Why Is Right Wing Watch, of People for the American Way, Worried about Julio Severo?

By Julio Severo

Right Wing Watch, a major American socialist group, has for several years and several times focused on my articles published by the conservative website BarbWire, and it has “exposed” them to its U.S. left-wing audience for politically incorrect views.

Its latest focus was on my BarbWire article “VP Pence Praises Indonesia’s Islamic Culture, Tours Mosque with His Shoes Off.” Right Wing Watch said on April 25, 2017,

Finally, Julio Severo is outraged that Vice President Pence took off his shoes while visiting a mosque in Indonesia: “You can take off your shoes where God is. But to take off your shoes in a place where God is offended is an insult to God. A Christian should never take off his shoes in a place where Islam is worshiped.”

Why does Right Wing Watch want to defend Pence, who is a conservative evangelical, in his non-conservative attitudes involving Islam? Specifically, why does this powerful left-wing group want to defend Pence from a Brazilian conservative evangelical?

Right Wing Watch exposed, at the same time, David Horowitz and Larry Klayman just for expressing conservative views hated by the U.S. left.

Other prominent conservative leaders frequently attacked by Right Wing Watch are: Scott Lively, Pat Robertson, Peter LaBarbera, Tony Perkins, Matt Barber, Linda Harvey, Bill Federer, Michael Savage, Alex Jones, Joseph Farah, Jerry Falwell Jr., Jane Chastain, Erik Rush, Bryan Fischer, Michele Bachmann, James Dobson, Dinesh D’Souza, Family Research Council, Barbara Simpson, Mat Staver, Cindy Jacobs, Lou Engle, Lance Wallnau, Rick Joyner and many others.

What does Right Wing Watch, which is owned by People for the American Way, want?

According to WND, People for the American Way (PFAW) is “an atheist socialist organization which, through publications like its ‘Right Wing Watch,’ dedicates itself to the destruction of conservatives in general.”

According to its website, Right Wing Watch has a special mission to attack conservatives opposed to the gay agenda, abortion and Muslim ideology.

This is not the first time Right Wing Watch exposed my article to its American left-wing audience. Last January, Right Wing Watch said:

Julio Severo asserts that Obama’s state department fomented “culture war on behalf of the homosexual agenda” all over the world that was carried out by that “pro-sodomy neocon,” Hillary Clinton.

Last October Right Wing Watch said:

Julio Severo proclaims that “neocon Hillary and her Catholic vice want to purge America from real Christian conservatives …The real Founding Fathers of America, including the first American president George Washington, were white, Protestant and conservative. They were not pro-abortion, pro-sodomy and neocon. They would never support neocon Hillary.”

In that same month, Right Wing Watch said:

Matt Barber’s BarbWire website posted a story on Monday by frequent contributor Julio Severo, who was alarmed by a “bisexual community briefing” at the White House last month and, in particular, the speech of a self-described bisexual Sioux man who began his presentation by calling on “the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka, to guide our words and thoughts so that we can speak true and strong.”

In a column titled “Bisexual Indian Invokes Demons At White House,” Severo wrote that the man had invoked “homosexual spirits,” thereby infesting the White House with demons that can only be expelled by “people who know and use the authority of Jesus’ name.”

“A homosexual culture is a culture of demon possession,” he wrote. “Has the White House turned into a haunt of demons?”

The prominent atheistic website Patheos also criticized my Christian view on demons. They do not believe in any God and demon activity in this world. In an article titled “The White House Must Be Exorcised Of Bisexual Native American Demons, Says Christian Writer,” Patheos said, “Severo described the spirits/gay demons as being ‘invisible, lethal and destructive’ — which is fascinating given that, as far as anyone knows, no one has ever actually been murdered by one…”

The Patheos article generated 110 comments from raging atheists against Severo.

In another post this month, Right Wing Watch said: “Julio Severo warns that if ‘Hillary is elected, everyone in the United States and around the world will pay a high cost for her aggressive abortion and sodomy agenda.’”

They also “exposed” in September 28, 2015:

Finally, Julio Severo is not happy with the nomination of Eric Fanning to serve as Secretary of the Army: “I am sure that in Obama’s and Fanning’s case, the Father of America would approve sentence on them and he would treat, with abhorrence and detestation, their sodomy and sodomy advocacy as an infamous crime. In the least, Obama would be expelled from the U.S. presidency and Fanning would be expelled from Army, both with dishonor, never to return. Both have committed treason against the Father of America.”

They also “exposed” me in June 30, 2015:

Julio Severo warns that “homosexuality brought destruction to Sodom, and it will bring destruction to any city or superpower embracing it. A remnant of Christians faithful to God should warn about the danger of sodomy and support efforts to protect children and their families from it.”

In June 18, 2015, Right Wing Watch again “exposed” me by saying:

Finally, Julio Severo wants to see Scott Lively appointed “as a U.S. Special Envoy for the Human Rights of Children and their Protection against the LGBT Agenda.”

Again, Right Wing Watch read my politically incorrect view on Barbwire.

Why has Right Wing Watch focused on my articles?

What do they intend to do?

In 2011, WND had reported on surveillance by the Homeland Security Department against my blog. What did they intend to do?

In the same year, WND reported in a headline on PayPal cutting my account after a campaign by a U.S. homosexual organization.

Why is Goliath (Right Wing Watch, Homeland Security Department, etc.) monitoring and worried about a small David?

Portuguese version of this article: Por que o Observatório da Direita, da entidade esquerdista americana People for the American Way, está preocupado com Julio Severo?

Source: Last Days Watchman

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Trump refuses to call genocide the mass killings of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks during World War One

By Julio Severo

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday marked the Ottoman Turks’ century-old massacre of 1.5 million Armenians, but declined to label it a genocide.

“Today, we remember and honor the memory of those who suffered during the Meds Yeghern, one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century,” Trump said in a statement. “I join the Armenian community in America and around the world in mourning the loss of innocent lives and the suffering endured by so many.”

Such a declaration, even though avoiding the term “genocide” and refusing to mention that the killers were Muslim and the victims were Christian, angered Turkey, whose cooperation Trump seeks against the Syrian government.

“We consider that the misinformation and false definitions contained in U.S. President Trump’s written statement of April 24, 2017 regarding the 1915 events are derived from the information pollution created over the years by some Armenian circles in the U.S. by means of propaganda methods,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“We expect from the new U.S. Administration not to accredit the one-sided historical narrative of these circles which are known for their tendency to violence and hate speech and to adopt an approach which will take into consideration the sufferings of all sides,” the statement read.

In contrast, many Armenian-Americans, including Kim Kardashian, have protested the U.S. government’s omission. Kardashian has called for the use of the word “genocide” and compared a refusal to use it to Holocaust denial.

Previous presidents, including former President Barack Obama, also refused to call the mass killings a genocide. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton avoided the term “genocide” after pledging during their campaigns to recognize it as such.

On April 10, in a bipartisan letter calling upon the President to “appropriately mark April 24th as a day of American remembrance of the Armenian Genocide,” more than eighty U.S. congressmen said that “by commemorating the Armenian Genocide, we renew our commitment to prevent future atrocities.”

“We join with Members of Congress in calling upon President Trump to reject Turkey’s gag rule and embrace an honest American remembrance of the Armenian Genocide,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America. “It’s long past time for America to stop outsourcing our national policy on the Armenian Genocide to Recep Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian and anti-American regime.”

In calling upon President Trump to properly mark April 24th, the signatories highlighted the U.S. record of past recognition, including “President Reagan, who recognized the Armenian Genocide in 1981.”

The letter specifically cites Christian populations targeted by the Ottoman Empire’s genocidal campaign, including “Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Pontians, Syriacs, and other persecuted peoples.” 

The Turkish government has resisted the genocide label for the actions of the Muslim forces of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, but Armenian-American groups have long urged U.S. presidents to change course.

“The president’s statement fails to stand up for human rights and is inconsistent with American values, and represents the same kind of capitulation to Turkish authoritarianism which will cost more lives,” said Anthony Barsamian and Van Krikorian, co-chairs of the Armenian Assembly of America, on Trump’s statement.

The group called for an investigation into “surreptitious Turkish influence on the U.S. government.”

Christian group are not happy about Trump’s behavior.

“Sadly, he ended his first 100 days in office on the most shameful of notes, and has cemented his position as the ultimate Washington politician,” Steve Oshana, executive director of the Middle East Christian advocacy group A Demand for Action, wrote on Facebook after seeing Trump’s statement.

For years, concerns about angering Turkey, a U.S. ally, and strong lobbying efforts by the Turks have blocked attempts to change official U.S. government policy to acknowledge the genocide. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan did use the term in office, but George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama shied away from it, even fighting congressional efforts to endorse it.

“The statement that was put out is consistent with the statements that have been put out for at least several of the past administrations,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, speaking on Trump. “So I think if you look back to the language that President Obama, President Bush, etc., have used, the language that the president used is consistent with all of that.”

Trump crafted an image of himself as a gutsy outsider on the campaign trail and in doing so had raised expectations that he might challenge the taboo, Oshana said. But his statement reflected the power that neocons ― who include the “swamp” that he pledged to drain ― retain in the U.S. government. 

Trump has distanced himself from his campaign views against neocons and he has tried to forge a closer bond with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, even phoning him last week to congratulate him on a contested referendum that was criticized as an authoritarian power grab.

The White House later said the two leaders mostly discussed joint counterterrorism efforts. This is very strange, because as an Islamic nation, Turkey does not fight terrorism, especially from ISIS. According to a 2014 WND (WorldNetDaily) report, “Turkey backs ISIS to eliminate Assad.”

ISIS has committed genocide against Christians in Syria and Iraq. According to Trump, Obama founded ISIS. And Obama worked closely with Turkey. So if Trump refuses the term “genocide” to please Turkey and has this Islamic nation as an ally against ISIS, is not he helping the ISIS genocide against Christians? To have Islamic Turkey as an ally against Islamic terror is so insane as to have the Nazi Germany as an ally against Nazism or have the Soviet Union as an ally against Soviet Marxism.

Armenia was the first officially Christian nation in the world. Armenia, as a Christian Orthodox nation, is allied with Russia, the largest Christian Orthodox nation in the world.

Because the United States is the largest Protestant nation in the world, Trump could have an alliance with Armenia and Russia against Islamic terrorism, and this was his intent in 2016, but now he is privileging an insane alliance with Islamic Turkey and Saudi Arabia to fight the Islamic terrorism created and supported by the Saudi and Turkish Muslims.

If Trump cannot recognize as genocide the slaughters of Christians by Muslims 100 years ago, how can he be able to recognize current genocides against Christians? How can he be able to recognize that Islam was and is a genocide machine against Christians?

So far, just 23 nations have recognized the Armenian genocide, among them France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Greece, Russia, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile and Bolivia.

“Today, on the day of remembrance of the Armenian genocide victims, we note the need to remember our holy martyrs,” stated Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan on Monday

In 2015 Russian President Putin was the only president of a major power to attend commemorations of 100 years of Armenian Genocide in 1915. The commemorations were held at the Armenian Genocide Memorial on Tsitsernakaberd Hill, in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan, to pay tribute to the genocide victims.

In the occasion, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was angered at Putin for calling the mass killing of Christian Armenians by Turkish Muslims a genocide. He said, “It’s not the first time Russia used the word genocide on this issue. I’m personally sad that Putin took such a step.”

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians in 66 towns and 2,500 villages were massacred; 2,350 churches and monasteries were looted, and 1,500 schools and colleges were destroyed.

Yet, Muslims in Turkey and in other nations understate and deny that Armenian Christians suffered a genocide, just as neo-Nazi groups understate and deny the Holocaust against the Jews and ultra-radical Catholics understate and deny the Inquisition against the Jews and Protestants.

With information from Washington Times, The Hill, Armenian Weekly, Sputnik News, Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Huffington Post, DailyMail, Associated Press and Tert.

Portuguese version of this article: Trump recusa chamar de genocídio as matanças em massa de cristãos armênios cometidas por turcos muçulmanos na Primeira Guerra Mundial

Source: Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading:

What Is Neoconservatism (Neocon)?

Islam, to surpass Christianity by 2070, will be only major religion to increase faster than world’s population 

Siding with the “religion of peace”: Obama, Bush, Brzezinski…

War between Christian Nations and Muslim Nations: A Table Talk between an American Economist and Young Muslims in Indonesia

CIA Rewards Saudi Arabia for Fighting Islamic Terror

Christians Are the Most Persecuted Religious Group in the World

Armenian President Warns about Danger of Genocide Denial, Brazilian Congressman Marco Feliciano Denounces Genocide of Armenian Christians

Armenia, the first Christian nation in the world, and the first genocide in the 20th century

Trump and Prophecies, and a New Model of National and World Leader

Mike Pence praises Indonesia’s Islamic culture saying it should inspire other Muslim countries as he tours mosque with his shoes off

Pence’s wife and daughters cover their heads with Islamic scarves at mosque

By Julio Severo

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence praised Indonesia’s Islamic culture last week alongside the president of the world’s most populous Muslim nation, reinforcing his message with a visit to the region’s largest mosque.

Mike Pence with Islamic leaders at mosque

“As the second- and third-largest democracies in the world, our two countries share many common values including freedom, the rule of law, human rights and religious diversity,” Pence said. “The United States is proud to partner with Indonesia. It promotes and protects these values.”

Pence added: “Indonesia’s tradition of moderate Islam frankly is an inspiration to the world and we commend you and your people. In your nation as in mine, religion unifies, it doesn’t divide.”

Even though these words seem to be Obama’s, they are not. Different from Obama, Pence presents himself as a solid evangelical.

Was Pence correct and fair in equalizing religion in the United States (the largest Protestant nation in the world) and religion in Indonesia (the largest Islamic nation in the world)? Was he correct and fair in saying that Islam in Indonesia unifies?

Was he correct and fair in saying that Islamic Indonesia and Christian America share many common values including freedom, the rule of law and human rights? Was he correct and fair in saying that Islamic Indonesia promotes and protects these values?

In his book “Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians” (Thomas Nelson), Paul Marshall said:

On May 2, 2008, a mob from the predominantly Muslim village of Saleman attacked the mainly Christian village of Horale. They burned one hundred and twenty houses, three churches, and the village school, and injured fifty-six Christians and killed four. Three of the four murdered had their throats slit.

The Indonesian Protestant Church Union reports that religious violence against Christians almost doubled between 2010 and 2011.

For the 10 to 13 percent of the Indonesian population that is Christian, the greatest challenges to religious freedom come from social pressure, vigilantes, militias, and local government.

Indonesia has recently been plagued by attacks on churches. It is impossible even to recap them all, so here are some examples from just the first part of 2010, as summarized by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. On January 22, 2010, local residents joined with members of radical groups to torch both the Batak Protestant Church building (HKBP) and the pastor’s residence in Sibuhuan, North Sumatra. Also that day, the Pentecostal Church (Gereja Pantekosta di Indonesia) of Sibuhun, Tapanuli Selatan, North Sumatra Province, was also set afire.

So if Indonesia and the United States are equal in religious terms, why are not Protestant churches torching mosques and killing Muslims in the United States?

Yet, the fanciful comparison made by Pence was motivated by flattery, not reality. It was flattery just, as Pence said at a joint news conference with Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo, to strengthen U.S. commercial partnership with Indonesia.

Pence’s flattery surpassed all the limits of his evangelical faith. According to a DailyMail report:

“He and his family later visited the Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia. The Pences removed their shoes at the entrance and his wife, Karen, and two daughters covered their heads with scarves.”

The Istiqlal Mosque can accommodate up to 200,000 Muslims.

Mike Pence, wife and daughters with Islamic leaders in front of mosque

To take off the shoes is a demonstration of deep respect. Only God, not Islam, deserves such respect. God told Moses:

“Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5 ESV)

A mosque is not a holy ground and God’s presence is not in that place. A mosque is a place of Islam, and Islam is a religious ideology of violence.

You can take off your shoes where God is. But to take off your shoes in a place where God is offended is an insult to God. A Christian should never take off his shoes in a place where Islam is worshipped.

Daniel in Babylon kept a high government post without “taking off his shoes” to other gods. Islam is another god, and if Pence thinks that Islam in Indonesia and evangelicalism in the United States are the same, he is doing what Daniel did not: he is selling his Jesus for the sake of U.S. commercial interests.

Daniel never sold his God for the sake of Babylon’s commercial interests.

Adding insult to injury, Pence said his trip to Indonesia was to “strengthen economic ties and security cooperation in combating terrorism.” To fight terrorism?

Today, Islamic terrorism is the biggest global threat. How can Pence want the U.S. in a partnership with Islamic Indonesia to fight terrorism? Comparatively, how could the United States want a partnership with Nazi Germany to fight Nazism? How could the United States want a partnership with the Soviet Union to fight Soviet Marxism?

In the early days of his administration, U.S. President Donald Trump committed the same absurdity: He sent his CIA director to reward Saudi Arabia for fighting Islamic terror. In contrast, a CBN report said that Saudi Arabia spreads Islamic terror around the world, including ISIS, the biggest Islamic machine of genocide against Christians today.

Not surprisingly, Obama, who was so respectful of Islam as Pence has been in Indonesia, was credited, by Trump himself, as founder of ISIS.

To show deep respect for Islam is to help Islamic terror.

Last month, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman visited Indonesia to accelerate the expansion of Islam. Since 1980, Saudi Arabia has devoted millions of dollars to exporting its strict brand of Islam in Indonesia.

Saudi King Salman shakes hands with Indonesian President Joko Widodo

Saudi Arabia has built more than 150 mosques in Indonesia, a huge free university in Jakarta, and several Arabic language institutes; supplied more than 100 boarding schools with books and teachers; brought in preachers and teachers; and disbursed thousands of scholarships for graduate study in Saudi Arabia. All this adds up to a deep network of Saudi influence in Indonesia.

“As the country with the biggest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia will always have a special bond with Saudi Arabia,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo told King Salman.

Indonesia has a special bond with the terrorist state of Saudi Arabia. The United States has, for the sake of commercial interests, the same bond with Saudi Arabia. And the United States, previously under Obama and now under Trump, is strengthening Islam, which kills about 100,000 Christians a year. With a future Islam strengthened by Pence, Obama, Trump and other American “Christians,” many more Christians will be slaughtered. America is feeding a powerful anti-Christian monster.

Indonesia has a special bond with the United States, through Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama lived in Indonesia, in the late 1960s, because his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, after divorcing Barack Obama Sr. (a Marxist Muslim), moved to Indonesia after marrying another Muslim: Indonesian Lolo Soetoro.

In Indonesia, Obama studied in an Islamic school.

According to Wayne Madsen, not only Dunham worked to CIA, including in a cover operation in Indonesia through the population control agency USAID, but her son Obama was a CIA creation.

U.S. conservatives voted for Trump-Pence ticket because they were tired of Obama taking his shoes off for Islam. What has changed? When the neocon’s agenda is followed, pro-Islamic speeches and partnerships are common, regardless if the follower is Democratic or Republican, left-wing or right-wing.

Saudi Arabia is spreading its violent religion through government efforts. If Pence actually thinks that Jesus Christ is important, why does not he behave as Daniel did, spreading His Gospel and taking off his shoes only for Jesus, never for Islam?

For the sake of commercial interests, a godless American can hypocritically partner with Islam to fight Islamic terror. But for the sake of Jesus, a Christian cannot behave hypocritically. Daniel did not so in his high government post and he was honored by God.

Partnership with Islam, especially against Russia, is a persistent objective of neocons, who are unable to see the future. Some decades ago, a group of Indonesians said, “Back in the fifties he [Arnold Toynbee] predicted that the real war in the next century would not be between Communists and capitalists, but between Christians and Muslims.”

For this future war, neocons are strengthening Muslim interests, not Christian interests.

Does Pence want honor from neocons and Islamic leaders or from God?

If Daniel could honor God in his high government post in the Babylonian Empire, why cannot Pence honor Jesus in his high government post in the American Empire?

If anti-evangelical left-wing Obama deserved to be rebuked for praising Islam, what does evangelical right-wing Pence deserve?

With information from DailyMail, The Atlantic and Associated Press.

Portuguese version of this article: Mike Pence louva a cultura islâmica da Indonésia dizendo que deveria inspirar outros países muçulmanos enquanto ele visita mesquita descalço

Source: Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading:

What Is Neoconservatism (Neocon)?

Islam, to surpass Christianity by 2070, will be only major religion to increase faster than world’s population 

Coming Soon? A More Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu and Less Christian America

Siding with the “religion of peace”: Obama, Bush, Brzezinski…

War between Christian Nations and Muslim Nations: A Table Talk between an American Economist and Young Muslims in Indonesia

CIA Rewards Saudi Arabia for Fighting Islamic Terror

Christians Are the Most Persecuted Religious Group in the World

Blogger ordered to pay $6,000 for protesting taxpayer funding of transgender group

Steve Weatherbe

CAMPO GRANDE, Brazil, April, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — A Brazilian Catholic blogger was ordered to pay a US$6,000 fine after his conviction for hate speech against homosexuals.

Roberto Flavio Calvacanti published the offending article on his blog “Catholicism and Conservatism” in 2007. Federal prosecutors characterized it as “clear hate speech and incompatible with human respect and dignity.”

His post called for the public to protest a proposal before Campo Grande city council to fund the Transvestite and Transsexual Association of Mato Grosso do Sul. He declared, “It is the limit of villainy to consider giving taxpayer money to the main hosts of infectious and communicable diseases as AIDS and syphilis.”

The article continued, “Evidently, Campo Grande has more moral and urgent needs for tax money than funding an association of transvestites. In a little while they may propose tax money to pedophiles. If you are also against the State funding homosexuality and faggoting, visit the website and vote NO.”

Fellow pro-family and pro-life blogger Julio Severo, who fled Brazil in 2009 to avoid prosecution for a similar offense, argued on his own blog that Brazilian prosecutors have tolerated far worse offenses against Christians without taking action. “Left-wing activists who advocate the homosexualist movement have inserted, publicly, crucifixes in their anuses as a form of protest with no fear of being prosecuted,” he said.

However, prosecutors charged that Calvacanti “is a provoker of moral pain and suffering to the LGBT community in Campo Grande through this offense against the rights of personhood of those people.”

Calvacanti argued that Brazilian law does not recognize homosexuals as a group that can be discriminated against. He also challenged the role of the prosecutors, who appeared to be acting as lawyers for the transvestite and transsexual association.

The judge, who Calvacanti claimed makes regular appearances on TV newscasts advocating the LGBT agenda, agreed with the prosecutors and dismissed Calvacanti’s arguments. In his ruling, the judge stated, “It does not matter if this person is male or female, is black or white, religious or atheist, heterosexual or homosexual. Everyone has the right to live as they wish, especially in intimacy, without anyone being allowed to incite hatred.”

The action against Calvacanti follows closely a similar conviction against politician Levy Fidelix and a US$8,000 fine for remarks he made while contesting the Brazilian presidency in the 2104 election.

Severo expressed hope that free speech about homosexuality might be restored to Brazil by “the extraordinary growth of conservative evangelical movements that are pushing Brazilian politics to the right.”

Source: LifeSiteNews, via Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading:

Brazilian Catholic Blogger Condemned to Pay US$ 6,000 for View Contrary to Homosexuality

Former Brazilian Presidential Candidate Fined in US$8,000 for “Homophobic” Comments

Prominent Pro-Family Activist Julio Severo Flees Brazil to Escape Charges of “Homophobia”

Hank Hanegraaff and Confusions

By Julio Severo

Was Hank Hanegraaff, a prominent apologist against the Prosperity Gospel, raised in a Calvinist or Arminian home? Was he brought to Christ in a Calvinist or Arminian church?

Hank Hanegraaff being received in the Greek Orthodox Church

Is Hanegraaff’s background of waging wars against the Prosperity Gospel Calvinist or Arminian?

Brazilian Calvinist theologian Franklin Ferreira thinks that the answer is Arminian. He said in his Facebook page,

“Hanegraaff was a prominent popular apologist and wrote one of the best books against the prosperity ‘gospel,’ ‘Christianity in Crisis,’ published in Brazil by CPAD (which launched other four of his books). He was Arminian, and in spite of critical of the Reformed view (there are audios and texts by Hanegraaff published by the website Society of Evangelical Arminians), he joined forces with Calvinists to fight the heresy of the prosperity message.”

Even though CPAD is a Pentecostal and Arminian publishing house, a book published by them is no proof that the author is Arminian. If so, John MacArthur, a strident cessationist Calvinist theologian, would be an Arminian. MacArthur has several books published by CPAD.

Yes, the Society of Evangelical Arminians mentioned Hanegraaff as an “Arminian author” in recent years.

So was Hanegraaff raised in an Arminian home? Was he brought to Christ in an Arminian church? Was the main influence in his life, before his apologetic ministry, Arminian?

In the website of the Christian Research Institute (CRI), its own director, Hanegraaff, affirmed that he is not an Arminian. CRI defends Calvinism in several of its articles.

The Theopedia website says that “Hanegraaff was born in the Netherlands and raised in the United States in the Christian Reformed Church.”

Theopedia explains that “The Christian Reformed Church… has roots in the Dutch Reformed churches in the Netherlands, but find their true Reformed roots in John Calvin from the Reformation.”

Rev. D. James Kennedy, of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, said decades ago,

“Hank was brought to Christ through the ministry of this church, of which he then became a member. I employed him some time later at Evangelism Explosion International in the Development Department. It was here that he learned his basic knowledge of the Scriptures. Here that he learned to evangelize. Here that he learned Mnemonics, the science of memory. It was from here and from me that he learned most of the things needed to get the position that he now holds.”

With this strong Presbyterian background, Hanegraaff became the president of the Christian Research Institute.

With this strong Presbyterian background, Hanegraaff became an apologist against the Prosperity Gospel.

The surprise is not that he began to call charismatics “heretics.” Eventually, he called even his former pastor D. James Kennedy a “heretic” too. As quoted by the Walter Martin Ministries Blog, Kennedy said,

“In conclusion, much of what Hank has learned he learned at this church and through my other ministries. I have tried in every way to be helpful to him. I have also endeavored to be gracious in spite of the many letters I have received accusing him of plagiarizing my book. In spite of all this, for some reason, totally unbeknownst to me, he has started attacking me on his public radio program. And as I just recently heard, has now had the temerity to call me a heretic. I have been called all manner of names by the enemies of the Cross, but one name I have never been called before is heretic. Given my 42 years of ministry, almost 50 books that I have published, the thousands of radio and television programs which have been broadcast here and around the world, it is almost laughable to think that we must wait until this late date to have it discovered by no less a scholar than Hank Hanegraaff that I am a heretic.”

This is the problem of Calvinism and its environment, especially of the cessationist variety: baseless wars and accusations of “heresy,” which ultimately hits everyone.

Franklin Ferreira said that Hanegraaff allied himself, apparently as an outsider, to Calvinists to fight the “heresy” of the Prosperity Gospel. Actually, he was not an outsider. He was inside the Calvinist camp!

The Calvinist camp has not been hit by the Prosperity Gospel. In fact, the major problems affecting Presbyterian churches are abortion and sodomy advocacy. No one of these problems, including theological liberalism, are caused by the Prosperity Gospel. All of them are caused by the Social Gospel, which is similar to the Theology of Integral Mission, which is the Protestant version of Liberation Theology.

So instead of fighting internal problems that directly affect them, many Calvinists prefer directing their attacks to external problems not affecting them.

Hanegraaff began by demonizing ministers of the Prosperity Gospel and eventually demonized his own former Presbyterian minister… Confusion leading to confusion.

Not only Calvinist churches in Europe, U.S. and Brazil are suffering from socialist theological influences, but the whole Brazilian society is also suffering from socialist influences.

If Calvinist or Reformed eyes cannot see the reality, through Bible or supernatural vision, which many of them reject in their cessationist unbelief, God will use a “stone” (a non-Christian mind) to see and cry out. This is what is happening.

This week, Rodrigo Constantino, a Brazilian conservative secular and non-Protestant writer, published an article titled “Democracy and the Prosperity Gospel,” written by Claudir Franciatto, who said,

“While the large part of the Brazilian society that is not evangelical restricts itself to call ministers, bishops and apostles of neo-Pentecostal (charismatic) churches ‘thieves’… [those ministers, bishops and apostles] are bringing to Brazil — secretly and imperceptibly — certain ‘Anglo-Saxon spirit’ of courage, pioneerism and positive individual attitude, which shaped a nation like the United States. This spirit was and is very necessary.”

Claudir added,

“Neo-Pentecostal ministers do not stimulate members to pray and remain sitting on their pews, but to act — within and outside the church.”

Yet, evangelicals cannot accept this “Anglo-Saxon spirit” of courage, pioneerism and positive individual attitude, because Hanegraaff, Ferreira and other theologians influenced by a cessationist Calvinism think and preach that the Prosperity Gospel is “heresy.”

If it is easy for Ferreira to call the Prosperity Gospel a “heresy,” can he call the Social Gospel or the Theology of Integral Mission a heresy?

Can he call cessationism a heresy? Theological liberalism (with its aftermath of abortion and sodomy advocacy) thrives on unbelief of a living and supernatural God working today.

Based on the Society of Evangelical Arminians, Ferreira said that Hanegraaff is an Arminian. Hanegraaff denied it. This is confusion.

Actually, when the Society of Evangelical Arminians said in recent years that Hanegraaff was an Arminian, he was already in the process of conversion to the Greek Orthodox Church. In fact, Christianity Today said that his move to the Greek Orthodox Church took a decade. So it is no wonder that in 2011 he denied that he was a Calvinist.

Hanegraaff was raised and trained in Reformed and Presbyterian environments to attack the Prosperity Gospel and other charismatic issues not affecting this environment. This is confusion.

After years calling charismatic ministers “heretics,” he eventually called his old Presbyterian minister a heretic too! This is confusion.

Jill Martin Rische, daughter of Walter Martin, who founded the Christian Research Institute in 1960, said about Hanegraaff,

“Shortly after my father, Walter Martin, died in 1989 his ministry was taken over by a man who we later discovered had a disturbing habit of ‘borrowing’ other people’s work and claiming it for his own.”

This is confusion.

When he became the president of the Christian Research Institute and wrote “Christianity in Crisis,” which attacks the Prosperity Gospel, Hank Hanegraaff had come directly not from an Arminian or Pentecostal church. He came directly from a Presbyterian church.

Now, he is in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Be it as may it, Hanegraaff did not leave cessationist Calvinism and its influences now. He did it years ago. He did not begin to attend the Greek Orthodox Church now. According to Christianity Today, he did it many years ago. The only new thing is the formal announcement that now he is an Orthodox Christian.

More confusion?

Portuguese version of this article: Hank Hanegraaff e confusões

Source: Last Days Watchman

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Hank Hanegraaff, the Most Prominent Calvinist Theologian against Prosperity Gospel, Leaves Calvinism

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A Charismatic Response to “The Growing Crisis Behind Brazil’s Evangelical Success Story”

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