Mormonism is a Cult Meme spreading further...Billy Grahman website down

[amborin]

Billy Graham Website Down: "Mormonism Cult" Scandal Widens

On Thursday and Friday Billy Graham's BGEA ran high-profile full page ads, in 2012 election battleground state newspapers, encouraging voters to support "Biblical values" - foremost among which, according to the ads, is opposition to same-sex marriage. Then, on late Friday, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association pulled the plug on the over-$75 million dollar a year nonprofit organization's website, in a striking counterpoint to the BGEA's byline: "Always Good News".

The surprise outage of the flagship global evangelizing organization website comes days before the 2012 presidential election, and on the heels of a widening scandal that opened up when aging evangelism superstar Billy Graham made a widely-heralded non-endorsement of presidential contender Mitt Romney and, soon after, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website scrubbed a page on which Graham identified Mormonism as a "cult", along with the Unification Church and Scientology.

On Friday, October 19th, the Washington Post ran a satirical essay , by a Mormon university professor, with the title "Mormon says he’ll miss ‘cult’ lifestyle". The same day, the website of Christianity Today, considered by many to be the world's leading publication for evangelical Christianity, featured a story titled Should the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association have Removed Mormons from "Cult" List? .


http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/brucewilson/billy-graham-website-down-mormonism-cult-scandal-widens

[Angry Dragon]

1. The 1% have bought Jesus

[brewens]

2. Pot calling the kettle black? We have historical proof of Joseph Smith being a con-man

but we at least know he really existed. At least proof he was accused of being a con-man. JAYUSUS may have been an even bigger huckster but we'll never know.

[CthulhusEvilCousin]

3. Maybe

But if Jesus was a con-man, He was not a profitable one.

Tacitus

Annals, book XV:
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

Mormonism, in contrast, makes billions of dollars a year, has 14 or 15 representatives in congress, owns a multitude of corporations, and only represents 1.7% of the population.

[CthulhusEvilCousin]

4. The article also discusses

the NAR. And if you want creepy, the NAR are it. Ironically, they are not far removed from the Mormons, who also believe they have Apostles and a Prophet who speak directly to God. The NAR are Charismatics who believe that they are also prophets and Apostles. They don't believe the retarded stuff Mormonism believes word for word, but they do believe in magic gold teeth (god gives people magic gold teeth), flopping around on the floor like fish, and also a tiny little doctrine known as DOMINIONISM, which is that they believe they will setup a Kingdom of God on Earth. The Mormons have a similar belief, where they have imagined themselves taking over the U.S. federal government, going through the "end times," and establishing a theocracy. Allegedly, after their theocracy is established, Jesus will land in Missouri. According to the NAR, He will land in Jerusalem. They're not much different in this regard.

Now, as I said in the other post, the Mormons represent 1.7%. And the NAR leadership are also, similarly, insignificant in terms of size. But they both have a deeper reach into politics and government than most people even realize. It's quite terrifying.

[pasto76]

5. he encountered an alien in thoser woods. My mormon foreman doesnt even deny that

he also acknowledges that 'they get their own planet" when they die, and "otherworldly" beings are part of their beliefs.

[BarackTheVote]

6. Selling out your religion for a tax cut...

tis easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle...

[sofa king]

7. I think that's what this election is really about.

A cult is seeking to make the jump to full-on religion, and is bent upon using Mitt Romney's Presidency to do it.

The only difference between a cult and a religion, Tom Wolfe once wryly observed, is that a religion has political power.

I figure the cult has all the goods it needs to make or break Romney's career at any time, either from Mitt's own confessions, or those who witnessed his deeds and reported them. If they can get him in, they have a better chance to exert control over him than anyone else does.

And that, finally, will make them a religion, in their eyes anyway.

[Lint Head]

8. A cult called right wing theocratic corporate fascism is making a mega effort to destroy our country.

Screw Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Billy and Franklin Graham and the entire GOP party!

[Iggy]

9. IMHO, The Mormon "Church" Is

more of a business empire-- like the bogus Scientology, than it is any sort of religion.

I hope everyone here read the Bloomberg Biz Week article on the Mormon business empire that came
out over the summer... Their empire is massive; way larger than I imagined. it was instructive in that
it helped define their culture.. and perhaps why Willard isn't forthcoming with ALL of his tax returns

[grasswire]

10. so much important stuff in this article!

Billy Graham is peeved at Obama because Obama rebuffed his overtures to be the personal spiritual mentor in 2008.

There's a cult called the New Apostolic Reformation that is tutoring at the state level the how-to's of forming a theocracy.

Kathleen Harris is an acolyte of that cult.

But even as Billy Graham has aged, and his perhaps less-diplomatic* son Franklin Graham has taken over the vast business franchise bequeathed to him by his superstar father, fast rising tendencies within American evangelism such as the New Apostolic Reformation -- which former co-architect of the religious right Colonel V. Doner, in a new 2012 book, warns could become an "American Jihad" -- are displacing strands of evangelicalism that embody Billy Graham's carefully cultivated ecclesiastical and religious inclusivity.

Top leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation have called upon their followers to burn the Book of Mormon, the principal scripture that differentiates Mormonism from Protestant and Catholic Christianity.

In early Fall 2012, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was a co-sponsor of the New Apostolic Reformation-dominated Philadelphia "America For Jesus" rally. A letter of support from the 93 year-old Billy Graham was read at the "America For Jesus" rally, which was sponsored by top NAR apostles and prophets including Cindy Jacobs , who has claimed that flocks of blackbirds dropped dead from the sky because of God's wrath at Barack Obama's decision to rescind the Department of Defense "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" policy concerning the sexual orientation of LGBT members in the U.S. military.

Other prominent NAR sponsors included Dutch Sheets , The Call founder Lou Engle , and National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference President Samuel Rodriguez . In August 2011, after unprecedented media scrutiny (see: 1, 2, 3) of the New Apostolic Reformation following a high-profile Houston, Texas NAR apostle- dominated religious rally called "The Response" that kicked off Texas Governor Rick Perry's failed bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, New Apostolic Reformation intellectual godfather C. Peter Wagner authored an op-ed for Charisma Magazine, the leading magazine of the Christian charismatic movement, titled The New Apostolic Reformation Is Not a Cult .

[Democat]

11. Cult = Any group who isn't willing to pay you enough for an endorsement?

Sounds possible.

[nc4bo]

12. ..

Sooooooo many Fundies are pissed/disturbed/horrified over this - just check out any red state or fundie reaction to Graham's "endorsement" stories in your local online newspapers and online television comments sections.

They are ready to burn stuff down I don't think Mitt is going to get quite the reaction he hoped for.

The Christian Right is not amused.