Very well put together YouTube video.
I find it ironic the people attending that Tent Church are the same people that are so sure beyond any doubt that they could ever be fooled by the Anti-Christ.
But there they are, not a Bible in sight, as a man recites internet information/rumors/conspiracies.
This is why obsessions are unhealthy and dangerous.
I’ve seen Greg Lockes before, unfortunately a type in East and Middle Tennessee. A fast-talking showy con man who uses his smarts for no good. He was arrested so many times as a teen he ended up in a Christian-run reform school where he got “saved” and then married one of the staff members. He said he committed all those crimes because his father was in prison and he hated his stepfather.
Well, how saved did he get? 21 years and four children later, right after he found his “fame” and “success”, he dumped his wife for her best friend the church secretary, yes, the wife who stuck with him through all the lean times. Yet all those people flock to his tent and put up with him accusing church members of being witches. Go figure.
His make-up-your-own-church tent church is not affiliated with any denomination and has no oversight, financial or otherwise. His poor wife ended up in a women’s shelter, and the profanity-laced texts he sent her show his true colors:
https://pulpitandpen.org/2018/03/03/greg-locke-american-pastor/
Locke showed up onstage at a Reawaken America rally in Arizona where he told the Q followers in the audience “I know y’all been ostracized and separated from yo’ families, but here’s what I know — there will never be activation without isolation. And God is isolating some of you ...” and rants on from there, starting at the 15:27 mark
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_-y-BIAtS0
What gobbledygook. No activition without isolation indeed. There was also what we call a “gasping preacher” at that event. I was shocked at first, as I thought gasping preachers were just a Tennessee thing (kinda like Hardshell Baptists, Pew Walking Methodists and Snake Handling Pentacostals), but I guess if they imported Locke, they could also import the gasping preacher.
The Southern Baptists have been trying to counter the Q stuff:
https://www.brnow.org/opinions/editorial/q-anon-the-rise-of-restless-evil/
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/evangelical-leaders-try-to-take-on-qanon-in-their-community/#x
Some pastors give up and leave:
https://www.businessinsider.com/pastors-quit-after-qanon-radicalize-congregation-2021-3
In case you are curious about the snake handlers:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cwBVcsWYJd8
The Q thing is not growing, no matter how much they claim it is. Apparently, there is a fairly consistent percentage of Americans who go in for wild conspiracy theories that does bot change over time:
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Even QAnon, the über conspiracy theory involving a covert cabal of Satanic pedophiles and an anonymous tipster on a message board, did not accrue believers according to the polling data showed here. Whether the question was overt (“are you a believer in QAnon?”) or roundabout (asking about a deep state or about elites engaged in a massive child sex trafficking racket), the numbers did not significantly budge between 2019 and 2021.
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Of course the Q followers believe their “Storm” will come to pass (keep moving the date every time it fails to materialize) and imagine we “normies” will have to bow down to them and admit we were wrong and they were right as we watch the executions of Hillary Clinton and Tom Hanks on live TV. Quite the fantasy ending, no? But it’s what they live for, having lost family and friends to their Q obsession.
The Dems keep harping about how “dangerous” Q followers are. How silly. They sit at their keyboards and openly claim they are “saving the world with memes”. That doesn’t seem dangerous to me! But Q is not an entirely benign phenomenon. Q followers have committed suicide over it, and a few have killed family members, but the larger toll is in broken marriages, families and divided churches. And there’s plenty of money to be made out of it. In this video, the pastor of the made-up Patriot Church in Lenoir City, TN says he’s been receiving $20,000 per month in donations since he started preaching the Q gospel:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gttqzP68HHQ
These Q grifters are getting their thirty pieces of silver, but seem to care not what it’s doing to marriages, families and churches. Some family members of Q followers who previously supported Trump have understandably turned against him most bitterly. Some have grown disillusioned with their churches and left Christianity altogether. It’s not just the Q followers affected by this thing. It’s families and churches, too. No, they don’t represent huge numbers any more than Q followers themselves do, but they are real people suffering real human losses.
Now even the Moonies are getting in on it. This bunch just bought a huge property in rural Grainger County in East Tennessee (also properties near Waco, Texas and other places):
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The MAGA-loving religious sect that worships with AR-15s has purchased a 130-acre property on a mountain in eastern Tennessee to serve as a “training center” and holy ground for its devoted, gun-toting followers, VICE News has learned.
The latest property acquisition is more evidence that Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, a fervent conspiracy theorist and son of an accused cult leader, is determined to expand his reach into the American Heartland.
Moon’s congregation, Rod of Iron Ministries, also known as The World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, is a gun-centric spinoff of the much larger Unification Church, founded by his late father, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah and businessman whose followers were famously known as “Moonies.” The younger Moon, who also goes by “The Second King,” split from the main church amid a dramatic falling-out with his mother about who, between the two of them, was the rightful heir to his father’s empire.
In 2017, Moon founded his church in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, siphoning off hundreds of followers from the main congregation who were willing to make the seemingly radical leap of incorporating high-powered rifles into their spiritual life. He did this with the backing of his older brother, Kook-jin “Justin” Moon, the CEO of Kahr Arms, a gun manufacturing company headquartered nearby. In recent years, he’s made headlines for recreating the mass wedding ceremonies that his father’s church was famous for, with the addition of AR-15s.
Sean and Justin Moon, plus other senior church officials, were also at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and posted videos of themselves emerging from clouds of tear gas. Sean has also courted fringe MAGA-world figures; this weekend, the annual Rod of Iron Freedom Fest at the Kahr Arms headquarters in Greeley will include speakers such as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, ex–NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch, far-right Proud Boy ally Joey Gibson, and GOP congressional candidate Teddy Daniels.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4avkdw/rod-of-iron-ministries-purchases-property-in-tennessee
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They’ve been making the news in East Tennessee some with their weirdness.
Why in the world are Republicans having anything to do with these crackpots?