Honjii's Harangues

Crazy christians seek dominion over politics, business and culture

Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air must be the world’s most patient person.  I could not have interviewed this (I can’t even find the right adjective) person and maintained my cool.  I don’t know how she managed for forty-five minutes.  Though I believe C. Peter Wagner is completely off his rocker, listening to him and those like him scare the hell out of me.

Courtesy of C. Peter Wagner C. Peter Wagner, pictured with his wife, Doris, is one of the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation.

A new charismatic Christian movement that seeks to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and Jesus’ return is becoming more of a presence in American politics. The leaders are considered apostles and prophets, gifted by God for this role. Several apostles affiliated with the movement helped organize or spoke at Rick Perry’s August prayer rally, The Response.

Among the topics discussed on Monday’s show are: Wagner’s explanation about a recent video that has been shown on television in which he claims the emperor of Japan had sex with the sun goddess, a power of darkness headed by the kingdom of Satan, and how that resulted in the decline of the Japanese stock market; how demons figure into the belief structure of NAR; the role of prophets and apostles within NAR; what Wagner means when he describes the NAR’s mission as taking dominion over business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion; how he felt when he found out that Ted Haggard, his World Prayer Center co-founder, had used drugs and had sex with men; spiritual mapping; and the role of Jews and Israel in preparing for the second coming.

You can  read the interview highlights here, or click the link below to listen.  Even if you don’t listen to the entire interview (I couldn’t) I would suggest listening to some of it, because hearing the guy gives you a much better sense of who he is than simply reading his words.

To listen to the entire interview click
http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=140946482&m=141006184&t=audio

A few of my own favorites:

On people in American politics being possessed by demons

“We don’t like to use the word possessed because that means they don’t have any power of their own. We like to use the word afflicted or, technical term, demonized. But there are people who — yes, who are — who are directly affected by demons, not only in politics, but also in the arts, in the media and religion in the Christian church.”

On demon identification

“Sometimes they know. Sometimes the demon has identified itself to the person. Sometimes you can tell by manifestations of superhuman, unhuman behavior. Sometimes you can tell by skilled deliverance ministers. My wife has a five-page questionnaire that she has people fill out before she ministers to them. So she asks the kind of questions that a medical doctor would ask to find out, to diagnose an illness. So she actually does diagnostic work on people to discover not only if they have demons, but what those demons might be.”

On whether other religions and nonbelieving Christians are demonic

“Well, it means they’re not part of the kingdom of heaven. It means they’re part of the kingdom of darkness. An apostle, a friend of mine in Nepal, once told me that every Christian believer in Nepal that he knows of has been delivered from demons. That their former Hindu religion had implanted, or the demons had gained access, and that in order to become Christian believers, the demons had to be cast out. Of course, we have many examples in the Bible of the same thing.”

On spiritual mapping to cast demons out of cities

“When you talk about demons over cities, we’re talking about what — sometimes what we refer to as territorial spirits, and they’re more high-ranking spirits in the hierarchy of darkness and they’re more powerful and they require different approaches, and it’s not as easy as commanding them to leave in the name of Jesus. So sometimes there has to be repentance, sometimes there has to be — there has been bloodshed in that city that needs to be repented of, there has been idolatry in the city that has ruined the land. There’s been immorality that needs to be repented of, and there are several social things that people really need to acknowledge that they’re bad and repent of them and ask forgiveness. … There are certain individuals in our whole movement that have special gifts for doing that, and they’re helping lead the way in weakening the power of the spirits. We don’t believe we can kill demons and sometimes we don’t believe we can completely get ‘em out, get ‘em away from a city, but we can reduce their power. We can bind them, and then we can move strongly with the kingdom of God into the city.”

On Thomas Muthee praying over Sarah Palin at the Wasilla Assembly of God, and asking for Jesus to protect her from the spirit of witchcraft

“What Thomas was probably doing, and he and I are friends also, what he was probably doing was speculating that there would be some people who practiced witchcraft and other forms of the occult who would try and take Sarah Palin down through certain rituals or curses or other techniques that witches have and try to destroy her through those things. And I think Thomas was praying a shield of protection around Sarah so that she would not be affected by them.”