Sarah Palin drew a crowd of about 1200 in Calgary this weekend.

She said she and her family scooted across the border to get health care in the Yukon.

unrepentant old hippie dug up the criteria for receiving health care in the Yukon, and crossing the border isn’t it.

Well, you betcha  Mrs. Palin said it, but did the border hop really happen? Wasn’t what she was saying two years ago.

Now that Palin has gone home, Canada is supposedly getting a visit by Karl Rove.

Media Matters is pointing out the er,  falsehoods, um lies in his upcoming memiors, Courage and Consequence, which is being released tomorrow.

Charles McVety announced on his TV show Word last night (Sunday March 7/10) that Rove would be a speaker at a conference during the g20 summit. I can’t confirm that until this week’s show goes online. Given Canada Christian College has hosted Ralph Reed, Rove showing up isn’t a stretch. (Turn off the speakers if you click over to Word.ca). Charles McVety has gone back to calling himself Dr. McVety and announced a couple of new websites. There is nothing on Roves speaking schedule yet indicating he is stopping by TO. Karl Rove was  the smartest man in politics, but then again so was Lee Atwater.

Another of the 10 Southern Baptists who went to Haiti and tried to take children out of the country has been sent back to the US.

Charisa Coulter was due to fly out of Haiti for the United States. Haiti authorities arrested 10 missionaries in January but eight were released in February and only the group’s leader, Laura Silsby, remains in jail.

Asked by Reuters how she felt on her release, Coulter said: “Bittersweet. I am glad to go back home but the experience has been very difficult.”

She then climbed into a U.S. embassy car and left the central police station.

That leaves Laura Silsby who will probably be charged with the lesser crime of organizing travel out of country for others without proper paperwork. She is also facing charges on other matters in Idaho. 8 other Americans were released from a Haitian jail and sent home February 17th.

By Rick Hiebert. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

Did you think that Todd Bentley would never again be allowed on the GOD TV cable/internet TV channel following the collapse of the Lakeland revival?

Think again. He’s been spotted on the “MorningStar Open Heavens Prophetic Conference” on GOD TV’s “Global Feed” tonight….

By Rick Hiebert. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

Todd Bentley acts and talks like he is part of it. Faytene Kryskow–who is ardently lobbying municipal, provincial and federal politicians in Canada–also sometimes acts and talks like she is part of it, but she maintains that she has no idea what it is. It is the New Apostolic Reformation, or the “largest religious movement that you have never heard of”, according to one blogger.

It’s a movement that argues that we need modern day apostles to lead a Christian take over of all aspects of society–before Jesus comes back. And when on BDBO, we talk of “dominionism” or the “NAR”, it’s this universe of ideas that we are alluding to. There’s no formal group to sign up with that hands out membership cards…but it is a set of beliefs that are often shared by some charismatic evangelists and leaders. The ideas are spreading to other parts of the church too.

As usually happens with these sorts of things, it’s an idea that is biggest in the United States first. So, this other blog post commenting on the NAR cites American examples. But, I think it would be safe to say that both Bene D and I are wondering if these ideas are getting some traction north of the border.

The NAR movement is kinda scary. And I’m very conservative, so when I write that it is “kinda scary”…I would suggest that you may safely assume that it is.

Destiny Church is in turmoil. Again.

When is the last time you heard of a pastor walking out of the pulpit and out of the church?

It happened in Brisbane’s Destiny Church (founded by Brian Tamaki) this weekend. Andrew Stock had been the minister at the Destiny Brisbane church plant for three years.

Destiny Church ministers and leaders are heading to its Brisbane branch after more than half the congregation – including its pastor – walked out.

Bishop Brian Tamaki, who founded the church in New Zealand in 1998, is expected to be among those heading to Australia this week after the resignation of Pastor Andrew Stock.

Members of the Destiny Church in Brisbane, who were at Sunday’s service, contacted the Herald yesterday.

It is believed Pastor Stock – who has been at the Brisbane branch pulpit for about three years – withdrew from his role because a newly introduced covenant went against his beliefs, a member said.

“He decided it was time [to withdraw as pastor]. He believed the covenant was wrong. It is simple – if you know you are sinning, you don’t want to be preaching from the pulpit.”

The member said the covenant told members to “give it heaps” as they worked towards a $3 million project which included building a $1.3 million budget to go towards putting Bishop Tamaki on TVNZ every morning, from Monday to Friday.

The covenant also encouraged members to go without coffee, takeaways and Sky TV for up to seven months to help give more in their church tithes.

The church member, who did not want to be named for fear of repercussions, said up to 70 people of the just over 100-strong congregation followed Pastor Andrew Stock, after a four-minute speech, as he walked out of the church with his family.

Destiny has always been controversial and it appears the covenant which included members buying a 300 dollar covenant ring was the last straw. New Zealand and Australian media are abuzz with the news, twists and turns and Destiny excesses. A PR war is in full swing and Tamaki who among other things, teaches and lives the prosperity gospel, says media always twists his words. He appointed himself bishop and his word is law. Destiny is a group of independent churches.

I like what Throng NZ has to say.

The questions I’d put to Brian Tamaki would be very different. I’d ask him who Jesus Christ was/is, what was Jesus Christ’s message and what are the most important Christian beliefs?

Get him to talk about the centrality of the Christian faith and this is where Christians will be able to discern if his teachings are in line with mainstream Christian beliefs or not. Christians and their leaders should be the ones judging Brian Tamaki, not the media who generally are completely ignorant about the real issues at stake here.

(For reference: I have strong reservations and concerns about Destiny Church and Brian Tamaki’s leadership.)

Destiny Church has tried politics, men’s conferences which drew wide spread criticism, social programs, runs a TV program, sells lots of Tamaki and church products. Andrew Stock (left) has already replaced by Phil Kingi, the Brisbane church congregation was largely ex-pats. It remains to be seen if the disappearing Brisbane congregation can be replaced.

Destiny has established 19 fundamentalist churches in New Zealand and has been referred to as a cult of personality.

Destiny Church – wiki
Religion News Blog – timeline of Destiny Churches/Tamaki stories

Previous BDBO posts

The cult of Brian – Destiny Church members take oath of allegiance
Destiny New Zealand plans it’s promised land – Destiny City

NZ and Australian blogs are leaning in favour of Andrew Stock walking from the pulpit and out the door; such as Kiwi blog, Social Justice, No Minister, Thinking Matters, Brian Edwards, Cultwatch, Cults.co. NZ. Others are fully committed to Tamaki such as My Place

Update: This is on a Destiny  website where  Tamaki and his pr department blame the devil for critical media coverage. When a leader thinks they are God or God-like and operate  a closed system, you begin to see sociological and theological characteristics of a cult.

Sociological warning signs:

authoritarian leadership patterns
loyalty and commitment mechanisms
lifestyle characteristics
conformity patterns (including the use of various sanctions against those who deviate)

Theological warning signs:

embracing of a particular doctrine system taught by an individual leader, group of leaders, or organization, which (system) denies (either explicitly or implicitly) one or more of the central doctrines of the Christian Faith as taught in the sixty-six books of the Bible.

By Rick Hiebert. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

Have you wondered why Rick Joyner and Todd Bentley are trying to get back into the swing of things as quickly as possible?

I think that blogger P.J. Miller has come across a great catch that might explain why there is such urgency in their minds.

It’s a story from one of the local newspapers from a couple of days ago, which explains that the local municipal council wants Morningstar–Joyner’s ministry– to fix the giant Heritage Grand Hotel on the old PTL grounds to bring it up to code. Morningstar has been given a deadline of June to comply…or else the hotel will have to be razed to the ground.

The hotel is the key to a planned new and rebuilt $40 million US ministry and retirement complex. The story notes that Morningstar is trying to sell space to seniors, in the old hotel, but is having difficulty doing so.

So Joyner needs lots of money quickly, or else down comes the hotel. If you are of a sceptical frame of mind, as PJ is, you might wonder if an instant revival, starring Todd Bentley, the mighty man of Lakeland, would do the trick, in the minds of the Morningstar brains trust.

Millions of dollars worth of temptation to just whomp a “revival” up, perhaps…

Google has launched a person finder for people looking for loved ones after the 8.8 Chile quake.

This is the second time the search engine has done this, as of an hour ago over 1400 people had logged in.

You can also access it here along with relief agencies working on recovery.

Twitter is also active with tsuanmi alerts, aftershock reports and people finding – NewsHitter.

1100 Canadians are known to be in the country.
Chile experienced the largest earthquake ever recorded in 1960.

By Rick Hiebert. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

I wonder if Todd Bentley is a fan of Jeopardy, the famous TV game show. I’m sure you know the one–where Alex Trebek provides an answer (“This preacher’s revival in Lakeland ended ignobly.”) and you provide the right question (“Who is…”)

What brings this to mind is a video released a few weeks ago by Bentley’s old friend, the charismatic evangelist Patricia King, another transplanted British Columbian. Patricia King has her own possible problems with being orthodox, and has had to pull an item off her website and apologize when people feared she was bring Biblically unsound. But in this one particular instance, I think she may be wise.

And I think she making an effort to rebuke her old friend here. She doesn’t name the evangelist who she is worried about in this video, but in talking about the importance of “covenants”, she uses an example. I think she is talking about Bentley. We have the “answer” in her description and may use it to guess who she is talking about.

The video has been saved in two parts on YouTube. In part one, she begins her talk on the importance of remaining committed in marriage, toughing it out through thick and thin.

Starting at 4:34 of the first part of the video…

…King begins to cite an example of what she believes can happen when the marriage coventant is broken:

“…before long, you just want to give up and go with someone else, and that actually happened with someone I know, in fact, the Lord had told this man to marry this man, He told him in a vision, and from what I understand, it was almost like an audible voice that he was told to marry a certain woman…”

[I’ll interrupt King for a moement to remember Todd Bentley’s autobiography, Journey Into the Miraculous, You may recall that he claims in his autobiography that he received a special message from the Lord that he was to marry Shonnah Andres…which he did. He wrote: more…