Scary Prophets

Blonde,

That made me so sad on so many levels. Was it all from the same message? Would you be able to provide a link or links so we can listen to the entire message.

"Mark, before you were born I appointed you and I appointed you a prophet." Wow.

Here are my random comments:

The yelling is disturbing.

Over the years he spent a lot of time discussing his hatred for the Internet. Seems to be on two levels. One, that his messages get on there and he gets in trouble for what he says. I hope that one day, he will be able to see how God used the Internet to correct his teaching and help others to not fall victim to false teaching.

The other level is that he repeatedly talks about the "slander" about him on the Internet. When I hear people make blanket statements like that, I say, "Like what?" Disagreeing with someone's public teaching is not slander. Saying that someone is a thief (unless they have been convicted of the crime) is slander. Are people really saying untrue things about him or are they disagreeing with his teaching?

I am reminded of a situation that happened many years ago (not a GC situation). A leader had been telling someone very close to me who was on a board of an organization that certain men were liars, and you couldn't believe what they said. A few weeks later one of these men wanted to meet my friend at a park in Minneapolis. My friend thought he perhaps was going to be attacked because he had been hearing about how bad this guy was. As it turns out, the guy meeting my friend in the park wanted to tell my friend that the leader of the group was having an affair with his wife. All the disclaimers by the leader about this man (how he was a liar) were ad hominem attacks to discredit him so the leader wouldn't get caught.

Since then, whenever I hear blanket statements without examples, I think back to that incident. If someone is doing something wrong, the way to handle it is not to discredit them, but to confront them. Not to tell others. You only tell others when the confronting part didn't work. Mr. D does not have to resort to ad hominem attack on critics of his messages. Making blanket statements that Internet commenters are slanderers is actually a form of slander. It works to keep some quiet, but when I hear it, it just makes me wonder, why the guy is so defensive.

He could use it as a teaching/clarifying opportunity by saying quietly, "In last week's message, I said such and such. Some have criticized that teaching. I wanted to further explain why I believe such and such." Yelling and attacking weakens his argument.

About the board of trustees. It sounds really good that a board of trustees makes all the decisions until you realize that the board of trustees (at least in our church) was appointed by the self-appointed elders. They are therefore beholden to the elders. They can be un-appointed at any given moment if they don't perform correctly. So, yes, there is a board, but no, they are not as independent as one would imagine.

And, about the prophet quote. I was reminded that being a prophet is not necessarily a good thing. There are false prophets.