Inside a Cult: Messiah on Trial
Reporter: National Geographic and Channel 4   Broadcast: 18/05/2009

Last year the program told the story of Michael Travesser, formerly Wayne Bent, who claims to be the son of God. This week a gripping follow-up as filmmaker Ben Anthony documents the story of Wayne Bent’s prosecution on charges of underage sex. The charges are serious and could see him jailed for over thirty years.

Ben Anthony is there for every moment of the trial, talking to Wayne Bent, his followers and the people who once revered “their messiah” only to later denounce him. His followers simply call him “Michael”. His real name is Wayne Bent. He says he is “divine” and he led a group of people into an isolated part of New Mexico, in the United States, to prepare them for the end of the world.

Two years ago this new age messiah allowed filmmaker Ben Anthony access to his compound called “Strong City”, and to speak to his followers. What Anthony documented shocked many viewers. Here was a man who wielded unfettered power over the people around him. Most of them had signed over their possessions to him. All offered utter obedience. But his demands were many. Using psychological manipulation Wayne Bent convinced the women in the group that they should sleep with him. Those men that objected were sent packing.

Intent on extending his influence, he then began a campaign to encourage the young girls in the group to come before him naked so they might fully know God. His actions began to concern some of the families involved. They also drew the attention of the local law enforcement agencies.

Last year Wayne Bent was tried for committing sex crimes against two of those girls. Once again filmaker Ben Anthony was there to record the proceedings and the results of his work are, “Inside a Cult: Messiah on Trial” - made with the assistance of the National Geographic Channel and Channel 4. 

It will be replayed on the 19th May at 11.35pm ( TONIGHT ).
link

or else you can even watch it now on iview :

iview link

Here’s one:

Jesus was a reformed racist, says Anglican Church of Canada
Posted By: Damian Thompson at Feb 27, 2009 at 00:41:46 [General]
Posted in: Religion
Tags: Anglican Church of Canada, Lenten reflections, typical Canadian political correctness

The Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) has published a Lenten reflection that portrays Jesus as a racist who saw the error of his ways after being challenged by the Canaanite woman in Matthew’s Gospel. The ACoC was long ago taken over by politically correct bores but, as Anglican Samizdat notes, this “reflection” turns Jesus into a sinner - in Christian terms, a pretty basic heresy. Here’s the reflection. Sick-bags at the ready:

—-

“… a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the houseof Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ ” - Matthew 14:22-27

This not a story for people who need to think that Jesus always had it together, because it looks like we’ve caught him being mean to a lady because of her ethnicity. At first, he ignores her cries. Then he refuses to help her and compares her people to dogs.

But she challenges his prejudice. And he listens to her challenge and grows in response to it. He ends up healing her daughter. What we may have here is an important moment of self-discovery in Jesus’ life, an enlargement of what it will mean to be who he was. Maybe we are seeing Jesus understand his universality for the first time.

—-

Or maybe not. Maybe someone has been on a “racism awareness course” and decided to redefine the divinity of Jesus in a way that flatters ethnic sensibilities. How very Anglican. How very Canadian.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2009/02/27/jesus_was_a_reformed_racist_says_anglican_church_of_canada

Birgitta Jonsdottir - Banking takeover of Iceland - part 1/5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XFRtqaJpKk&feature=related

Max Keiser Report (A shorter story)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHuRAbAs-j4

City Bible Forum weekly talks start today in the Sydney CBD with a special topic - “Where was God in the bushfires?”

Speaker: Dominic Steele.
Time: Wednesday 12.10pm or 1.10pm, or Thursday 1.10pm.
Location: 123 Pitt Street (Angel Place Conference Centre) Martin Place for the Wednesday talks, or Chapter House (St Andrews Cathedral) Town Hall for the Thursday.
Cost: Free to bring lunch in or pay $7 for their lunch.

Will try for Wednesday 1.10pm, should be interesting stuff!

Is it too soon to be writing it’s obituary?

I appreciate the good intentions and hard work of those who have had to work extremely hard to wrangle something together in a very short time frame, but the calendar is looking pretty bare, and this isn’t a rehearsal, this is supposed to be the real deal.

I was talking about Connect09 with some ordinary pew sitters the other week, and there seems to be a case of a severe lack of direction, which has been the case from the get go really.

The diocesan leadership didn’t really know what it should be, so they got the ministers together and told them to figure it out.

The ministers didn’t know what it was supposed to be, so they told the congregation to work it out.

The congregation didn’t really know what it was supposed to be, so nothing much is happening.

When you see people passing responsibility down the chain it’s pretty clear there’s no direction. Then to make up for that, no direction becomes the direction - it’s ‘whatever you make it.’

There’s probably a few initiatives here and there that are operating under (or have been co-opted by) the Connect09 banner,  but is anyone else feeling a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing?

Currently it seems everyone’s preoccupied with Acts 29 church planting, which is kind of odd - doesn’t having a outside network planting your kind of churches in your backyard mean you aren’t doing your job? Weird.

My wife sent me these, even though most of them were first told to her by me.

1. Two antennas meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The ceremony wasn’t much, but the reception was excellent.

2. Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar.
One says, “I’ve lost my electron.”
The other says, “Are you sure?”
The first replies, “Yes, I’m positive…”

3. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, “I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”

4. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

5. A sandwich walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Sorry we don’t serve food in here.”

6. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

7. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says:
“A beer please, and one for the road.”

8. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: “Does this taste funny to you?”

9. “Doc, I can’t stop singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.’”
“That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome.”
“Is it common?”
Doc says “It’s Not Unusual.”

11. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

12. A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, “My dog’s cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?”
“Well,” says the vet, “let’s have a look at him.”
So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth.
Finally, he says, “I’m going to have to put him down.”
“What? Because he’s cross-eyed?”
“No, because he’s really heavy.”

Here is why.

  * IFR’s eat today’s nuclear waste, and are the only way to economically solve the previous generation’s nuclear waste!
  * Instead of old waste being an expensive problem to dispose of, it becomes a fuel that could run the world for the next 500 years! Just the American waste alone would then be worth $30 trillion dollars! (Point 4 here).
  * Nuclear waste from older reactors has to be stored for 100 thousand years, but after ‘burning’ in an IFR it is reduced to 10% of the mass and then only has to be stored for 300 years because it is so radioactive that it quickly burns itself out.
  * 500 years of cheap baseload power is attractive in a world of peak oil, gas, and coal, and who knows what other energy alternatives we may have discovered and developed by then?
  * If we started building IFR’s today, by the time we ran out of ‘normal waste’ to reprocess, the first few generations of IFR ’super-hot’ waste would have burnt themselves out and could be decommissioned from high security storage and be safe! That’s the nuclear waste problem solved!

For more, see this blog or download this podcast.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/07/22/science-show-nuclear-power-plants-now-safer-and-cheaper/

So here’s a thread we can do that in, whenever we are moved to pray prayers of thanksgiving.

I’ll start with a few very current things.

I’m thankful to God for:
~ my 4-digit tax return that has helped me in my newest jobless season;
~ a saving on my Paris/London/Hong Kong airfare - $3119 total, instead of up to $5741..a nice deal!!
~ the Flight Centre travel expo this last weekend that made it all so economical
~ opening doors for me to be going this far.

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 THESSALONIANS 5, verses 18, 17 and 18.

TZ.

* Is suffering part of God’s plan for the Christian, when it happens today?
..and..
* Is it ever God’s will that His beloved (in the world today - people just like US) should suffer?

I’d like to hear Bible-based thoughts on this (apart from my ideas). The reason being..

..A Christian brother in my age bracket who goes to a very different kind of church from either of mine..
(my churches being
- AM Sydney Anglican;
- PM interdenominational Chinese church with Presbyterian & Baptist roots)
..recently sent my sister [blood relative not just Christian sister] a message with the following ideas:

{When God doesn’t heal..?}

So what to do with the un-healed wounds? Well, do as Jesus did, “endure” it, rather than take “joy” in it.. knowing it is NOT His will for you..

He has answers for you.. and that either means striking out n perservering in the same prayer n not giving up..  perhaps that takes little change of environment, or different answers re: “renewing of your mind”..

..a theology which suggests that .. suffering is part of God’s plan is wrong..
..

“Because Jesus ENDURED the Cross (Heb 12:2), He didn’t take pleasure in it (SO NEITHER SHOULD WE) - God is not a cosmic killjoy - it was the ONLY WAY.

..Suffering exists in the world, not because God desires it for us, but because it exists as a result of sin in the world from the Fall.

..God desires us not to suffer: if Hitler had been sent for our own good, then you have the Father’s will desiring for our destruction, and Jesus cleaning up and acting in the opposite way.. but Jesus is perfect theology - He is the exact representation of the Father and the Father’s will - and God is not a schizophrenic by all means - God is good, ALL the time..!!

To me it seems like my Christian brother is saying,
“God’s plan for us is NOT to suffer;
God’s will for us is NOT to suffer..”

I could be reading it wrong, & maybe also he worded this badly.. .. ..

IF, however, that is what he is saying, then my personal feeling - based on the calling of Paul the apostle as recorded in the book of ACTS - is that I disagree with such ideas.
~

Reasons for disagreeing with this notion
that suffering is NOT part of God’s plan for us:

Reason 1
In ACTS ch. 9 - verses 11 to 16 -  Saul of Tarsus has been blinded while on the warpath against Jesus’ followers.

God directs Ananias to Saul, revealing to Ananias what He has got planned for Saul:

”This man is my chosen instrument
to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings
and before the people of Israel.
I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.””
(vv.15-16)

It seems rather obvious to me that God intended Saul/Paul to suffer, in his lifetime.

That it was, ahem, God’s will for Paul to suffer.
~

Reason 2
Gallop forward through Paul’s history to ACTS ch. 20 - verses 17 to 31 -  where Paul has gathered the leaders of the Ephesians church.

He himself says:

”And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem,
not knowing what will happen to me there.
I only know that in every city
the Holy Spirit warns me
that prison and hardships are facing me.”
(vv.22-23)

What??

God the Spirit has warned Paul to EXPECT imprisonment?

And hardships too?

Sounds like suffering to me.
~

Reason 3
Peter, friend/follower/apostle of Christ, says in the 4th chapter of his first letter:

”So then, those who suffer according to God’s will
should commit themselves to their faithful Creator
and continue to do good.”
(v.19)

Actually, ALL of that section in 1 Peter 4 is good to read & think through..
~

So, do passages like these say,
“YES, it may be part of God’s plan for you to suffer”?

Am I wrong, if I dare to say that according to the words of Paul & Peter
- Jesus’ own apostles -
that in fact it may be God’s will (sometimes) that we suffer?

TZ.

P.S. I do not want to sound glib here.
I realise that there are people reading this who are suffering terribly right now - whether that be physical, emotional, mental or other suffering.
(I myself have suffered greatly on an emotional level in recent years.)

The passages I’ve tried to quote are actually what the Bible says. I could be interpreting them wrongly, after all..