Dominionist Movement: Arming for Armageddon Militant Joel’s Army Followers Seek Theocracy

Arming for Armageddon: Militant Joel’s Army Followers Seek Theocracy By Casey Sanchez

“….. Tattooed across Todd Bentley’s sternum are military dog tags that read “Joel’s Army.” They’re evidence of Bentley’s generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that’s gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other “hyper-charismatic” preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers.

“An end-time army has one common purpose — to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion,” Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada. “The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel’s Army. … Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God’s kingdom on earth.”

Joel’s Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they’re members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel’s Army.

Despite their overt militancy, there’s no evidence Joel’s Army followers have committed any acts of violence. But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God’s avenging army.

Those sounding the alarm about Joel’s Army are not secular foes of the Christian Right, few of whom are even aware of the movement or how widespread it’s become in the past decade. Instead, Joel’s Army critics are mostly conservative Christians, either neo-Pentecostals who left the movement in disgust or evangelical Christians who fear that Joel’s Army preachers are stealing their flocks, even sending spies to infiltrate their own congregations and sway their young people to heresy. And they say the movement is becoming frightening.

“The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008,” writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. “One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors.”

Joel’s Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism.

Notorious for endorsing the public execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterers, the Christian Reconstructionist movement is far better known in secular America than Joel’s Army. That’s largely because Reconstructionists have made several serious forays into mainstream politics and received a fair amount of negative publicity as a result. Joel’s Army followers eschew the political system, believing the path to world domination lies in taking over churches, not election to public office.

Another key difference between the two branches of dominionism, which maintain a testy, arms-length relationship with one another, is Christian Reconstructionism’s buttoned-down image and heavy emphasis on Bible study, which contrasts sharply with Joel’s Army anti-intellectual distrust of biblical scholars and its unruly style.

“Some people snort cocaine, others snort religions,” Joel’s Army Pastor Roy said while ministering a morning program at Todd Bentley’s Lakeland, Fla., revival in late May.

… Snide jabs at traditional church services are fairly common at Bentley’s revivals…. Bentley is considered a prophet both by his followers and by other leaders of the Joel’s Army movement, whose adherents claim to be reviving a “five-fold ministry” of prophets, apostles, elders, pastors and teachers, as outlined in the Book of Ephesians. Not every five-fold ministry is connected to the Joel’s Army movement, but the movement has spurred an interest in modern-day apostles and prophets that’s troubling to the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal church, which has officially disavowed the Joel’s Army movement.

In a 2001 position paper, Assemblies of God leaders wrote that they do not recognize modern-day apostles or prophets and worried that “such leaders prefer more authoritarian structures where their own word or decrees are unchallenged.” They are right to worry. Joel’s Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city.

According to Joel’s Army doctrine, the enforcers of the five-fold ministry will be members of the final generation, for whom the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade constituted a new Passover.

“Everyone born after abortion’s legalization can consider their birth a personal invitation to take part in this great army,” writes John Crowder, another prominent Joel’s Army pastor, who bills his 2006 book, The New Mystics: How to Become Part of the Supernatural Generation, as a literal how-to guide for joining Joel’s Army.

Both Bentley and Crowder are enormously popular on the Elijah List, an online watering hole for a broad spectrum of Joel’s Army enlistees, from lightweight believers who merely share an affection for military rhetoric and pastors who dress in army camouflage (several Joel’s Army pastors are addressed by their congregants as “commandant” or “commander”) to hardliners who believe the church is called to have an active military role in end-times that have already begun. The Elijah List currently has more than 125,000 subscribers on its electronic mailing list.

Rick Joyner, a pastor whose books, The Harvest and The Call, helped popularize Joel’s Army theology by selling more than a million copies each, goes the furthest on Elijah’s List in pushing the hardliner approach. In 2006, he posted a sermon called “The Warrior Nation — The New Sound of the Church,” in which he claimed that a last-day army is now gathering and called believers “freedom fighters.”

“As the church begins to take on this resolve, they [Joel's Army churches] will start to be thought of more as military bases, and they will begin to take on the characteristics of military bases for training, equipping, and deploying effective spiritual forces,” Joyner wrote. “In time, the church will actually be organized more as a military force with an army, navy, air force, etc.”

In a sort of disclaimer, Joyner writes at one point that God’s army “will bring love, peace and stability wherever they go.” But several of his books narrate with glee what he describes as “a coming civil war within the church.” In his 1997 book The Harvest he writes: “Some pastors and leaders who continue to resist this tide of unity will be removed from their place. Some will become so hardened they will become opposers and resist God to the end.”

Two years later, in his book The Final Quest, Joyner described a vision (taken as prophecy in the Joel’s Army world, where Joyner is considered an “apostle”) of the coming Christian Civil War in which demon-possessed Christian soldiers enslave other, weaker Christians who resist them. He also describes how the hero of the novel — himself — ascends a “Holy Mountain” in order to learn new truths and to acquire new, magic weapons….

The atmosphere is less charged with violence at “The Call,” a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel’s Army pastor Lou Engle and held every summer in a major American city (this year’s event was scheduled for Washington, D.C. in August).

Attendees are called upon to fast and pray for 40 days and take up culture-war pledges to lead abstinent lives, reject pornography and fight abortion. They’re further asked to perform “identificational repentance,” lugging along family trees and genealogies to see where one of their ancestors may have enslaved or oppressed another so that they can make amends. (Many in the Joel’s Army movement believe in generational curses that must be broken by the current generation).

As even his critics note, Engle is a sweet, humble and gentle man whose persona is difficult to reconcile with his belief in an end-time army of invincible young Christian warriors. Yet while Engle is careful to avoid deploying explicit Joel’s Army rhetoric at high-profile events like The Call, when he’s speaking in smaller hyper-charismatic circles to avowed Joel’s Army followers, he can venture into bloodlust.

This March, at a “Passion for Jesus” conference in Kansas City sponsored by the International House of Prayer, or IHOP, a ministry for teenagers from the heavy metal, punk and goth scenes, Engle called on his audience for vengeance.

“I believe we’re headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground,” said Engle. He was referring to the Baal of the Old Testament, a pagan idol whose followers were slaughtered under orders from the prophet Elijah.

“There’s an Elijah generation that’s going to be the forerunners for the coming of Jesus, a generation marked not by their niceness but by the intensity of their passion,” Engle continued. “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on everything that hinders love, with his eyes blazing fire.”

Although Joel’s Army theology is mainly directed at people in their teens and early 20s via events like The Call and ministries like IHOP, sometimes the target audience is even younger. In some of the most arresting images in “Jesus Camp,” a 2006 documentary about the Kids on Fire bible camp in North Dakota, grade school-aged kids dressed in army fatigues wield swords and conduct military field maneuvers. “A lot of people die for God and they’re not afraid,” one camper told ABC News reporters in a follow-up segment.

“We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” added another, “only in a funner way.”

Both Christian and secular critics assailed the makers of “Jesus Camp” for referring to the camp’s extremist, militant Christianity as “evangelical.” There is a name, however, that describes Kids on Fire’s agenda, if you’re familiar with their theology: Joel’s Army. Pastor Becky Fischer, who runs the camp, said that a third of the kids at her camp were under 6 years old because they are “more in touch in the supernatural” and proclaimed them to be “soldiers for God’s Army.” Her camp’s blend of end-times militancy and supernaturalism is perfectly emblematic of the Joel’s Army movement, whose adherents believe their cause is prophesied in the Old Testament chapter titled “An Army of Locusts.”The stark, evocative passages of that chapter describe a locust swarm that lays waste to Israel (to this day, the region suffers periodic locust invasions): “Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come.” As remarkable as the language is, most biblical scholars agree that it is a literal description of a locust invasion and resulting famine that occurred sometime between the 9th and 5th centuries B.C.E.

In the Book of Joel, the locust invasion is described as an omen that an Assyrian army to the north may attack Israel if it fails to repent as a nation. But nowhere is the invasion described as an army of God. According to an Assemblies of God position paper: “It is a complete misinterpretation of Scripture to find in Joel’s army of locusts a militant, victorious force attacking society and a non-cooperating Church to prepare the earth for Christ’s millennial reign.”

The story of how an ancient insect invasion came to be a rallying flag for 21st-century dominonists begins just after World War II in Canada. Out of a small town in Saskatchewan, a Pentecostal preacher named William Branham spearheaded a 1948 revival in which he claimed that his followers lived in a new biblical time of “Latter Rain.”

The most sinless and ardent of his flock would be called “Manifest Sons of God.” By the next year, the movement was so strong — and seemed so subversive to some — that the Assemblies of God banned it as a heretic cult. But Branham remained a controversial figure with a loyal following; many of his followers believed him to be the end-times prophet Elijah.

Michael Barkun, a leading scholar of radical religion, notes that in 1958, Branham began teaching “Serpent Seed” doctrine, the belief that Satan had sex with Eve, resulting in Cain and his descendants. “Through Cain came all the smart, educated people down to the antediluvian flood — the intellectuals, bible colleges,” Branham wrote in the kind of anti-mainstream religion, anti-intellectual spirit that pervades the Joel’s Army movement to this day. “They know all their creeds but know nothing about God.”

Branham was killed in a car accident in 1965, but his Manifest Sons of God movement, the direct predecessor of Joel’s Army, lived on within a cluster of hyper-charismatic churches. In the 1980s, Branham’s teachings took on new life at the Kansas City Fellowship (KCF), a group of popular self-styled apostles and prophets who used the Missouri church as a launching pad for national careers promoting outright Joel’s Army theology.

The Joel’s Army movement began with the 1940s preaching of William Branham, whose group was banned as heretical by the Assemblies of God.

Ernie Gruen, a local pastor who initially promoted and gave citywide credibility to KCF pastors in the early 1980s, cut his connections in 1990. Concerned about KCF’s plans to push its teachings worldwide, Gruen published a 132-page insider’s account, based on taped sermons and conversations and interviews with parents who had enrolled their kids in KCF’s Dominion school.

According to Gruen’s report, students at the school were taught that they were a “super-race” of the “elected seed” of all the best bloodlines of all generations — foreknown, predestined, and hand-selected from billions of others to be part of the “end-time Omega generation.”

Though he’d once promoted these doctrines himself, Gruen became convinced that the movement was turning into an end-times cult, marked by what he summarized as “spiritual threats, fears, and warnings of death,” “warning followers to beware of other Christians” and exhibiting “a ’super-race’ mentality toward the training of their children.”

When contacted by the Intelligence Report, Gruen’s spokesman said that Gruen stands by everything he published in the report but no longer grants media interviews.

The Kansas City Fellowship remains in operation and has served as a farm team for many of the all-stars of the Joel’s Army movement. Those larger-than-life figures include John Wimber, the founder of a California megachurch, The Vineyard, who, before his death in 1997, proclaimed that Joel’s Army would not only conquer the earth but defeat death itself. Lou Engle founded The Call based on the Joel’s Army visions that KCF “prophet” Bob Jones (not to be confused with Bob Jones III of Bob Jones University) received while at KCF. Mike Bickle, another KCF member, stayed in Kansas City to form the International House of Prayer.

IHOP members and other Joel’s Army adherents are well aware of how their movement is perceived by other conservative Christians.

“Today, you can type ‘Joel’s Army’ into a search engine and a thousand heresy hunter websites pop up, decrying the very mention of it,” writes John Crowder in The New Mystics. Crowder doesn’t exactly allay critic’s fears. “This is truly warfare,” he writes. “This battle is not a game. They [Joel's Army warriors] will not be on the defense; they will be on the offense — and the gates of hell will not be able to hold up against them.”

So far, few members of the secular media have taken notice of Joel’s Army, even as they report on Protestant dominionists like Pat Robertson or the more outrageous calls for the stoning of gays and lesbians emanating from Reconstructionist circles. There are exceptions, however. On the DailyKos, a well-read, politically liberal blog, a diarist has been blogging for two years about her experiences as a walkaway from a Joel’s Army church. She writes under a pseudonym out of fear of physical reprisals.

She may have real cause for concern. As Wimber, the late founder of The Vineyard, put it in one of his most famous and fiery sermons, one that is still frequently cited by Joel’s Army followers: “Those in this army will have His kind of power. … Anyone who wants to harm them must die.”

P.S. And if they are such “Elijahs” against the “Jezebels” how come NOT ONE OF THEM SAW TODD BENTLEY’S SIN ON HIM DURING LAKELAND?????

One of the main jobs of a prophet is point out sin to reconcile that sinner to the Lord.

AND, if they hate gays so much, why don’t they stone Paul Cain and Todd Bentley and Ted Haggard?

Reminds me of the Nazis… putting gays in concentration camps while so many of the S.S. were flaming homosexuals themselves.

Rev. 16:13 “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 14 For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. 15 “Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.” 16 And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon.”

When the antichrist appears, there will be a great falling away…not from a faith in God….but from the true gospel of Jesus Christ centered in His death that alone atones for sin and alone reconciles sinners to God.

This antichrist will appear with abundant signs and wonders. I believe this appearing could coincide with thousands of lights in the heavens seen by the whole world. This will be an overwhelming and masterful delusion. This antichrist will claim to be the mahdi, the Jewish Messiah, and the Jesus of the Christian faith. The lights will convince the athiests, agnostics and evolutionists that the man from above, will bring world peace.

Those who oppose him will be under a death decree. These youth being gathered at this time will think they are doing God a service by killing those without the mark. That is what Joel’s army is really all about….it a recruitment in the army of antichrist.

First of all, thankyou to The Washington based group which did this report and regularly briefs the FBI and other US law agencies about potential threats to internal national security. This was originally a Klan watch group but has steadily expanded its brief.

ROMANS 13 is a much neglected Chapter of The Bible. God gives the “sword” to Government and Government agencies. I include the media powers as well in this.

Can we all learn to pass on concerns to local and national newspapers, TV and radio ? They have the resources to investigate but need the public to pass on tips as to what to investigate.

Can we all learn to pass on concerns to Congressmen, Government Ministers, MPs, The FBI, British police etc

Especially in Britain to The Home Office. They want to know who is likely to be a danger to UK internal security. They have staff which are paid to log, monitor and investigate suspect groups and individuals.

Also phone or write To the Department of Preventing Extremism which is inside The Department of Communities and Local Government headed by Hazel Blears. The Government has a full staff to look into concerns about extremism and brief other government and police departments. It is their job to investigate, get proof if it exists, and take action if they deem it appropriate.

The Home Office can certainly ban Joel’s Army extremists from entering Britain.

(THIS WILL CLOSE TREVOR BAKER’s CONFERENCE CENTRE BUSINESS IN DUDLEY as he is a noted Joel’s Army centre and most of his Conference people from North America are Joel’s Army).

Also in Britain consider contacting The Commission for Human Rights and Racial Equality. They have hundreds of millions of UK Government money to investigate concerns and make reports and take action where necessary. They need to be told what needs investigating.

ROMANS 13 was written by God not me. He gives certain agencies the sword to exact His Revenge. Please consider whether you have concerns these agencies need to hear about. MPS will always pass on concerns to Government Ministers.

MINISTERS AND POLICE OFTEN WAIT FOR A FEW COMPLAINTS BEFORE DECIDING A MATTER NEEDS FULL INVESTIGATION.

The Government actions will publicise this group’s existence and intentions. Hopefully it will wake up the most naive of Church Leaders.

If they all read Miriam’s Blog it would make life much easier in The UK Church.

What I’am seeing here is the stage being set for opening act of the tribulation, even on the thresh hold! Now is the time to READ OUR BIBLES PRAY, FAST, WARN, and get off our rear parts and get out and exercise the “Great Comission!” The time is drawing near! Stay in the word, follow it to the letter and DO NOT STRAY from it in any way!

Watch news reports, use the Bible as a companion as you watch it, you will see many things already done and others in the works. We will not be able to stop this, as it is prophecy from the Bible, stay steadfast and you will prevail. Covering your eyes or plugging your ears will not make it go away. Be ready to fight the good fight. again we the Lord’s own WILL PREVAIL!

He is drawing us closer to Him, helping us dress for battle, helping us put on the full armor, fear not, the attacks we face as His own, will be as firey darts hitting the armor and bouncing off. But woe to those who do not heed these words, cracks in the armor will let the enemy in and he WILL lead you astray.

This time is now, even this very minute to fortify, again we the Lord’s own will prevail. Do not fear, fear alone will leave a crack in the armor and the enemy will get in.

Draw close to me and I will draw close to you says the Lord. I will not leave you or forsake you, you are my chosen. Be steadfast, walk in Love and pull many from the eternal lake of fire, for these are the many things you already know, put them and keep them in your hearts and on your minds and be ever ready to do these which have be commanded. The time is NOW!

Miriam, this is what the Lord showed me. It’s as if he is getting us ready as a parent dresses a little child. Again…I am shaking and my heart is pounding! How does this test with you?

I also seen more, but mainly focused on the words, was this right? Or should I have wrote what I seen???

I saw us, the saints being dressed in a type of armor. The Lord was individually making us ready, like dressing us and checking out the armor to make sure it was battle ready, such as no cracks, as I said like a parent would dress a child. The armor looked like a bronze color.

There was like a welcome mat, such as ones at the front door of a house…on it said TRIBULATION, and it was like a door way to step through, but I did not see the other side of it fully, only a quick peek, it looked chaotic and loud, there were people running, and screaming, and leaders telling them what to do. When some saw it they became full of fear and did not want to go through, the Lord spoke to them, some continued to get ready, some walked away. Then he gave us the words, the ones I spoke of up top.

I guess the reason was…shaking heart pounding, as you have said….it is having to speak it out!

No problem, totally understood. Sometimes it is right to hold something back, sometimes not, hence why I asked about your reasoning - it was not to be critical.

He was wanting us to know everything WILL be alright for His own! That is why I feel we are already at the very start and we need to keep in our Bibles and keep warning about all the crazy doctrines. Hence keep suited up with the truth! DO NOT STRAY, some how this gave me MUCH comfort! And to KEEP WATCHING!

“As Wimber, the late founder of The Vineyard, put it in one of his most famous and fiery sermons, one that is still frequently cited by Joel’s Army followers: “Those in this army will have His kind of power. … Anyone who wants to harm them must die.”

Though personally I do NOT believe Sarah Palin either understands or believes the false teachings of these Kansas City (false) Prophets who fueled the false "Lakeland Revival" of Todd Bentley last summer, apparently her home church in Juneau has ties to Rodney Howard Browne, a real lunatic of the Toronto Blessing. This is a network of deceived Christians with ties to even Rick Warren, which makes it very dangerous doctrine indeed. C Peter Wagner is claimed to be Rick Warren's mentor. This article gives a grand overview of the roots of Lakeland going back to the insane heretic William Branham.

At Lakeland this summer, Todd Bentley proclaimed that Bob Jones was giving him "the mantle of William Branham".

Scary stuff indeed because of its political End Times anti Christ implications. Sarah Palin needs to distance herself from this deception.

The Democrats are picking up on the story linking Sarah Palin to this group because of her home church’s ties to Rodney Howard Browne.

Browne and Joyner et all need to be exposed by real Christians for their Dominionism and lies.

Browne disagreed with Todd Bentley early on in the revival this summer, BUT Browne believes exactly the same things that Bentley does.

This is a dangerous cult and it has infected the Assemblies of God church that previously stood against it — going back to 1949. As Lakeland was hosted by a corrupt Assemblies of God preacher, Stader, this heresy has gotten out of control and is infectious to unwitting Christians.

You wrote:

“I would like to think you are right, but this movement has only gained strength as there is too much money to be made on the heresy.”

Heresy? What heresy exactly? And how can this be any more or less heretical than any other Protestant movement and who decides that?

“And too much power to be gained. You have no idea of the delusion these so called Christians are under... especially if you understand that their Joel 2 army is the deluded Anti Christ Army that God promises He will send in the End Times to persecute the saints...”

Oh, please. These chumps will never be the Anti-Christ. They’re going to be nothing overall.

“Palin needs to bone up on her apologetics so as to steer clear of this nightmare.”

I think you’re getting overly excited about this.

Dear vlad:

I wish you were right. However, since April when my own charismatic church fell under the delusion and was swept into the apostasy of Lakeland, you would not believe what is going on.

The leaders of this movement have a lot in common with the early Mormons.

They mistake Old Testament ideas of killing unbelievers, bolstered along by the lunatic ravings of their Old Testament styled “Prophets” who hold a magical sway over these people.

I personally think that these charismatics (and I am charismatic myself) have felt like such underdogs in the world, it is a theology of power for their whacked beliefs.

The Lakeland Revival that ended in ignominy this summer is proof of their delusion, though people like me spent weeks — taking off my paid assignments for many many weeks to do it — just to warn the people I love of this deception.

Jesus warns again and again of false prophets and false teachings that go against the Gospel.

It also warns that a one world religious government will be led by someone who does miracles and calls himself Jesus. This is the AntiChrist.

This governmental system will be a theocracy that the Bible says will “kill people in the name of God” because they believe the antiChrist actually is Jesus.

The Bible says that this is the Joel 2 Army. In Joel 2.

It is an army that God “promises He will send” just as He promises He will send “a strong delusion” upon those who no longer love the truth of His Word.

This army will be sent like locusts against the true church in purifying persecution in the last days — the end times when God says “He will have to shorten the time for the sake of the elect”.

I know it sounds conspiratorial. I don't want to fear monger and must guard against it in my own heart, even. But this is a broad network of ignorant charismatics and evangelicals who do not really understand that we are called to carry the Cross to the Lost and God's kingdom IS NOT OF THIS WORLD.

The only one who will “take dominion” of nations and governments in a physical sense is the anti Christ.

So this heresy, which has grown up under unsuspecting charismatic movements, is very dangerous.

As a tag line, the most interesting and phony defense that they always make is that they assume that anyone opposing them are cessatioinists who do not believe in the Pentecostal Holy Spirit gifts of charismatia.

They are being surprised by educated charismatics like myself who have no fear to oppose them head on. They are deceiving the Flock.

The final thing about this prophetic movement of the Joel 2 Army — the “Apostolic Prophetic Cult” is that it is rife with false prophecy.

My question is for them: if normal Christians cannot discern between true and false prophets now, HOW will we discern or distinguish THE False Prophet who the Bible says will herald the Anti Christ?

This is why it is imperative that this Apostolic Prophetic Cult is deconstructed, and debunked and their people de culted.

Dominionism’s original branch is Christian Reconstructionism, a grim, Calvinist call to theocracy that, as Reconstructionist writer Gary North describes, wants to “get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”
Notorious for endorsing the public execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterers, the Christian Reconstructionist movement is far better known in secular America than Joel’s Army. That’s largely because Reconstructionists have made several serious forays into mainstream politics and received a fair amount of negative publicity as a result. Joel’s Army followers eschew the political system, believing the path to world domination lies in taking over churches, not election to public office.

Check this out - the author is trying to connect Todd Bentley with Gary North....

This is the number one difference between the "reconstructionist" movement and the "identity" movement. The former still believe in one objective G-d and religion for everyone in the world, while the latter are henotheists to whom "the Biblical G-d" is the G-d and creator only of "white chr*stian Israel," with other people being the creations of other "gxds" (or at least not descended from Adam). This is why the far, far, far right supports a "planet of peoples;" they reject the idea of a single human race under a single G-d. They are essentially pagans opposed to monotheism to whom each people has the right to create its own worldview and "gxd" in its own image.

This doesn't mean I'm apologizing for or defending the "reconstructionists," however. They are very anti-Israel and run the John Birch Society (I assume Ron Paul is one of these people). They are certainly very far removed from traditional "pessimistic" apocalyptic chr*stianity.

NOW--I would like to address the inevitable association of "theocracy" with anti-Semitism. While I personally consider "reconstructionism" to be anti-Semitic (or at least anti-Israel), this has nothing to do with their theocratic orientation. Judaism is in fact a Theocratic religion; every Orthodox Jew lives his/her life according to a very strict and complicated regimen of Halakhah, which is the practical implementation of Divine Law. In fact, one could say that "reactionary" chr*stians who are "theocratic" have taken a step towards Judaism/Noachism by rejecting the "spiritual messiah" in favor of a literal world-ruling messiah. True, they err in their chr*stianity and their belief that mankind is obligated to observe "chr*stian law" (is this not a contradiction in terms? Is not Judaism the statutory religion while chr*stianity is anti-statutory and salvational?), the obsession with Divine Law, far from being anti-Semitic, is much more Semitic than chr*stian. As I said, I regard "reconstructionists" as anti-Semites for their prejudice against Jews and opposition to Israel, but their "theocracism" has nothing to do with this.

How ironic that the Jews have become so disassociated with Theocracy that the first thing most people think on contemplating such a thing is "what will become of the poor Jews?" Why does not one consider that the "poor Jews" may be the people running it???

And then there are the kooks on the other side that claim that all Christians are involved in this “reconstruction” - *whisper* some don’t even know it.

Such as this kooky quote:

“...Many on the Christian Right are unaware that they hold Reconstructionist ideas. “

*AND*

“... Generally, Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of “Biblical Law.” Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of its manifestations, ... Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment beyond such crimes as kidnapping, rape, and murder to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.

Reconstructionism has expanded from the works of a small group of scholars to inform a wide swath of conservative Christian thought and action.”

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html

Lies. And now we have Todd “The Psychotic Prophet” to
sell more lies.

Sorry but real disciples of Christ do not wish to create a theocracy much less a theocracy based on the
Old Covenant Laws.

The Assemblies of God got themselves in very hot water because Stephen Strader, the pastor who hosted Todd Bentley’s “revival” was Assemblies of God.

People cried out to the AOG early this summer to condemn what the AOG had condemned for fifty years of this false movement, They did a lukewarm response.

So did Jack Hayford, head of the Foursquare Church. This is doing the thing in the book of Revelation where a church is condemned for “tolerating” the false prophecies and false teaching of Jezebel. it is not an obscure sin. Hayford and the AOG needed to stand by the Bible and condemn Lakeland at the time.

Now that Lakeland exploded in sin, they have egg on their faces. Not to mention the unbelief now sown in the scattered sheep of the false revival there. Strader should have been reprimanded immediately.

P.S. This is also the reason some are alarmed at any NAR/Dominionist ideas of Sarah Palin’s AOG pastor. His “tolerated” associations. To tolerate means to have passive agreement and is NOT pleasing to the Lord where blasphemy and heresy is being hawked.

“Be ye either hot or cold, but be ye lukewarm, and I will spew you out of my mouth...” (Funny I learned that scripture under Jack Hayford...)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.