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Jewish leaders are criticizing a ceremony that involved a controversial megachurch leader being wrapped in a religious scroll and exalted as a “king� to the applause of his parishioners. The video from a service last Sunday at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church shows Rabbi Ralph Messer, a Messianic preacher, instructing two men to slowly wrap Bishop Eddie Long in a large scroll that’s purported to be the Torah.“It doesn’t matter where you go, how you try to attack him. He’s sealed,” Messer proclaims, before the scroll is opened to reveal a teary-eyed Long. Moments later, Long was seated in...

In a Saturday phone call to Florida Courier Publisher Charles W. Cherry II, Daniel Beirute, attorney for Florida-based televangelist Paula White, denied that White would be 'coronated' as was Bishop Eddie Long in a widely ridiculed ceremony that went viral on Youtube. "The allegation stated in your article, that 'Rabbi Ralph Messer is … coming to New Destiny Christian Center … to make Paula White a ‘queen’ during a Super Bowl Sunday service' is entirely false," Beirute wrote in a later email. "There is not a single shred of truth in it, and we cannot fathom where such ridiculous fantasy...

="itemFullText"> Otis Holland, 55, a Las Vegas pastor wanted on charges of having sex with underage girls, was captured on Wednesday, Jan. 25, in Mexico. Holland disappeared from the Henderson area in June, after an arrest warrant was issued for him by the Henderson Police. The warrant was for 11 counts of sexual assault of a victim under the age of 16, one count of child abuse and conspiracy to commit a crime. On a recent airing of Fox-TV's America's Most Wanted, the pastor's crimes were broadcast, bringing in a tip from a viewer who saw the program. The information...

A Broward teenager is accusing a Fort Lauderdale youth pastor of sexually molesting him for the past 10 years, according to the Broward Sheriff's Office. Jeffery London, 48, was arrested Wednesday night at his home in Lauderdale Lakes after returning from conducting Bible study at the Bible Church of God in Fort Lauderdale, sheriff's officials said. The accuser, now 18 years old, recently told a friend from church that he had been abused repeatedly over the decade he lived with London. The alleged victim's mother had left him in London's care when he was 8 after she faced financial difficulties,...

T.D. Jakes says he has moved away from a "Oneness" view of the Godhead to embrace an orthodox definition of the Trinity -- and that some in the Oneness Pentecostal movement now consider him a heretic.,... Oneness Pentecostalism denies the Trinity and claims that instead of God being three persons, He is one person. In Oneness Pentecostalism, there is no distinction between the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. It is also called "modalism," . 'It is encouraging to see T.D. Jakes moving away from the heresy of modalism. However, we should pray for him and exhort him privately and...

In December 2011 the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (Washington) issued A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population. Some of the data were developed in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (South Hamilton, Massachusetts). The two institutions are responsible for the bulk of reliable statistical information on religion worldwide. They are directed, respectively, by Luis Lugo and Todd Johnson. I happen to know these two gentlemen quite well. They are the religious nose counters par excellence. Ask them how many Lutherans there are in Mongolia, and how many Buddhists...

The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life published a demographic report this week on the size and distribution of the world's Christian population and revealed that Pentecostals and charismatics make up more than a quarter of all Christians. Using estimates from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the report also showed that together Pentecostals and charismatics make up more than 8 percent of the world’s total population. The study defines Pentecostals as members of Pentecostal denominations that teach that all Christians should seek a post-conversion religious experience called the baptism of...

Leaders of two large Christian traditions held preliminary conversations Dec. 13-15 to lay groundwork for ecumenical dialogue between Baptists and Pentecostals around the world. Delegations from the Baptist World Alliance and Pentecostal World Fellowship set guidelines for anticipated multi-year meetings to pursue closer ties between two groups..Pentecostals are members of Protestant denominations or independent churches that hold the teaching that all Christians should seek a post-conversion religious experience called the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They believe that people who experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit may receive one or more spiritual gifts, including the abilities to prophesy or...

You don't often find a Pentecostal preacher who converts to Catholicism, but it does happen. To hear a first-hand account of just such a transformation, you may want to check out a special mission series at 7 p.m. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday at Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic Church, 3601 S.W. 17th. The featured speaker for all three nights will be the Rev. Alex Jones, a former Pentecostal preacher from Detroit who became a Roman Catholic a decade ago after studying the early church. Jones is now an ordained deacon in the Catholic church. After his conversion, 62 people...

Journey Home - 08-22-2011 - Former Pentecostal - Marcus Grodi with Brent Stubbs Pentecostal Convert: Brent Stubbs    The Journey Home with Marcus Grodi LIVE - Mondays 8 PM ET Encore – Tuesday 1 AM ET & 9 AM ET, Thursday 2 PM ET, Saturday 11 PM ET Host Marcus Grodi is also the founder of The Coming Home Network International. The purpose of the Coming Home Network International (CHNetwork) is to provide fellowship, encouragement, and support to men and women who are considering becoming Catholic and those who have already come home. In particular, the Coming Home Network seeks...

Kanon Tipton is a preacher who has become a YouTube sensation, brought congregations to their feet, and appeared in a television special. Yet he still has other challenges ahead — like starting the first grade. Dubbed the “world’s youngest preacher,’’ the 4-year-old from Mississippi has galvanized audiences in person and online, where videos of his energetic sermons have been viewed more than four million times. He is merely the latest in line in his family, precociously following in the footsteps of his Pentecostal preacher grandfather and father.Tipton and his parents, Damon and Kandi, spoke with TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie in the...

Police have arrested three pastors of a Pentecostal group, the Gospel Messengers Team (GMT) and the couple who hosted them: the episode occurred on July 13 in Bighapur, Unna district in Uttar Pradesh, on false charges of having tried to convert people of other religions, even by force. On the morning of July 13 about 150 faithful gathered at the house of Om Prakash for the regular weekly prayer, led by pastors AB Singh, Ganga Prasad and Robert of GMT. At about 11, about 75 people led by Himesh Dixit, Subhash Bajpai and Chinh Patel, known leaders of the Hindu...

The two lines begin forming outside the Crystal Cathedral before 9 on Sunday mornings. It is a mostly immigrant crowd - Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, among others - and they stand patiently, unfurling umbrellas against the sun. When the doors open for the 9:30 English-language service, the lines don't budge. It isn't for a lack of seats inside - so few people are there that cameramen have trouble finding crowd shots for the "Hour of Power" television program, which has been broadcast from the Garden Grove megachurch since 1970.

The Assemblies of God, one of the largest Pentecostal denominations, is growing faster than the U.S. population.AG reported that its U.S. adherents increased four percent in 2010, which is several times higher than the U.S. population growth rate, which is about one percent a year. Adherents of the Assemblies of God USA have surpassed three million followers, 3,030,944 to be exact, in 2010. This is the largest annual percentage increase since 1983, according to AG records. In terms of official membership, AG reported a 2.5 percent increase, to 1.75 million members. Attendance at major worship service, water baptism, spirit baptism,...

Researchers say Pentecostals and charismatics - Catholics and others who share in Pentecostal practices - make up one-quarter of the world’s Christians, with the greatest numbers in the developing world. A new study finds the fastest-growing Pentecostal churches are tackling social problems in their communities...Professor Donald Miller of the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture said churches like this are booming around the world. He has visited many, from a Catholic charismatic congregation in India to a Pentecostal assembly in Singapore.This Catholic charismatic congregation in Brazil is part of a huge movement in the country, where...

A large conference of Pentecostals whose Christian tradition is rooted in India is set for Thursday through July 3 at Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City. The Rev. Thomas Mathew, one of the event's coordinators, said between 5,000 and 6,000 people from across the United States and Canada are expected to attend the Pentecostal Conference of North American Keralites, now in its 29th year. Mathew, senior pastor of First India Pentecostal Church, 1001 N Council, said the event was created to gather together natives of the state of Kerala, India, and their descendants who are part of the Pentecostal...

PASTOR Kwame Anim, president and general overseer of Pentecostal Fire Ministry, a burgeoning charismatic church at Denkyemuoso in the Kwadaso District of the Ashanti Region, has taken his life under a bizarre circumstance. The 46-year-old pastor, who was a native of Apirede in the Eastern Region, was said to have committed the abominable act in one of the uncompleted rooms in his house at 4.00am Tuesday, a few hours after retiring to bed. This is the second time a man of God is allegedly taking his life, as a Baptist priest had allegedly blown his head off in a similar...

When the famous falter, people pay attention. That’s as true today as it was 85 years ago, when the most prominent evangelist of the day suddenly vanished. Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared from Los Angeles on this date in 1926. The woman at the center of this mystery seemed to have everything – beauty, eloquence, the fame that accompanied one of the first major multimedia ministries. Pentecostal minister Aimee Semple McPherson established the 5,000-seat Angelus Temple based on her Foursquare Gospel. She built her ministry over years of tent revivals, newspaper columns, radio broadcasts and charismatic flourishes that included faith healing...

But why would people furious about corruption, rising prices, and political authoritarianism care about homosexuality, which is already illegal in Uganda? The answer lies in another country where politics are often hijacked by anti-gay demagoguery—our own..... But the political scapegoating of gays and lesbians is a relatively recent phenomenon, one deliberately exported by the American right.Martin Ssempa, a Pentecostal preacher who has championed the bill, was a protégé of Rick Warren and, during the Bush administration, a recipient of at least $90,000 of American aid earmarked for abstinence promotion.Yet the ideology underlying the bill comes from American conservatives. It is...

Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal (really?) If you believe that the clergy sex abuse scandal is a "Catholic" phenomenon, then (sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but...) you are likely another example that Americans usually hear what they want to hear, prefer to believe what makes them happy, and accept things that the pagan media tells them without discernment.

...This brings us to the Presbyterian Church, which has historically held that the gift of tongues was limited to the generation of Christ’s apostles and has since then ceased ....The Presbyterian position on tongues, as well as the “sensational gifts” (interpretation of tongues, healing, prophecy, miracles, etc…) differs sharply from the Pentecostal view at a fundamental philosophical level...Unlike Pentecostals, Presbyterians do not look at the events of Acts as being normative for what the church should expect to experience in every generation. To the contrary, Presbyterians interpret Acts as the history of the birth of the church, not a pattern...

If you grew up Catholic, it may be difficult for you to relate to those who profess faith in Jesus but whose stomachs turn at the thought of being Catholic. It might seem odd that the Catholic theology you’ve grown up with is seen by others as an offense to God. I was one of the stomach turners. There are days that I wake up and I still can’t believe I’m Catholic. I grew up in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, usually referred to as Foursquare. Foursquare is a Pentecostal denomination that began in the 1920s and is...

Right now there are churches in almost every country which call themselves Baptists on the sign out front who, nevertheless, arc not Baptists, but in reality are Pentecostal churches. ....Pentecostalism is the belief that the miraculous gifts or signs which the Lord gave to the Apostles and others in the early churches have not ceased, but are still available and are still being exercised by today’s Christians. Pentecostalism claims that God still gives these miraculous gifts to men today. Lists of these gifts can be found in Mark 16:17-18 and 1 Corinthians 12:8-11. ..God’s extraordinary gifts are called this in...

Pentecostal Bishop Alphonso Scott. St. Louis, Mo., Apr 25, 2010 / 08:01 am (CNA).- The misdeeds of a few priests who have committed “atrocities” should not overshadow the “great deeds” done by priests and religious of the Catholic Church, two leading African American ministers from St. Louis have said.Writing in the St. Louis American were Pentecostal Bishop Alphonso Scott of the Lively Stone Church of God and Bishop Jesse Battle of the House of Deliverance Church. They are respectively president and vice-president of the Ecumenical Leadership Council, which represents hundreds of predominantly African American churches in Missouri.Noting the headlines...

Nana Kwesi Yirenkyi, Head pastor of Jesus Blood Prophetic Ministry at Oblogo in Accra, was put before court on a charge of incest yesterday. He was refused bail. Counsel for the accused, popularly known as ‘Jesus One Touch; prayed the court, presided over by Mrs Georgina Mensah-Datsa, to grant his client bail contending that “he leads a large congregation and has a fixed abode.” But the judge turned down the lawyer’s plea and remanded Pastor Yirenkyi to appear again on March 17. Prophet Yirenkyi was arrested by the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Police Service at...

Teaching that God, who is pure spirit (John 4:24), has His own spirit body is to teach something definitely not found in Scripture. There is no biblical basis for such a teaching. This teaching would be more in line with Mormonism than orthodox Christianity. Kenneth Copeland teaches that God created the Universe, and everything therein, out of a spiritual substance known as faith, by forming a mental picture of the creation in "the insides of Him," then by using words as containers for His "faith," projected the image outwardly into the reality of creation. For example, in his tape, Spirit,...

NO PRICE TOO HIGH  (1 hr) The profound conversion story of a Protestant minister who brought his congregation with him into the Catholic Church. The viewer will discover the sacrificial yet triumphant journey of a man of deep integrity and love for Christ.Wed 3/3/10 10:00 PM ET / 7 PM PT Sat 3/6/10 5:00 AM ET / 2 AM PT Pastor and Flock Convert to CatholicismJUDY ROBERTSWhen Pentecostal minister Alex Jones came into the Church this past Easter he was not alone. He brought much of his congregation in with him. When Pentecostal minister Alex Jones came into the Church...

Obama's so-called holy writ is the abominable Koran. His hope for eternity is unknown; but if he becomes a suicide bomber for Allah, he will be guaranteed pronto a score of virgins for everlasting. His hope for the present seems to be his reliance upon Islam's Koran furthered by his clandestine support of Islam World Rule via czars and a shadow government given to overthrowing our Republic.

When Bill O’Reilly asked Sally Quinn questions regarding Sarah Palin’s faith on The Factor, Quinn was all over the answer board.

Women should support women. That’s what feminists preach. They write it as a part of their creed. It’s basic. Not however when it comes to Sarah Palin. She will not get the support of America’s women in total. Not on your life.

Sarah Palin, if running for President, surely will divide this Republic all the more into two definite segments-fiercely opposing segments. Already we have two primary segments: believers and secularists. Believers are those moralists who hold to the God of the Bible, particularly the New Testament God in Christ. It may be via Roman Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism, Orthodox Christians, or non-church members who hold to biblical ethics. Secularists are exampled by Joy Behar on The View. She is with conviction a non-believer who holds that this life is all there is. No deity. No hereafter. No judgment accountability. This is it;...

Already we have two primary segments: believers and secularists. Believers are those moralists who hold to the God of the Bible, particularly the New Testament God in Christ. It may be via Roman Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism, Orthodox Christians, or non-church members who hold to biblical ethics. Secularists are exampled by Joy Behar on The View. She is with conviction a non-believer who holds that this life is all there is. No deity. No hereafter. No judgment accountability. This is it; write your own (im)morals.

She is not only Christian in the biblical definition, but also “evangelical” when it comes to tags. And not only “evangelical,” but charismatic/pentecostal. That issue alone will swab the deck. The atheists, agnostics and generic secularists will warp and woof. They will holler and screech. They will write and scrawl. They will pull up the sewer tops from every evangelical and pentecostal persona in the past century. Further, they will take especially the pentecostal beliefs and strew them from coast to coast, then every continent. They will misplace them, misstate them, malign them and nail them to hell’s front door.

It seems to be a basic rule of the universe that whenever something is simple the devil tries to complexificate it and whenever something is complex the devil is always insisting that it should be simple.So it is only in keeping with this pattern that something as simple as baptism should have generated so much unbelievable complexity over so simple and powerful a rite.It would appear at first glance that there is nothing to performing baptisms. All you need is sufficient water (just a few drops will do) to run on the skin and somebody (anyone will do) to say,...

The God Chasers by Tommy Tenney Book Excerpt & Commentary I recently finished THE SHACK by William P Young and HE LOVES ME by Wayne Jacobsen. I found both of them deeply moving, Biblical, edifying and helpful in drawing me closer to God. Subsequently, a Navy Friend/ Christian Bro of 30+ years read me the riot act about THE SHACK. I found his rants about “heresy” completely without substance. Turns out he had not read it. Sheesh. It is, after all, a NOVEL! And, I found it exceedingly Biblical. Some important Biblical truths, doctrines are affirmed with a sentence...

Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. As we came to the close of the last millennium there were groups within the Christian community who claimed to have a special connection with the encounter that the early followers of Jesus had in the upper room on that great and glorious day. A modern “Pentecostal” movement was born. Out of it, much good has come. The Second Vatican Council in the Catholic Church began with a prayer for a...

ABC News Ties Sarah Palin to Pentecostalism "As America gets a crash course in Sarah Palin, the question has been raised of how her two decades as a member of the Assemblies of God church in Wasilla has shaped her personality. If elected, Sarah Palin would become the most powerful Pentecostal in U.S. history. So how has this church shaped her as a leader"What is interesting about this is that my father (a minister now for forty years) was an Assemblies of God pastor for seven years and was also a pastor for many years with Church on the Rock...

Marcelo Bordon is a powerful bear of a man. In football, people like Bordon are known as towering defenders. He is sitting in the club restaurant owned by Schalke 04, the Bundesliga (German football league) team he plays for. With his slicked-back hair, muscular upper body and tattoos, he could easily pass for a prison guard in New Jersey. Yet he speaks softly, talking about the love that helps him when he is in distress, and about the one who has always been there for him, ever since he came into his life. Bordon is referring to the Holy Spirit....

While the millions of Muslims in America are observing the month of Ramadan and concentrating on gaining as many blessings as possible in this noble month, we would be deaf, dumb, and blind not to be caught up in election fever. Every media outlet is giving non-stop coverage to the contest between the Democratic Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama and Vice-Presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden and the Republican candidate John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Given the unpopularity of President George W. Bush and the Democratic leads in polls, most observers have assumed it to be...

As the “drive-by-media” continues to look at every aspect of Sarah Palin’s personal and religious life, they are digging themselves into a big hole, turning what they believe will cause her harm, to work for her good. If you take nothing else from this, remember this quote: Bitter Pennsylvanians “cling to their guns and religion.” — Barack Obama Reporters for CNN and other networks are not prepared to write honestly or objectively about matters of faith. These are people who view life from a much different perspective. They are not so naive to overlook that Christians from all denominations are...

WASHINGTON, March 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pope Benedict XVI will lead an ecumenical prayer service April 18, at St. Joseph's Church in the Yorkville area of Manhattan. Participants at the service will include 250 national and local Protestant and Orthodox Church leaders. St. Joseph's Church was built in the 19th century by the immigrant German community that settled in the area and today serves a diverse population. A Sunday Mass is still celebrated in German. The pope will address the group after a reading from Paul's letter to the Ephesians (4:1-6) and before the congregation prays the Lord's Prayer. At the...

WIMAUMA - Father Demetrio Lorden walks into the garage of a concrete block house, slips on his robe and vestments, and unpacks a gold chalice. He tests a microphone, and as dogs howl nearby, a small group of Hispanic workers and their families launches into a discordant song of praise. Lorden calls this his "evangelism Mass," the one he has every Monday night in houses and mobile home camps of the Wimauma immigrant community. Like other Catholic priests with Hispanic members, Lorden is trying to fend off competitors for the parishioners in his pews. Protestant evangelists - people just as...

A senior Vatican cardinal told a gathering of the world's top prelates Friday that the Roman Catholic Church had to examine what it is doing wrong in the battle for souls who are leaving the church to join Pentecostal and other evangelical groups.Cardinal Walter Kasper, who heads the Vatican's office for relations with other Christians, told a meeting of more than 100 cardinals that the church must undergo a "self-critical pastoral examination of conscience" to confront the "exponential" rise of Pentecostal movements."We shouldn't begin by asking ourselves what is wrong with the Pentecostals, but what our own pastoral shortcomings are,"...

When Pentecostal power couple Randy and Paula White recently announced they were headed to divorce court, the most remarkable part of the reaction was that there wasn't much reaction at all. For increasing numbers of clergy, a divorce no longer generates the kind of career-killing hue and cry of decades ago, in part because plenty of people in the pews have experienced divorce themselves. The shifting views on divorced clergy reflect a growing concession among rank-and-file conservative Christians that a failed marriage is no longer an unforgivable sin. For many evangelical Christians, the line seems to have shifted from a...

TAMPA, Florida (CNN) -- Some Christian congregations, particularly in lower income, urban areas, are turning to an unlikely source for help -- the Church of Scientology. Rev, Charles Kennedy uses Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's book during a Friday night sermon. Scientologists do not worship God, much less Jesus Christ. The church has seen plenty of controversy and critics consider it a cult. So why are observant Christians embracing some its teachings? ....The Rev. Charles Kennedy, of the Glorious Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal church in Tampa, Florida, and the Rev. James McLaughlin, of the Wayman Chapel African...

I was raised in the Oneness Pentecostal movement until I was twelve years old. My mother was more devout, and my dad had stopped attending church by the time I was around six or seven. The Oneness Pentecostals are a very, very strict sect of the Pentecostal churches. I remember when we had no television in the house, we couldn’t wear short-sleeved shirts, no make-up for the women, long hair for the women, and a myriad of other rules applicable to every facet of life. I was baptized in “Jesus’ name,” for the Oneness churches do not believe in the...

Raleigh | A powerful sense of devotion overtook Michael Burbeck in a medieval church in the small Czech town of Cesky Krumlov. The way he describes it, he was praying in the lofty, 125-foot-high sanctuary of St. Vitus Roman Catholic Church, when he looked up at a life-size crucifix and was overwhelmed by a sense of peace and belonging. He realized he would commit the rest of his life to Jesus. "It was like the classic movie scene: Guy sees girl across the room, knows she's the one," said Burbeck, who grew up on the Cary-Apex border. "I had this...

July 30 Roundtable (former Pentecostals)

Ask people to name the most influential Canadians of the 20th century and they will throw out familiar entries from the centre-left political firmament: Pierre Trudeau, Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas. Yet there was a woman who eclipsed all these men: a Canadian preacher who reinvented American Protestantism, starred in a crime sensation rivalling that of the Lindbergh kidnapping and helped fuse the alliance between evangelism and right-wing ideology that drives American politics to this day. And amazingly, I bet you've never heard of her. Perhaps a newly published biography will change that. Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy was born to a hardscrabble...

Marcus Grodi welcomes John and Gay Caswell, former Pentecostals, to his program this evening. This is a live telecast and you may call the number posted on the television screen for an opportunity to pose a question to his guests. Alternately, you may also submit your questions via email to journeyhome@ewtn.com. This program will be televised, live, at 8pm Eastern Daylight Savings time. Check your local cable listings for the appropriate channel.