Joel's Army Growing

Marcia · Aug 30, 2008

This is a credible article on the growing ranks of Joel's Army, a cultic offshoot of extreme Pentecostalism-Latter Rain movements. This is something all pastors and believers should take note of and be aware of. Please read entire article. Although it starts off talking about Todd Bentley, please do not make this thread a discussion of Bentley. If you want to comment, stick to the OP thread title and matters related to that. Thanks.

....Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read "Joel's Army." They're evidence of Bentley's generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that's gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other "hyper-charismatic" preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel's Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers.
Joel's Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they're members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel's Army.

......Despite their overt militancy, there's no evidence Joel's Army followers have committed any acts of violence. But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God's avenging army.

Those sounding the alarm about Joel's Army are not secular foes of the Christian Right, few of whom are even aware of the movement or how widespread it's become in the past decade. Instead, Joel's Army critics are mostly conservative Christians, either neo-Pentecostals who left the movement in disgust or evangelical Christians who fear that Joel's Army preachers are stealing their flocks, even sending spies to infiltrate their own congregations and sway their young people to heresy. And they say the movement is becoming frightening.

"The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008," writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. "One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors."
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Source
http://www.alternet.org/story/96945/?page=entire

Marcia · Aug 30, 2008

I'm asking the mods to please close this thread. I posted it in the General Baptist Discussion forum. Thanks!

trustitl · Aug 31, 2008

Once again I am amazed at how "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived". On one hand I am saddened but on the other hand I am thankful to see God's word come true:

"For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." I Cor. 11:19

"Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" Matt. 18:7

I have seen in my own life and in the lives of others that the worse the heresy the more people see the truth.

Gerhard Ebersoehn · Aug 31, 2008

"One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors."

GE:
I guess as soon as the aches and pains of old age start, they will have to begin count their losses. This sort of stuff can only interest youth, it sounds like to me.

Gerhard Ebersoehn · Aug 31, 2008

trustitl said:

Once again I am amazed at how "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived". On one hand I am saddened but on the other hand I am thankful to see God's word come true:

"For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." I Cor. 11:19

"Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" Matt. 18:7

I have seen in my own life and in the lives of others that the worse the heresy the more people see the truth.
Click to expand...

GE:
Amen! Tribulation worketh patience, and patience, experience -- the best cure against heresy.

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