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Subj: Rapists For Jesus!
Date: 9/4/03 12:40:26 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: robthesheep@hotmail.com
To: r421@aol.com
How About It?
The Baptist Foundation of Arizona, a subsidiary of the Southern
Baptist Convention used Southern Baptist pastors and former pastors
as sales representatives to rob 13,000 mostly elderly Christians
by promising high returns, the security of church backing, and
the chance to help Baptist charities. It was nothing but a fraud
and a big Ponzi Scheme.
In the old days the news media and the Evangelical leaders used
to blame things on a specific individuals such as Dr. Lyons,
Jim Bakker, and Dan Strader.
But with the arrest, sentencing and prosecution of so many people
in the Baptist Foundation of Arizona and the Greater Ministries
they are realizing it's a team effort by the religious leaders.
They have not wakened up to the fact yet that it's also the corrupt
and perverted Fundamental Evangelical thinking, system and denomination
that is responsible for producing wolves in sheep's clothing.
It's very hard for them to swallow this idea but they are slowly
coming around to see what is the truth - It's the system, stupid!
It's The System Which Creates The Individuals And Supports Them
- Religion Today and Christian News Today wrote about the same
story on December 16, 1998 concerning Strawder, the founder and
operator of Sovereign Ministries International. But the two approaches
were completely different.
Religion Today dwelt solely on the sins and actions of Jonathan
Strawder who was going to prison for promising people he'd better
than double their money in a financial scam that mixed faith
with greed.
Religion Today's title for the story was "A man who convinced
2,100 Christians to invest." While Christian News Today
title was "What Evangelicals are Like In Florida. "Tampa
Tribune title was "Ministries founder held in fraud case."
Christian News Today and the Tampa Tribune reported that Jonathan
Strawder had family ties to Greater Ministries International,
a similar Tampa-based program that is under federal investigation
as a possible Ponzi scheme.
The Tribune stated that Strawder worked at Greater Ministries
International, and there are many similarities between the two
programs. Strawder's father and uncle are active members of Greater
Ministries. Investigators suspect Greater Ministries also is
a Ponzi scheme worth much more, and Strawder's plea agreement
could be ominous. ``Clearly, it's a spinoff'' of Greater Ministries,
Strawder's attorney Joel Hirschhorn said.
Christian News Today had also stated something which Religion
today would not state that the mid week Newspapers of the Tampa
Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times on December 15, 1998 both
had stories about "born again" evangelicals who say
the love the Lord but do terrible and wicked things. Just like
the Straders of Carpenter's Home Church Lakeland, Florida who
conducted a ponzi scheme and stole from poor defenseless elderly
or Pastor Dempsey of Riverhills Church of God, Temple Terrace,
Florida who had an adulterous relationship with another pastor's
wife for five years
But Bruce Gourley the editor of THE BAPTIST OBSERVER NEWSPAPER
in his COMMENTARY on MORAL ISSUES concerning Southern Baptists
and Bill Clinton posted on the web about Baptist Doctrine and
the system - the fundamentalist theology and attitude:
"On the other hand, just a few weeks, Ollin Collins, mega-church
pastor and trustee chair of Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary and the direct product of fundamentalist theology and
attitude, was revealed to be a long-running adulterer"
While Southern Baptists have built the largest theological training
system in the world. Still, many of the convention's 100,000
pastors -- especially those of churches with fewer than 50 members
-- do not have seminary degrees. More than half hold other jobs
to fulfill a calling in the 16 million-member religious body,
according to interviews and published reports.
Growing by nearly 100,000 new members and 1,500 new churches
each year, the SBC holds the nation's largest annual church gatherings.
It boasts a roster of flamboyant preachers -- from Billy Graham
to Jerry Falwell -- and has been home to Southern politicians
as divergent as Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich or Al Gore and
Jesse Helms.
So it's no wonder the SBC pretty much sets the image for all
Baptists in America.
"Whenever Southern Baptists are described in the news, all
other Baptists are assumed by the population to be in the same
camp," says the Rev. David Scholer, a professor at Fuller
Theological Seminary who is an American Baptist, a smaller denomination
based in Valley Forge, Pa
Yet all of this doesn't change the fact that the Southern Baptists
system and theology produced thieves in the Baptist Foundation
of Arizona who have stolen from and used the sheep for their
own greed?
But -I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the
creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy,
in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking
for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free
and moral agent.. - Thomas Jefferson Letter To Francis Hopkinson,
Paris Mar. 13, 1789
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of
body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
- Thomas Jefferson Letter to P. S. Dupont de Nemours, Poplar
Forest, April 24, 1816
So Why Would Southern Baptists Evangelists Billy, Franklin and
Ned Graham Hide their total Compensation?
Can religious Evangelical institutions and their leaders be trusted
in America? As seen from the many court prosecutions in the last
five years including Dr. Henry J. Lyons, former president of
the National Baptist Convention, the Baptist Foundation of Arizona,
a subsidiary of Southern Baptist Convention, and Greater Ministries
International Church, the answer sadly is no!
The Baptist Foundation of Arizona, a subsidiary of the Southern
Baptist Convention used Southern Baptist pastors and former pastors
as sales representatives to rob 13,000 mostly elderly Christians
by promising high returns, the security of church backing, and
the chance to help Baptist charities. It was nothing but a fraud
and a big Ponzi Scheme.
Until the late 1980s, the BFA had been managing church building
funds and retirement funds for a few thousand Baptist layman.
Profits came from land investments in the red-hot Arizona market.
But when property values tanked, the BFA investments did, too.
Instead of admitting losses and writing down loans, BFA officials
in several cases allegedly cooked up transactions between BFA
and shell companies that made it look as if the BFA was still
profitable. "It was a big paper charade," charged Assistant
State Attorney General Robert Zumoff, reported the Phoenix New
Times
The Baptist Foundation of Arizona took in a total of $590 million,
using a maze of shell corporations in a Ponzi scheme, before
it was shut down in August 1999. Ponzi schemes depend on the
solicitation of new investors to pay existing ones.
Three people related to the Baptist Foundation pleaded guilty
to defrauding investors in May and have agreed to cooperate in
an investigation of five others indicted on 32 counts each of
theft, fraud and racketeering.
A Phoenix judge had accepted plea bargains from three of eight
defendants charged with crimes in the 1999 collapse of the Baptist
Foundation of Arizona, a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention.
They were accused of bilking 13,000 investors -- many elderly
and most members of Southern Baptist churches -- of hundreds
of millions of dollars in the largest fraud case involving a
non-profit organization in U.S. history.
Foundation officials Edgar Kuhn, Donald Deardoff and Jalma Hunsinger
had earlier pleaded guilty to reduced charges in exchange for
cooperating with prosecutors in a case involving five others
who claimed innocence reported the Associated Baptist Press.
Food for the Poor Inc., a nonprofit Deerfield Beach-based charity
that helps feed people in Latin America and the Caribbean, has
been pronounced financially sound by a private oversight council
for religious charities and was awarded control over $25 million
in food relief this month by the Department of Agriculture. But
FBI agents are still investigating accusations of fraud within
Food for the Poor, FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said.
To fend off accusations of wrongdoing, Food for the Poor administrators
asked a private group that audits religious charities to review
their financial records. The group, the Evangelical Council for
Financial Accountability in Winchester, Va., sent a letter to
Food for the Poor saying the charity was financially sound. "We
asked them to come in and do a full review of the entire charity,"
said Food for the Poor spokeswoman Ann Briere. "They are
fully satisfied."
But is the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability very
responsible and truly accountable to the public? For Southern
Baptist Evangelist Billy Graham was embarrassed in 1977 when
the Charlotte Observer discovered an undisclosed $23-million
fund in Texas, apparently not mentioned in the accountings of
the Minneapolis headquarters of the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association. As a result Graham's business manager led the formation
of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability after
Graham said on a national telecast, ". . . there are some
charlatans coming along and the public ought to be informed about
them and warned against them, " "stated K. Hadden and
Charles E. Swann in their book Prime Time Preachers. [ http://religiousbroadcasting.lib.virginia.edu/primetime/C6.html
]
Graham helped start the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability,
a self-policing organization, .the St. Petersburg Times reported
on Oct 11, 1998.
.In 1992 his ministry, Samaritan's Purse, had a run-in with the
Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, the self-policing
organization his father helped start. The ECFA suspended Samaritan's
Purse while it looked into Franklin's (Graham) compensation and
use of the company plane.
FRANKLIN'S REAL COMPENSATION AND PERSONAL USE OF HIS COMPANY
PLANE IS STILL A REAL PROBLEM TODAY AND NED GRAHAM'S PROBLEMS
HAVE PROBLEMS!
It is a fact that the most efficient charities in the American
Religion Category for the year 2000 Samaritan's Purse, the Billy
Graham Evangelistic Association, Focus on the Family, and Campus
Crusade for Christ had many things in common besides being Southern
Baptist led in that they do not reveal to the public or their
donors the total salary of their Chairman of their non profit
organization even though their tax exemptions come from the public.
Although it's the public right as well as each donor's right
to know and ask questions about the total remuneration of Southern
Baptist Billy Graham, including special privileges and expenses
in his North Carolina home paid by BGEA, including support staff.
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Samaritan's Purse, and
Campus Crusade For Christ have developed the art of stonewalling
when it comes to special remuneration and expenses of it's chairmen.
Many prominent Baptist evangelists in America, such as Billy
and Franklin Graham, belong to the Evangelical Council of Financial
Accountability that purports to work on behalf of the donor but
in reality exists for the spenders. Although ECFA has in its
possessions the total salaries of all the religious evangelical
non-profit organizations that belong to it, it will not disclose
them. Christian News Today requested such information from ECFA
but to no avail, although the hypocritical motto of ECFA is
"For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in
the eyes of the LORD, but also in the eyes of men"
As CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, he collects
an annual salary of $115,500, plus a $38,500 housing allowance.
The organization and its affiliates brought in $139- million
in contributions and revenue last year reported the St. Petersburg
Times during the Billy Graham Crusade in Tampa in 1998.
It also reported Graham, who suffers from Parkinson's disease,
has crusades planned next year in Indianapolis and St. Paul.
He was so unsteady on his feet Tuesday he had to be shuttled
in a car and a golf cart from the news conference in the club
area of the stadium to the nearby football field, where he posed
for photographs. His return to Tampa, one of only two crusades
he agreed to this year, is a homecoming of sorts. ( In actual
fact Billy earned at least $ 100,000 per crusade that year?)
Graham said that even though he is weak, he still believes he
has work to do.
He joked that the task became abundantly clear one recent day
when he was on an airplane with a drunk passenger. He said the
passenger kept harassing the flight attendant until he realized
Graham was sitting behind him. He said the passenger then turned
around and offered his hand to Graham. "Put her there,"
the drunk passenger told Graham. "Your sermons sure have
helped me."
"There is something that can be corrupting about power and
notoriety," said Paul Nelson, president of the Evangelical
Council for Financial Accountability, which reviews Graham's
finances each year. "God bless them, they (Graham's organization)
have been able to navigate that." (These remarks turned
out to be false for Billy Graham's total compensation was a lot
higher according to the financial statement of B.G.E.A. not including
fringe benefits pension and health care expenditures and he spent
fifty percent of his time in bed?)
Even though he was sick and dying, spent over fifty percent of
his time in bed or the hospital, Dr. Billy Graham had been taking
a one hundred percent salary and other benefits from the B.G.E.A.
that he had founded: Even though the I.R.S. rules stated that
no non-profit organization should exist for the benefit of one
individual.
No other salaried employee in B.G.E.A. was allowed to take a
one hundred percent salary plus his pension fund and other perks
and spends so many days being sick, as Billy Graham has done
and does. Where was the justice or integrity in all of this?
So how can American TV preachers preach to others if they are
hiding their total salaries? They cannot! It only shows they
have no integrity, especially Rodney Howard Browne who has his
parents on the payroll and Benny Hinn who has his family on the
payroll and Dr. Billy Graham who pretends to be something that
he is not. For the Tampa Tribune reported that:
Although Billy Graham encourages religious leaders to be open
about their salaries and publish their finances, Howard-Browne
would not disclose what he earns. He says his salary is determined
by his board of directors, which is comprised of four pastors,
himself and his wife. The couple does not vote on his salary.
``People get hung up on the figure,'' he says. ``But they don't
take everything into account. I don't get a housing or clothing
allowance. We take our kids on the road and that's very expensive.''
Not good enough, says Paul Nelson, president of the Evangelical
Council of Financial Accountability in Washington. Revival Ministries
International is not among its 925 members. ``When you hold yourself
out as a public trust, it's just good practice to be open about
your finances,'' he says. ``If you're not forthright, you leave
a question in the minds of your potential givers.''
For the past five years, the ministry has been audited by Katz
Kamm, a Baltimore accounting firm. But the tax-exempt church
association is not required to open its books to the public.
`While I applaud them for getting the audit, I would strongly
suggest they go one step further and make their records public,''
Nelson says.
Speaking of making their records public, "open about your
finances'' and "forthright," while Paul Nelson, President
of Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability reveals upon
demand even to strangers his total salary of $ 123,000 and IRS
tax form 990 Billy, Ned and Franklin Graham do not. This makes
the Grahams and ECFA hypocrites.
The Associated Baptist Press - www.abpnews.com on April 3, 2001
reported that:
"About half of Baptist organizations contacted by the independent
newspaper Baptists Today would not disclose salary information
for their top executive. Three Southern Baptist Convention entities
said policies allowed them to release only salary ranges.
Presidents Albert Mohler of Southern Seminary in Louisville,
Ky., and Kenneth Hemphill of Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth,
Texas, declined to provide any information on compensation. New
Orleans Seminary did not return numerous phone calls regarding
the salary of President Charles Kelley. However, the IRS requires
all colleges and universities to report the salaries of the top
five paid staff members, Brumley explained."
But Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said recently on CNN's Larry King
Show: I believe the Roman Church is a false church and teaches
a false gospel. ... Indeed, I believe the pope himself holds
a false and unbiblical office."
The International Mission Board has defended the publishing of
prayer guides for use in Southern Baptist churches that critics
said were insensitive to Jews, Hindus and Muslims.
A leader of a Southern Baptist fellowship of "Messianic"
believers recently announced the group was severing ties with
the convention because of a public perception that Southern Baptists
are intolerant of other faiths.
So Southern Baptists such as Albert Mohler are not only intolerant
of other faiths but are thieves who hid their total compensation?
Christian News Today had requested that Campus Crusade for Christ
validate or deny the following story and disclose the total salary
of its Founder Bill Bright. When contacted a staff worker of
CCC said it would not be a problem and that CCC would not only
give us Bill Bright salary but also his personal income tax.
Later the same staff worker when asked about the CNT request
and CCC offer told CNT in writing " I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR
FROM YOU AGAIN EVER!"
"For CNT had reported In other news, Bill Bright, 79, Southern
Baptist Evangelist and Conservative Fundamental Evangelical learned
last week that he has fibrosis of the lung, a disease that builds
up scar tissue. There is no known cure, and life expectancy is
three to five years, his ministry said. Bright also has been
treated for prostate cancer for the last four years, just like
another Southern Baptist Evangelist and Fundamental Evangelical
Billy Graham.
Bill Bright and his wife made up of two of the four directors
of the board that runs this family ministry and just like a typical
family run evangelical ministries their total salaries and those
of their best friends are one of America's best kept secrets.
None of the prominent evangelical leaders in America, such as
Billy Graham, Bill Bright, Jerry Falwell, Charles Stanley, and
Pat Robertson to name but a few, reveal their total compensation
to their donors.
Many prominent Baptist evangelists in America, such as Billy
and Franklin Graham, belong to the Evangelical Council of Financial
Accountability that purports to work on behalf of the donor but
in reality exists for the spenders. For although ECFA has in
its possessions the total salaries of all the religious evangelical
non-profit organizations that belong to it, it will not disclose
them?"
Why is it that the Religious Evangelical leaders in America such
as Bill Bright and Billy Graham who profess Christ and the love
of Truth will not disclose their total salaries nor release their
personal income tax to their donors? Is it possible that they
are really crooks who use the separation of Church and State
to fleece the sheep as South African Evangelist
Dr. Rodney Howard-Browne had said, it was their responsibility
to fleece the sheep?
Evangelist Howard Browne winter camp meeting in the USF Sun Dome
in Tampa Florida attended by two CNT reporters, South African
Pentecostal Evangelist Dr. Rodney Howard Browne taught pastors
that "sheep needed to be fleeced or they
would have too much hair and could not see where they are going.
It was the pastors job to fleece the sheep."
Dr. Rodney Howard- Browne had been credited with bringing the
laughter revival to America. But from what really happened in
Carpenter's Home Church in 1993 and 1994 and its devastating
effect on the community including the robbing, raping and [...]
of the sheep, was not much of a revival. The leadership of the
Assembly of God denomination both in Lakeland and Missouri also
would not accept the testimony of one of its members Roy Aldrich
that he was robbed and raped by money changers and wolves in
sheep's clothing in Carpenter's Home Church during the so called
"revival". But the State of Florida who cared about
justice, righteousness and truth accepted the words and testimony
of Roy Aldrich about the Straders.
The Florida State prosecutors proved their case and convinced
the jurors that Dan Strader, the son of the senior pastor Karl
Strader, devised an elaborate scheme to attract cash in the real-estate
and mortgage investments. He was selling the securities without
a license and that the securities were unregistered. This was
done in an organized method amounting to Racketeer-Influence
and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO Act.
Daniel, 37, was sentenced to 45 years in prison in August
1995. He was convicted of 238 felony counts for bilking 57 mostly
elderly investors, some members of the church, out of $2.3 million
by selling investments in properties that didn't exist or already
had liens against them. Others who were involved along with Dan
Strader were not pursed by the State of Florida as they felt
that the conviction of Daniel Strader was a good example for
others to take notice.
Dr Rodney Howard Browne used his influence and powers to raise
money at Carpenter's Home Church to buy the senior pastor Karl
Strader his much needed second Lincoln Town Car. But when Rodney
was requested to use his influence and power to raise money for
the unfortunate elderly victims of Dan's Strader, he refused.
It is to be noted that Howard-Browne's standard biography claims
he once served as an associate pastor at Rhema. But according
to Rhema church officials contacted, Howard-Browne was never
an associate pastor-nor did he ever hold any pastoral credentials
or responsibilities. Said Kelmeyer: "Rodney was never an
associate pastor here. He was an ordained minister by the state
and a lecturer at our Bible school, but was not involved in any
form of pastoral work."
Howard-Browne also claimed a "doctorate of ministry degree"
from an obscure San Jacinto, California correspondence institution
called "The School of Bible Theology." A state Department
of Education employee contacted likened the tiny school, which
bills itself as "The Seminary to the World" and has
no faculty, to a "diploma mill."
Why are Evangelical leaders in America hiding their total personal
salaries? Are they ashamed that they earn so much or not enough?
Or are they Crooks and Liars? Mind you the latter is more plausible
for Evangelical Leaders in America, be they Billy or Franklin,
Graham, Bill Bright, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell or others,
have no integrity whatsoever; especially when it comes to their
own personal salaries and those of their special friends.
David Taggart, a twenty-nine-year-old "personal aide"
to Jim Bakker and his lover, received $360,000 in 1986 for special
services. While in 1986 the Bakkers were paid $1.9 million. It
is a fact the PTL Club was full of personal misconduct, mismanagement,
and pillaging of the PTL treasury.
So are the others any different? For the total salaries of the
Billy Graham and his sons and family are one of American's best-kept
secrets and even their personal lives that are no different than
that of Jim Bakker!
Self Righteous Baptists leaders, such as Billy Graham and Bill
Bright were shocked and dismayed, at the revelations about the
life style and morality of these Pentecostal "televangelist
in America. On Larry King live in the fall of 1998 Southern Baptist
Evangelist Billy Graham was insulted when he was compared with
TV Evangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker and their
sex scandals. Billy Graham said that he did not do those things
which Jim Bakker or Jim Swaggart did - a statement that turned
out to be a lie!
But Billy Graham's own son Ned Graham turned out to be no different
than Jim Bakker. Even though a President of an Evangelical Ministry
must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded,
of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine,
not violent, and not greedy for money, Ned Graham the son of
Billy Graham, Southern Baptist minister, president East Gates
International, a group that distributes Bibles in China told
Christianity Today in an interview that he had abused alcohol
and spent an "inappropriate amount of time" with two
women on his staff.
Grace Community Church, Southern Baptist Convention, in Auburn,
Washington-which counted Ned Graham, his wife, and their two
sons as members established in 1999 the fact that Ned Graham
was an adulterer, alcoholic, wife abuser, and drug user and revoked
Graham's ministerial credentials. It directed Graham to stop
using the title reverend.
Yet in a style reminiscent of Jimmy Swaggart, who refused to
be defrocked by the Assembly of God denomination, Ned Graham
left that congregation for another church.
Most of the staff and board members of East Gates International
resigned amid controversies. East Gates, in Sumner, Wash., withdrew
its membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability
after Ned replaced the board members with his sister Ruth Graham
McIntyre, brother-in-law Stephan Tchividjian, and business leader
Peter Lowe.
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing,
but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. "You will know them
by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs
from thistles?
"Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree
bears bad fruit. "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor
can a bad tree bear good fruit. "Every tree that does not
bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. "Therefore
by their fruits you will know them.
"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter
the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father
in heaven.
"Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not
prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done
many wonders in Your name?' "And then I will declare to
them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'
Matthew 7:15-23
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