Danish Evangelist Savaged by Ankle-Nippers

It had to happen eventually. Torben Sondergaard and The Last Reformation are experiencing heavy persecution.

I’ll post a video in which Sondergaard explains it, but I can summarize: he made the mistake of cooperating with a documentary crew, and they convinced TV watchers in Denmark that he runs a destructive cult. Why he cooperated is beyond me. Everyone knows the secular media are run by leftists Satan.

I found out he has Youtube trolls. A user calling himself TLR-is-a-cult has posted some ridiculous videos consisting of short pieces of TLR footage with bizarre accusations spliced in. He accuses TLR of using “fake doctors” to confirm healings. He claims Torben tells people to throw their medicine away. He says Torben is a child abuser because he prays for kids to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He even suggests Torben caused a man to have his leg amputated, although he doesn’t explain how that worked.

Every Christian who accomplishes anything knows what it’s like to have crazies pursue him. I’ve had nutty, unattractive single women set their sights on me, and I had one highly eccentric person force eighty dollars on me and then post weird messages on Facebook, criticizing me yet refusing to say why. My last pastor had a screaming fit in a church parking lot because he was angry at a friend of mine for talking to me. The pastors at Trinity Church in Miami had secret meetings about me after I left.

I know what cults are like. I can tell you a few things they do.

1. They push you to join.

2. They demand large sums of money and/or free work.

3. They attack everyone who points out their problems.

4. They tell you who to associate with, and they make a special effort to separate you from members who have left.

5. They glorify human beings. Cults that are churches may worship pastors or false prophets.

6. They restrict your behavior with excessive rules.

7. They put down the competition. I used to go to Trinity Church in Miami, and the pastors there saw other churches as competing businesses. They also suppressed sub-pastors who were not members of the family that owned the church corporation.

I’m sure cults have other qualities. This list is something I came up with on the fly.

At my last church, we were expected to give the pastors big cash offerings on their birthdays, and the head pastor actually chewed us out because he thought our offerings were too small. He told us we had to give money to his son, who was a drug dealer, a self-proclaimed atheist, and a disrespectful punk.

Talk about pastor-worship. I didn’t go along.

I have been to one TLR event. I can tell you how it differed from a cult experience.

1. They didn’t care if I joined or not. They gave us the option, but that was about it. Membership consisted of being put on a list and an Internet map.

2. They took a couple of brief offerings, but they didn’t beg or manipulate. Unlike Rich Wilkerson of Trinity Church, they didn’t tell us we were going to miss out on blessings if we didn’t pay them. They didn’t threaten us with curses. They didn’t ask me to do one single thing for them. Trinity is so greedy for free work, they have interfered with prospective marriages in order to keep volunteers free.

3. They didn’t spend any time vilifying their detractors. I would guess that Torben said one or two things about criticism he has received, because he spoke to us for hours, but I don’t recall any of it. He criticized bad doctrine other churches embrace, but that’s his job. Bad doctrine is supposed to be exposed.

4. They never tried to tell us whom to associate with. The topic never came up.

5. They didn’t glorify human beings. It’s true, Torben got a lot of attention. He runs the show; God put it in his hands. That doesn’t make him an idol. The whole purpose of the event was to raise up other people to do what Jesus did. Torben wasn’t trying to make himself a unique messiah. He was trying to raise up new people to go out and do what he was doing. He refuses requests to baptize people personally, because we need to know that any Christian can baptize. I was baptized by a couple of young men. It wasn’t Torben, and they were not members of his immediate family. Cults keep people small so they will serve and pay. Torben was trying to bring people up to his own level and beyond.

6. We were not given any oppressive rules. Torben talked about the way we were supposed to live, as a preacher should, but we weren’t told we had to give up pork like the Seventh-Day Adventists, wear funny costumes like the Black Hebrew Israelites, or stop drinking hot drinks or wear special underwear like the Mormons.

7. Torben never put down the competition. He never slammed other charismatic groups that do what he does. Again, he criticized bad doctrine, but that’s not the same thing. Torben and his cohorts are doing their best to increase the number of independent workers who do what the disciples did.

I don’t communicate with TLR. I will never join. I gave them a small offering which was less than a tithe, because I was grateful and I knew they had spent a lot of money. That’s it. They don’t care. They leave me alone.

The notion that TLR is a cult is ludicrous at the moment. It could become a cult later, especially if Torben falls into error or leaves, but it hasn’t happened yet. The potential is there. They have a school in Denmark, and they have a course of videos posted online. Things like that can turn a good ministry into a carnal cult over time. It has not happened yet.

Here’s something weird: the slander videos receive lots of supportive comments from anonymous people. Some of them seem to share similar writing styles, suggesting it’s actually one nut with many accounts. They agree with the cult accusation, but none of them mention any facts.

Torben says Danes are sending him tons of hate email. He says TLR is being attacked on social media. It looks like the documentary worked.

He believes the documentary makers want to get a law passed, preventing evangelists like Torben from ministering to children the way TLR does now. No baptism with the Holy Spirit. No tongues. No casting out devils. No healing prayer. I don’t know if Denmark’s laws would permit such a ban. It would not be a surprise, because Europeans live in hidebound nanny states.

Denmark has a state church. Talk about an oxymoron. It’s an inversion of authority. God is supposed to be above kings and national assemblies. When lawmakers who know nothing about God pass laws regulating churches, they invariably cripple God’s servants. Torben says Danes are upset with him because he does what he does outside of the state church. They seem to think he needs a license. He’s not a trained priest. He’s a baker.

David was a shepherd. Amos was a farmhand. Peter was a fisherman. Jesus was a carpenter. It’s a good thing none of them had to get licenses from the Danish government.

Long ago, God told me that when I saw things that didn’t make sense, I should look for supernatural causes. The nutty, ignorant, dishonest, rabid attacks on TLR do not make sense. It’s a bunch of nice people who go around praying and baptizing, free of charge. They’re not the Medellin Cartel. There is no natural reason why people should hate them. Clearly, Satan has stirred up his peanut gallery, also known as the Beast, against TLR.

It’s a very positive sign. If Satan isn’t attacking you, how can you think you’re doing what you’re supposed to?

Persecution isn’t fun, but it’s an honor, and it’s certainly better than being attacked for real crimes and sins. I would rather be Torben Sondergaard than Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart.

I was persecuted at Trinity Church and New Dawn Ministries in Miami. I was flattered. I didn’t deserve the honor.

It’s funny, but churches are huge centers of persecution. At the event I went to, Torben said his problems came from other Christians. I can relate. When I was a church volunteer, I had almost no problems with people who merely attended. It was the pastors and volunteers that went after me.

I hope the people at TLR will not be discouraged. They should be encouraged instead. They should realize that the attacks are evidence that they’re doing the right thing.