Posted on 05/13/2011 2:57:33 AM PDT by Gamecock
Pastor Paula White broke her silence Thursday night, addressing all the scandals that she has been associated with since her divorce in 2007.
"We’re letting our hair down," White told thousands at the 2011 Pastors and Leadership Conference in Orlando, Fla. "I'm not here to look cute ... I came to let the devil know ... I'm stronger than I've ever been."
Though the two-hour message began with shouts of encouragement and notes of affirmation for the participating leaders who may be facing challenges or opposition, by the end of the night it was apparent that the popular charismatic pastor was also preaching to herself.
"I have a word to those who have all odds stacked against them," she preached. "You're about to get your bounce back."
"The enemy strategically plotted against you, hunted you like prey, set out to destroy you, tried to wreck your mind, destroy your heart, jack up your family, take your ministry, ruin your reputation ... and he thought that he had you. He set you up and thought this is what will kill them.
"I came to put every devil on notice ... I'm getting my dream back, I'm getting my prophesy back, I'm getting my vision back, I'm getting my anointing back, I'm getting my strength back."
White, who calls herself the "former messed up Mississippi girl," let the audience know that she would be "very vulnerable and very open" that night.
Before walking back through her tumultuous past few years, she told them, "I think it's time we stop being hypocrites in the pulpit. I think ... it's time that we take the mask off to this generation and show them that we have the same issues and the same struggles."
"We (sic) going public with all our stuff. Somebody's got to get real in the church now."
She did just that, opening up about the pressures that piled up and the crises in her life that the media was all over.
It all began in 2004 when the IRS launched a nine-year investigation into the personal and organizational finances of White and her then husband, Randy.
Just two years earlier in 2002, White had written in her journal: "I'm living heaven on earth. Life cannot get any better."
"I'm above the struggle and beneath the radar. I love my husband and my husband loves me. And we do. The kids are doing good. And millions of dollars in the bank. Not sick," she recalled feeling at the time.
White had risen to prominence as a preacher, motivational speaker, author and TV personality after co-founding what is now Without Walls International Church with her husband and starting her own ministry.
She was living her dream life, as she described to pastors at the Orlando conference.
But after the IRS investigation began, she began to face challenge after challenge to the point where she wanted to and even tried to quit.
"You can handle something if it's for a short season. But how do I praise Him when my days turn into weeks and my weeks turn into months and my months turn into years and my years turn into decades?" she said. "How do I praise Him under that continual pressure? That kind of pressure wears you out."
Listing the numerous trials she went through, White said she experienced a midlife meltdown, compassion fatigue, her friend being falsely accused and sent to prison, a stroke, addiction to the prescription medication she was given following her stroke, and problems in her marriage.
Continuing, she added that her church staff split in the middle with some turning on the Whites and going to the media.
She maintained that the articles written based on allegations from former church staff were "mostly, totally unfounded" and "lies." The Whites were accused of being all about money and fame.
She also indicated that the staff turned on the church because they couldn’t "supply the staff with the lifestyle that they were used to."
Family problems were added when White found out that her son had a drug addiction and was sexually abused by another male at a staff member's house. She then had to experience the pain of her non-biological daughter battling brain cancer. Kristen, Randy's oldest daughter, died in 2008 at age 30.
In the midst of all this, White said she was being pressured to preach and prophesy and fulfill her role in the church.
"[Bishop] Randy, Pastor Paula, give me a word, marry me, bury me, pay these bills, prophesy. Why aren't you doing this? Why isn't it like it used to be? We don't like the music. We leaving the church because you didn't know our names and you didn't come have lasagna with us," she said, mimicking the demands and criticisms she was met with.
White noted that it was under "that kind of pressure" and "in a really weak moment" that she and her husband made the decision to divorce in 2007. The split was amicable.
According to White, her husband closed up to her. While she traveled the world preaching, she pondered, "Why can I win the world and not go home and win the one that I love?"
She recounted a time when Randy took her into a dark room, placed a mask on her, spun her around and told her to find her way out. With tears, White said she sat there for half an hour, scared and calling out to him. He took off her mask and informed her that that is what he felt like he was going through.
When the two announced their split, Randy had agreed to take the responsibility. And "God told me to keep my mouth shut," she said.
Randy, who no longer co-pastors Without Walls, is now writing a book, she noted.
But she added, "I'm proud of him. He never quit .... God or anything else."
The trials continued even after the divorce when White and televangelist Benny Hinn were pictured last summer in The National Enquirer leaving a hotel in Rome holding hands. They were accused of having an affair and being engaged.
On Thursday, White flatly denied that she ever had an affair.
"They're going to talk about you and write ... because it sells ragtag magazines," she said. "They're going to lie on you but God's going to tell you to keep your mouth shut."
There was also the so-called Grassley investigation. Sen. Charles Grassley launched a Senate probe in 2007 into six influential ministries, including White's, following complaints of opulent spending and possible abuse of nonprofit status.
The probe came to a close in January of this year. With little cooperation from most of the ministries, which called the investigation an attack on their religious freedom and privacy rights, Grassley's office was unable to make any conclusion about the spending of the ministries and handed out no penalties.
White interpreted that to mean her ministry was cleared.
"The church better recognize, it should be thanking six ministries for fighting for the body of Christ for saying 'we are not going to let you dictate to us how we interpret Scripture' and you can't tell us 'because Jesus rode in on a donkey' because if you start telling us how to interpret Scripture in one way, you'll tell us how to interpret it in every way," White said in frustration. Grassley had referred to Jesus' humble entrance into Jerusalem to make the point that ministers today don't really need Bentleys and Rolls-Royces to spread the Gospel.
"I preach in countries if I say 'Jesus Christ is the only way, the truth and the life,' they'll arrest me. And don't think America's that far away. Unless the people of righteousness stand up and say 'we're not going to allow for this because you cannot take what is our First Amendment rights. You can't do that!" White asserted. "We pay taxes. We work hard. We do it by the books. We have integrity. But you're going to make a public misery and mess out of it like something's wrong!"
Stressing that her church gave $9 million to mission in January 2007, built education centers in Pakistan, put students through college, fed and continue to feed thousands every week, and helped transform countless lives, White said, "Are you serious? You want to fight over a $50,000 what? Excuse me?!"
Her long, emotional testimony was met with applause and support from the thousands of pastors in the conference room in Orlando.
Though at the time, she wondered whether she would be able to overcome the trials, she now says what the devil meant for bad, God has turned around to work for the good.
"God uses every enemy, every lawsuit, every lie, every betrayal, all the brokenness," she stressed.
"It's not over. I got my bounce back. That's my message."
The three-day Pastors and Leadership Conference, hosted by Bishop T.D. Jakes, kicked off on Thursday.
I don’t know how repentant her heart is.
That’s God’s priority.
I VERY GREATLY AGREE.
Interesting.
It is another to dogpile on someone else—particularly a public figure—in order to boost one’s own sense of worth.
Leaving aside the question of why a public figure would be entitled to any greater consideration than an anonymous person, this is also interesting.
I am left with the following conclusion:
If Quix doesn't like the person who is being criticized, then any criticism of that person is a fitting and appropriate calling of a spade a spade.
If Quix likes the person who is being criticized, then any criticism of that person is a "dogpiling" and apparently unfitting and immoral.
She was divorced yet Jesus condemned this practice and subsequent remarriage. How can a christian countenance this type of behavior? Perhaps you are not a christian.
In addition, how is it possible to continuously cast aspersions at other Churches but not this instance? Could we have an inherent bigotry existing in the heart or perhaps some hypocrisy?
Blame it on the space cadets . Inquiring minds want to know.
WRONG.
This gal is far from my preference.
According to your earlier assessment, she is candid, honest and Biblical.
Your analysis of the Paula White case seems to turn more on your personal biases rather than on any objective evaluation.
How is it that I need to cast aspersions
on top of the Himalya’s worth already cast?
Are you really convinced that she LACKS
CONDEMNATION?
I suppose you think you’re God’s anointed messenger to deliver yet another mountain worth?
BTW, no commiserating.
. . . except as a fellow flawed human.
A compelling question, bronx2.
That’s how her narrative struck me.
Particularly compared to the RC hierarchy’s dancing, bouncing, shucking and jiving about all the athletics with the altar boys.
Evidently you’ve missed some of my criticisms of Pentecostalism.
I think candid statements in public are an improvement.
I’ll likely continue to applaud them.
Paula White Scam Causes Single Mother To Stop Attending Church
Posted by Job on June 12, 2007
TAMPA – LaShonda Dupree heard the drum roll, saw the gleaming lights and the television cameras as she stood on stage at Without Walls International Church.
She was a 20-year-old single mother of three with bad credit and an apartment she could afford only with government assistance.
As the music crescendoed, she realized she’d won the top prize in an essay contest: a brand new, $100,000 house in Temple Terrace.
“Congratulations on your new home!” Pastor Paula White told Dupree.
“I don’t know if you know this or not, but it’s not just a house,” Pastor Randy White informed the roaring crowd. “It comes with all the furniture inside, too.”
Dupree was jubilant, nearly in tears, as her children joined her onstage.
“I was like, this is not real,” Dupree recalled of the giveaway Nov. 17, 2002, at Without Walls’ Lakeland campus.
As it turns out, it wasn’t.
Today Dupree, 25, lives with her children in a house she rents in Riverview for $673 a month. She is no closer to homeownership than she was during the church’s Home For The Holidays presentation. The event and the family’s subsequent tour of the house – “Whose room is this?” “Who’s going to get the bunk bed?” Paula White asks Dupree’s daughters – aired repeatedly on the Christian Television Network.
Dupree has said little about her experience until a story Sunday in The Tampa Tribune detailed problems at Without Walls. It is one of the largest independent nondenominational churches, collecting $40 million a year in revenue. Detractors say its pastors borrowed $170,000 from an elderly widow and never kept promises to care for her or pay it back. Since 2000, five businesspeople have sued or filed liens against the church or the pastors, accusing them of not paying bills or reneging on deals.
This week, Dupree said she is another victim.
“It was like, ‘Hey, everybody, look at all the good we’re doing here!’ But they didn’t tell the rest of the story, which is the recipient never got the house,” she said.
Robert Fruster was the man on stage announcing the winners. He felt terrible about what happened, he said.
“We needed to live up to what we said we were going to do,” said Fruster, a former Without Walls pastor.
It Began With A Class
Through a public relations company, Randy White issued a statement that said the giveaway did not turn out the way he had hoped.
“We tried to do a good thing, and it backfired,” the statement said. However, White said the contest clearly stated that the winner got a down payment, not the house.
That's an interesting comment, in light of this earlier one:
How is it that I need to cast aspersions on top of the Himalya’s worth already cast?
Surely you see the double standard at work here.
Thank you for the link, Quix. Have a great day.
Criticize or don't criticize, it's up to you.
I just think it's fascinating to make sweeping statements against throwing rocks in general and at Paula White in particular, and then follow those statements up by throwing rocks at other targets.
The allure of human divinity is strong. Rob Bell of Mars Hill seems to have been sucked in by it. If they find something in the Bible that they don’t like, they immediately assume the Bible is the problem. That’s how several denominations could believe that Jesus turned water into grape juice at Cana or ordain women/divorced people. They are so self-centered, they believe themselves over the Bible.
“Any man who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of Heaven”
“That’s God’s priority.”
She’s a church leader so we get a vote on that. Paul advised us to be wise about false teachers.
From your link:
“For a period of 23 hours, a young Ecuadorian girl named Angelica was shown the Kingdoms of Heaven and Hell, and the Return of Christ. She witnessed Jesus weeping as He overlooked multitudes of souls lost forever, a world that has rejected Him, a Church that is mostly unprepared for Him, a people that have stopped witnessing to the lost, and an entertainment industry that even lures children to satan. She witnessed many of our esteemed cultural icons suffering in the Pit; singers, entertainers, and even a pope. Angelica was also shown how the Kingdom of Heaven is all wonderfully prepared and ready, an unimaginable glorious place, where no evil exists. Though Jesus is ONLY coming back for a Holy People, and many of God’s children will NOT be ready on that day, and will be left behind in a world that will fall apart.”
We know billions of people are lost, dead in trespasses and sin, and they are not ready for His return. Counted among that number are sure to be many who are members of a church.
But His people, the Body of Christ, THE Church, are indeed prepared for His return.
A believer grows in grace and sanctification, but the moment he is born from above he’s got all he will ever need—Jesus Christ. One day believers will stand sin-ridden and guilty in the court of heaven, but they will be found spotless and blameless because they are clothed in the robes of HIS perfect righteousness. Nothing can pluck them from His hand.
You can stand on the promises of His Word, He’s trustworthy. If you’ve got Him, if He has truly wrought a change in your heart, you don’t need to concern yourself with the visions of Ecuadorian girls, the wild claims made by healers, or the promises of prosperity teachers.
Paula White’s Friend Bishop Rick Hawkins Caught Up in A Church Sex Scandal
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4114696187749649421#
Nov 21, 2007 ... In February, Paula removed Randy and added Rick Hawkins to her board of directors
Let us explore this apparent contradiction . Do we have evidence of rash judgment accompanied by unmitigated criticism of others who have been accused of scandal while easily dismissing the obvious sin in this case? Jesus is mercy but His Justice demands accountability.
Are you extending the same amount of boundless grace to all sinners or just to certain preferred ones?
Have you been "Judging from the sidelines needing to guard your heart mind and soul" or have you been a player in this game guilty of similar transgressions?
Confession is good for the soul , JN 20:23, and so a personal catharsis might well expiate for past transgressions and would assuage your spiritual equilibrium.May the peace of Christ be with you.
Amen, Friend!
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