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Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation. The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here. Off the Cuff! (Part 3) MORE ABOUT ORAL! I didn’t mention this about Roberts in the ‘memorial’ section above because we try to keep that relatively free of negativity, but it needs to be mentioned somewhere. After his early ‘healing evangelism’ days, things got tougher. His heir apparent, son Richard Roberts divorced his wife, Patti, and she started her own evangelistic/healing ministry, writing a devastating book, Ashes to God, in which she blamed Oral and his ministry for the divorce. She also really blew the top off what was going on “inside” the organization and “inside” the family! It was on a par with another “insider” book, Give Me That Prime-Time Religion by Jerry Sholes, a former associate who had worked with Oral and Richard closely for several years. Neither helped his image with the evangelical religious public even a little bit. Richard then married a younger woman, Lindsay Roberts, a coed at the university. All did not go well there, either, and a bunch of professors sued Richard and the university (he had become president) and made a number of charges against Sister Lindsay, which we won’t go into here other than to say several had to do with involvement with “underage male students” at the university. Richard was first given an indefinite leave of absence, but about a month later, after the faculty voted almost unanimously “no confidence” in his leadership, he resigned. He still holds the title President Emeritus of ORU and also serves as Chairman and CEO of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association. Let me also refer here to the fact that in late 1987 or early 1988 Oral wrote me an unsolicited letter saying God had called him “to bring deliverance” to my life since, he declared, God told him something was “hitting at you and trying to stop you in your tracks from being all God wants you to be spiritually, physically, financially, and with your family.” What was hitting at me he didn’t say and I had no idea. I was in excellent health at the time and The Biblical Evangelist was circulating in excess of 26,000 biweekly. He even offered proof that my “deliverance” was available from his hand, enclosing a photocopy from the Bible of II Kings 5:1-14 (apparently I was the leper, Oral was Elisha, and God was God in his interpretation). He had highlighted with a yellow felt pen verse 8, “let him come to me and he shall know there is a prophet in Israel” and the words in verse 14, “and his flesh came again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” To make sure I didn’t miss his point he had written in the margin, “Partner, YOUR DELIVERANCE IS IN THIS SCRIPTURE!” and it was signed, “Oral Roberts.” He identified himself with Elisha although the Methodists, where he held membership, wouldn’t even identify him as a minister, listing him as a layman. He waxed eloquent in applying II Kings 14 to my case, assuring me of my need to not only turn to the living God for help, but to “a servant of God as His instrument who can help you get your deliverance in ways no one else can.” When I reported it in this paper, I said, “Shades of Rome and the Vatican! I don’t need the pope to forgive my sins and I don’t need Oral Roberts to get me a deliverance. Thank God, on the basis of Calvary’s finished work, I can go directly into the presence of Almighty God and make my requests known to Him … in the first person!” And I suggested that perhaps I should send Oral a photocopy of Hebrews 4:14-16, highlighted in yellow, of course. Oh, yes. Oral said to me in his letter, “My heart is really touched today for what you are facing. Even as I write, I can feel you in my spirit.” My response to that hogwash: “Balderdash! Since he has no idea what I am facing, how can he be touched by it? And how can he feel me in his spirit – along with the thousands upon thousands of others who received the same identical computerized letter?” And from there he went to the main pitch of his letter, “I face struggles too – and right now a very serious financial one,” and he went into his sales pitch for an offering from me. My response, “Physician, heal thyself! Take care of your own deliverance before you offer to take on mine.” The moment I received that silly, insincere letter, I knew for sure his ministry was phony. I might add, his habit of a “point of contact” in his television “healings” (mimicked by other hucksters after he started it), I also considered a charade. He would put his hand on the camera (or some object) and tell the victim wanting a healing to touch the television while he prayed for healing. That way, he claimed, the power of his prayer would be transferred over the airways to the sick. The farce would be evidenced when, for most, at the end of the program, the local station’s announcer would say the program had come to them via “electrical transcription.” The prayer on his end was live, put in a can, held for a week or sometimes more on a shelf or in shipping, put on a shelf at its destination, then the ‘canned’ prayer would be flashed on the victim’s television screen that he/she was touching. Is that how you understand biblical prayer? I don’t. WANNA JOIN A CULT? When our headquarters was in Anyone who called was hoodwinked. It was simply a propaganda appeal to get the responder hooked into a vicious cult misnamed “The Church of Scientology.” For one thing, the claim of an “ Responders discovered the test was simply a recruitment tool the cult was using – and has been using on its worldwide Scientology websites for decades – to draw suckers into the cult, which is neither a legitimate historical church nor anything scientific. While it bills itself as “The Only Major Religion To Emerge in the 20th Century,” it was founded in 1952 by the late L.[afayette] Ron Hubbard after his book Dianetics was released (although it didn’t officially become a ‘religion’ until a year later, after critics blasted the authenticity of the book’s teaching). Hubbard was, in reality, a noted science fiction writer and the movement may have been his life’s best ‘fiction’ attempt. Religiously it is closer to Buddhism than Christianity. It is interesting that The Readers’ Digest, in its May 1980 reprint, quoted Hubbard as saying in 1940, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” About a decade later he started his own religion, launching the Hubbard’s successor – and the current leader – is David Miscavige, a tyrant of major proportions. Marc Headley, who was in the “church” for 15 years before quitting, told of being beat up by Miscavige – and said he saw at least 30 others being beat up by him – and ‘heard’ of scores of others he didn’t personally witness. This physical abuse was strictly one-way; victims were not allowed to defend themselves. Members have been leaving the cult, figuratively, according to an interview I heard with Headley, like rats jumping off a sinking ship in mid-ocean. Headley has also written a book about his experiences, Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtains of Scientology. He also said actor Tom Cruise, the cult’s most prominent and visible member, called the whole thing phony baloney and left for several years – then was brought back as a member in good standing, everyone ordered by the boss man to call him “Sir” (and any who slipped were punished). The web is filled with horror stories of ex-members. The ‘deal’ Tennessean readers were offered was nothing new. It has been pushing this phony offer for at least three decades that we know of – and it really must work as a recruitment tool for Scientology to pay for this kind of promotion. Hubbard died and went to H___ (you fill in the blank; that is neither my job nor my aim) in 1986. USE YOUR BRAIN, DUMMY We were interested to read in PsychoHeresy Awareness some time back, in its ‘Psych Notes’ section, some ‘brain myths,’ a couple of which we felt needed passing on. One of the myths mentioned related to the ‘left brain/right brain’ hullabaloo hitting the media several years ago. We thought it was nonsense back then and privately said so to any who asked about it, but we didn’t have background smarts sufficient to answer publicly. Here is how this “some people are left-brained; others are right-brained” neuromythology was answered in Awareness: Supposedly, left-brained people are analytical, logical and verbal, whereas right-brained people are creative, holistic and spatial … The left-brained-versus-right-brained dichotomy is grossly oversimplified. For one thing, this distinction implies that people who are verbally gifted are not likely to be artistically talented, but research suggests otherwise. Moreover, neuroscience studies suggest that the brain’s two hemispheres work in a highly coordinated fashion.” By the way, the same article threw cold water on the misconception “we use only 10 percent of our brain’s capacity.” This misconception … is among the most deeply entrenched in all of popular psychology … Yet the scientific evidence against this myth is overwhelming. Functional brain-imaging studies have consistently failed to turn up any region of the brain that is perpetually inactive. Moreover, research on brain-damaged individuals reveals that a lesion to almost any brain area will produce at least some psychological deficits … Sorry, parents, you’ll have to come up with another idea to get junior to do his homework. Bribery, maybe? THE TALE OF A SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL We wrote up Tim Tebow as the football star of tomorrow before he even finished high school. That we were not wrong is a matter of history, as evidenced by all the records he broke and now holds at the He was nominated for the Heisman Trophy his sophomore, junior and senior years, winning the first time he was nominated. While I could be wrong (I often am, especially in sports), he lost the other two (he was a finalist each time) because of his vibrant testimony for Christ. Some didn’t like the Scripture verses under his eyes and the fact he gave his testimony almost every time someone stuck a mike in his face. I think this is clear from the fact so many sportswriters are among the voters – while in at least the first of his losing years, maybe both, he got more first place votes than any other player – but was listed third, fourth and even farther down the line by others. If you asked him whether he would prefer his testimony or more Heismans, he would answered with a positive “my testimony.” I mention him now because – and we have mentioned this before, too – when his mother Pam was carrying him she developed a serious infection. Doctors recommended that to protect her life, she abort the child. She refused. (She didn’t say it was above her pay scale to decide such thing, as Obama did when being interviewed by Rick Warren prior to the election.) But she did say those decisions of life and death were in the hands of a Higher Authority, whom she respected and trusted. Focus on the Family prepared an exciting Super Bowl commercial about the matter (a 30-second spot costs nearly $3 million) to show what a tragedy it would have been if Pam had decided otherwise. Both she and Tim appeared in the commercial. All the feminist pro-baby killers (men are not so much that way except for doctors who want to become multi-millionaires by slaughtering them by the thousands) started screaming bloody murder (there’s that word again, but this is only figurative, not literal like in abortion) saying it was an insult to women, in violation of the Supreme Court, would incite violence, and every other silly thing they could think of – and demanding CBS not run it. These folks said so doing would be tantamount to “throwing women under the bus.” And this from women who have been throwing precious babies under the bus for nearly forty years – over 50,000,000 of them, in fact. And not a one of the critics had even seen the commercial! Who will win the Super Bowl? For me, that is not as important as who will win the battle of the commercial. The former will simply be a blip in the sports history books. The latter could have an impact on As Tim told reporters prior to the game, acknowledging some wouldn’t agree with it, "… but I think they can at least respect that I stand up for what I believe," adding, "[T]hat's the reason I'm here, because my mom was a very courageous woman. So any way that I could help, I would do it." At the moment of this writing, CBS is standing tall. P.S. Later: CBS did run the commercial. We have no idea why. It had no punch line of any kind; in fact, to many viewers it wouldn’t have made sense. And Focus spent millions on it! The only benefit as I see it was the talk it generated before the fact. THIS & THAT . . . Legal back alley abortion clinic kills patient! Trying to destroy her baby, she died! Alexandra Nunez, a single, 37-year-old mother of four, went to Salomon Epstein’s abortion clinic to kill her new baby. The inept abortionist punctured her uterus and then went on to puncture an internal artery. She bled to death because the clinic had no ability to perform life-saving surgery. Quite a difference from Pam Tebow, wouldn’t you say?... Well, your representatives in Do you old-timers remember T. Coleman Andrews (1899-1983)? He was an early Commissioner of our Internal Revenue. He said, about the event we celebrate annually on April 15: "I don't like the income tax. Every time we talk about these taxes we get around to the idea of 'from each according to his capacity and to each according to his needs.' That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him"… James Madison warned, "The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." Boy, has it ever!... What’ll we do when we run out of “wealthy” Americans? Obama and his gang of merry men keep saying they are only taxing the wealthy (a lie, but they seem to be fooling most people with it). Currently 60% of our income tax funds come from the top 5% of wealthy households. That well will soon run dry, then what?... Spending out of control – on our way to fiscal ruin! The first three months of our national budget year shows a deficit of $388.51 billion, over 15% (16.8%, to be exact) above the deficit a year ago for the same period. By the way, the deficit for all of last year was $1.42 trillion – over three times the previous year… Did you hear about the star NFL quarterback and his buddies who starred in an anti-abortion video? No, not Tebow. It was Phil Simms – who was part of this year’s broadcast team – and his buddies that won Super Bowl XXIL: tight end Mark Bavaro, defensive end George Martin, wide receiver Phil McConkey, guard Chris Godfrey, and nose tackle Jim Burt. Each had strong words against the wicked evil of abortion… Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made a speech (apparently on camera in an empty chamber, since no individuals could be seen, just empty seats) comparing those of us who oppose the insane, bank-breaking, back-breaking ObamaCare bill – that will destroy the best health care system in the world – with those who opposed ending slavery (it was Republican president Abraham Lincoln who ended it), those who opposed women’s rights (it was Republican president Teddy Roosevelt who first supported women’s suffrage), and those who more recently opposed civil rights with a filibuster (a Democrat led it and Robert Byrd, last I knew a very prominent Democrat, spoke in it for 14 hours). I guess Reid’s just not good at history. Did it ever enter your mind, Harry, that some of us oppose it just because it is dumb, dumb, dumb?... Boy, did American founder James Madison (1751-1836) ever get this one right: "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm"... Remember back when Obama and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress assured us the sky was falling and our only hope was to pass a $787 billion stimulus package? We were promised it would give us 3½ million new jobs over two years. One year has passed; we are halfway there. We learn the tally is approaching four million – jobs lost and 10% unemployment (it was 4% back then). Boy, were we ever snookered!... Good news (we hope) on a story we’ve been covering. The 17-year-old convert from Islam to Christ, Rifqa Bary, will be staying at a foster home under state custody in her hometown of Columbus (OH) until she turns 18 and then she’ll be free to live wherever she chooses. That will happen in August. [Later: the parents rejected this compromise]... The Alan Guttmacher Institute was founded by – and remains an arm of – Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest baby killer organization. It noted teen pregnancies were up 3% for the latest reporting period and promptly blamed “abstinence programs.” We think the more likely cause is the sex ed programs that teach ‘how to do it’ down to the most minute detail – and imply the whole thing is the most exciting, fun-filled experience since the invention of kissing… Obama’s brilliant EPA director, Lisa Jackson, has officially declared carbon dioxide dangerous to the environment. Carbon dioxide is what we exhale and plants inhale! Are we supposed to stop breathing? To get plants to stop inhaling could only be done by destroying them. I know they want us seniors to stop breathing; but everybody? Everything?... When FDR introduced Social Security to Americans in the early 1930s, the bill was 82 pages in length. The ObamaCare bill passed by the Senate was almost 30 times that size (2,409 pages – and most have never been able to read even one page of it; and it’s a rare bird (including in Congress) who has read all of it)… Why is it that our courts almost universally side with perverts in family issues? Take Judge John R. Kennedy in Out in Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance was shorter than most of his speeches. And he only used his favorite pronoun, "I," 38 times. In his The State of the Union address was second longest in history, exceeded only by another narcissist who loved to hear himself talk, Bill Clinton; no wonder Senator Reid was caught on camera yawning. Were you impressed with Obama’s “spending freeze”? If so, why? It only affects less than 1% of his trillion dollar budget… Obama declared heatedly, “The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel." Oops, wrong quote; that’s what he said when, during the primaries McCain suggested a freeze… Obama, in his SOTU mentioned the Constitution twice. Once was to say it said he should “from time to time” give Congress information (as he was doing, according to Article Two, Section 3). The other reference showed his ignorance, speaking of “the promise enshrined in our Constitution, the notion that we're all created equal." As any schoolboy who has reached the fifth grade should know, that is not in the Constitution; it is in paragraph two of the Declaration of Independence! Obama, by the way, humbly calls himself a Constitutional scholar and a ‘professor’ of constitutional law... He majored on “jobs” in that State speech and it was reminiscent of a previous one a short time ago on the same subject when he mentioned tax cuts twice, small businesses eight times, and Obama (himself) 132 times! His favorite phrase was “it’s not about me”… Seated in the gallery with his wife were the two police officers who stopped the Scott Roeder, the man who shot down baby-killing abortionist George Tiller in the latter’s church “to protect unborn babies,” was found guilty of premeditated, first-degree murder. While his motive may have been pure, his action was not. Romans President Obama appointed him. Or was it her? Anyway, Obama named Amanda Simpson a Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department. Amanda used to be Mitchell Simpson and he was a test pilot. An Arizonian, after his/her sex change she/he ran openly for the state legislature as a transgendered candidate. The people, given a chance for her/his leadership, soundly rejected him/her. But he/she fit right into the Obama program… Pioneer In our last issue we noted Lou Dobbs, former Headline News anchor, saying he was thinking of running for the Senate from The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Mark Hanson, in a Town Hall meeting to discuss ELCA’s position on ordaining perverts, said “today’s science” proves the Bible wrong on sodomy. He thinks God is “still speaking to us,” contradicting the Bible’s claim that He gave His last Word there. He also said being pro-Sodomite might help the denomination grow… Media watchdogs that track such things tell us the immorality of Tiger Woods has been getting 15 times the press ClimateGate has received. Reporting the latter is not politically correct. And the other is?… The “greenies” had a lot of fun (?) at the climate control conference in The Senate passed (57-35, eight not daring to vote, obviously) its $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill. A thousand pages (wordy is the key to get stupid, radical stuff passed, our leaders have learned) and less that half of this amount was for budget operation – the rest was for entitlements, along with over 5,000 (!) earmarks, commonly called “pork”... U.S. District Court Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr., appointed by Bill Clinton, was investigated for weeks by a Congressional committee about possible impeachment. Among other things, they found a pattern of five or six vodka cocktails during lunch, gambling with borrowed money, filing bankruptcy under a phony name, plus receiving cash, trips and home repairs from attorneys and a bail bondsman with business in his court. He’s a Democrat. Will he be impeached?... Our friend Anonymous hit the nail on the head: "A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own”… It came out recently in a book that, during the primaries in 2008, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke of Obama as a “light‑skinned black man with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” So both sides of the aisle called for his resignation like they did Republican Trent Lott, who held the same office as Reid, for saying at a birthday bash years after the fact that Strom Thurmond, a states’ rights advocate, would have made a good president (he would have, too – and you may quote me). Not exactly. In what had to be a horrendous double standard, Reid got a pass, while to this day Lott gets kicked… Memo to Al Gore: Dear Al, we are freezing to death. Will you check what has been called “global warming” and speed up the process?... When Obama, after the President Obama, giving his budget to Congress: "Already, we have made historic strides ... to cut wasteful spending.” Maybe he didn’t laugh, but everyone who heard him must have… Judicial Watch, using the Freedom of Information Act, obtained documents showing “Speaker Nancy Pelosi has incurred expenses of $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets the past two years. Then there's the matter of the $101,000 tab taxpayers picked up over that period for 'in-flight services,' including a selection of top-shelf booze ... Pelosi has used Air Force aircraft to travel back to her district at average cost of $28,210.51 per flight ... We suggest that since everybody has to make a sacrifice, it not come at the expense of the Need a whitewashing job done? Get the government – preferably the military – to do it for you. They are pros! Secretary Bob Gates ordered an investigation into Major Nidal Hasan’s slaughter of the innocent at The “Cockamamie?” That’s what Jim Martin, president of the “60 Plus Association,” calls the latest ObamaCare (hatched secretly in a back room by 10 Democrat senators). He added it is “insult on top of an insult,” the worst bill he’s seen in his 40 years in Columnist Jacob Sullum has a good suggestion: "From now on, when you hear Obama speak, try replacing 'let me be clear' with 'let me lie to you,' and see if it makes more sense"... Obama: "Let's be clear here [see previous item]. Seven presidents have tried to reform a health care system that everyone acknowledges is broken. Seven presidents have failed up until this point. We are now that close to having a bill that does all the things that I said and most experts said needed to be done when we started this process. It is not only deficit neutral, but will actually bring down the deficit according to the Congressional Budget Office"... Remember Winston Churchill's last words in his last speech in Parliament as prime minister in 1955 (quoted by columnist Tony Blankley): “Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair"… We salute, in this case, the seven Democrat senators who had the moral courage to vote for an amendment to ObamaCare that would have barred tax dollars for killing unborn babies. The seven were: Sen. Ben Nelson, Statesmen can’t be bought. Politicians can. In the case of ObamaCare, the majority of the general public did not want it. So Obama and his cronies used our tax money to buy off the crooked politicians to force on us what we didn’t want. Crooks do not get any lower than that. The list of “bought” politicians should embarrass the Devil!… Our friend, Dr. Jim Murk, issues a warning: “Right now Hillary Clinton is pushing for the Law of the Sea Treaty to be enacted. Obama will sign it. It will turn the entire control of the oceans over to the United Nations. There will be no freedom on the High Seas and Desperately need surgery? Have you tried outer space? The Senate passed a $1.1 trillion Omnibus bill in December that gives $2.7 million for surgical operations in outer space (this is the truth). If you can get signed up there, there is probably not a long ‘waiting’ list… Charles Stanley’s “In Touch Ministries” recently sold FamilyNet, a radio/tv network, to ComStar Media Fund, a firm associated with Robert A. Schuller, who broke recently from his father, Robert “Hour of Power” Schuller. A You heard what Harry Reid said about the black Obama back during the campaign, but did you know the same book reported Bill Clinton’s call to Ted Kennedy asking for his endorsement of Hillary and saying, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee”… David Limbaugh noted about ObamaCare: “No fewer than 13 state attorneys general signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, expressing their 'grave concern' over the constitutionality of one provision of the bill.” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs made a joke about it… According to Human Events, Harry Reid’s son Rory Reid is running for governor in Nevada, but Harry’s influence is so bad there that his campaign signs currently ignore “Reid,” just saying, “Rory 2010”… |
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