Is the lens dim? - When do mega-media "Christians" go bad?
Is there a use-by date tattooed anywhere on them?
Pat Robertson has apparently claimed that God told him there would be a terrorist attack killing thousands if not millions on U.S. soil come the end of 2007.
You got to love how the AP report starts:
In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007.
"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."
Sometimes I just have to wonder if Robertson isn't crossing religious lines and taking up palm reading.
I don't mean to intone that God doesn't speak to people and warn of impending danger or to give direction, because He does. It's just hard to believe Robertson when he follows it up with things like this:
"I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."
Sometimes he misses? Good grief. It's hard to take him seriously. But then I think I stopped taking him seriously years ago.
Onto another mega-'Christian' mogul, Darlene Bishop of Darlene Bishop Ministries. It seems that she's being sued by family because she allegedly encouraged her brother suffering from cancer to not take treatments but instead to devote himself in prayer to be healed. He died.
She apparently stated in one her books that he was healed of the cancer, but the book doesn't mention his demise. Also in the book she writes of being healed from breast cancer. The Daily Mail reports:
But in a sworn deposition responding to the lawsuits Mrs Bishop, who was once voted America's sexiest preacher, admits no doctor ever diagnosed the breast cancer she refers to in her book.
She says she thought she had cancer in 1986 and that it was cured after she prayed to God to heal her.
I firmly believe that God answers prayer. And I believe that He heals too. But I get the sense from Mrs. Bishop's flashy website that she's into the 'Name it and Claim it' mentality. The kind of mentality of so many others who want to treat God like some cosmic genie.
Where Mrs. Bishop appears to have gone wrong is lying in her books. Maybe God did heal her of cancer, but without a medical diagnosis of cancer it's misleading to present it in a book to her readers. And then there's the whole thing of purporting her brother was healed only to have him die from cancer.
I don't know. Sometimes I just want to sigh and throw my hands up in exasperation.
[Hat tip: Drudge Report]
