree with you publicly, have I “touched” you in the meaning of the verse? Of course not. There’s nothing wrong with speaking honestly to a man of God. When the Bible was written, prophets were beaten and murdered. They had real problems, not Facebook posts.

If you look up the Hebrew word translated “touch,” it also means things like “afflict” and “strike.” So it’s kind of a stretch to apply it to someone who says maybe the pastors shouldn’t go on vacation four times a year at the congregation’s expense.

There is more to the subject, though. Almost no one considers this: if I spend more time with God than you do, and you’re wandering around doing your own thing, I have the right to correct you as God sees fit. Publicly or privately. Usually it’s best to correct people privately, but we are not under the law, so it’s not mandatory, and aside from that, when people repeatedly reject private correction, it becomes pointless.

Virtually nobody who fought with me has the kind of prayer habits I do. I am not bragging. It’s just a fact. God addicted me to prayer, and now I spend a great deal of time with him. The people who try to correct me pray very little. They have no right to open their mouths, because they’re not prepared.

It’s amazing how our confidence in our standing contrasts with our qualifications.

Every lukewarm hypocrite who goes to church once a year and only prays when he buys a lottery ticket feels entitled to air his opinions about God. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. If you don’t know anything, you should shut up. You may have an opinion, but it’s worthless, and you should realize that.

I have the right to speak openly about the bad things preachers do. If you want to challenge me, develop a prayer life and ask God what you should do about me. Otherwise, be quiet. You’re in over your head.

I’ll go beyond that. Even if your prayer life is weak, if you know for a fact that a preacher is crooked or incompetent, you should say so, with reasonable discretion.

I used to think the pastors at New Dawn were great. I still believe they were much better than they are now. Anyway, other people left the church because they knew things I didn’t know. If they had spoken up sooner, maybe I would have awakened sooner.

The spirits that corrupt churches love the “speak no evil” mantra, because it protects them. Termites, roaches, and fungi love the dark. When the light comes in, it ruins everything for them. It will disarm evil spirits, and if a preacher isn’t totally corrupted by pride, it will wake him up and correct him.

If you’re sure something is badly wrong with your pastors, why would you keep it quiet? Malfunctioning pastors ruin lives. They hurt our friends. Yet we help them by adhering to a code of silence.

How are you a friend if you let someone like Benny Hinn take your friend’s money?

I am now beyond blunt when I talk about preachers. I don’t care about them or their jobs. If you hurt people for a living, your job should be taken away. Why should I help you drink the blood of innocent people?

I don’t know if I’ll ever go to church again. How am I supposed to find one that isn’t crazy? There must be a few out there, but I don’t know of any. I’ll wait, and if God sends me somewhere, I’ll go. Until then, I won’t worry. Worrying leads to carnal decisions.

My advice is to be honest but not vindictive or cruel. Say what will promote a positive result, and sleep soundly afterward.

I’ve been involved with preachers that had problems, and I have been fooled, but looking back, I can say that I never supported them in anything I knew to be wrong. I put up with a certain amount of error, because it’s inevitable, but I never pretended I thought something was right when I knew it was wrong.

If you want to argue with me, that’s fine. Just make sure you spend a few years praying several hours a day first. After that we can talk.