HarvestNET.org

[Teri]

[eweiss]

This week's Dallas Observer hit the streets today with a l-e-n-g-t-h-y cover article on homeboy Ole Anthony, his history (not quite the way Ole has told it), his investigations (it appears that he and his crew kind of doctored the evidence against Bob Tilton - to be discussed further in a Dallas Observer blog), his theology (a bit whacked), and his practices (also a bit whacked):

The Cult of Ole

This is why Doug Duncan and his wife wrote their book.

FYI - The Dallas Observer is the local free, alternative, muckracking, liberal rag. It's been sympathetic to Ole for years, so it's kind of surprising to see this. However, it's also based on 25 hours' worth of interviews with Ole.

The article is wrong in a couple minor details that I know something about - e.g., the details about Berean and Norman Grubb are not quite correct, as I understand it (I can explain, but it's beside the point) - so I hope the rest of the story doesn't suffer from such lapses.

An interesting read.

I could probably write paragraphs of comments, but I won't.

Next week's Letters to the Editor will probably be pretty hot.
_________________
Φως ιλαρον αγιας δοξης αθανατου Πατρος,
Ουρανιου, αγιου, μακαρος, Ιησου Χριστε,
Ελθοντες επι την ηλιου δυσιν, ιδοντες φως εσπερινον,
Υμνουμεν Πατερα, Υιον, και Αγιον Πνευμα, Θεον,
Αξιον σε εν πασι καιροις υμνεισθαι φωναις αισιαις,
Υιε Θεου, ζωην ο διδους,
Διο ο κοσμος σε δοξαζει.

[eweiss]

2 articles/sidebars that accompany the main story:

The Man and the Myth

The Thorn in Their Side
_________________
Φως ιλαρον αγιας δοξης αθανατου Πατρος,
Ουρανιου, αγιου, μακαρος, Ιησου Χριστε,
Ελθοντες επι την ηλιου δυσιν, ιδοντες φως εσπερινον,
Υμνουμεν Πατερα, Υιον, και Αγιον Πνευμα, Θεον,
Αξιον σε εν πασι καιροις υμνεισθαι φωναις αισιαις,
Υιε Θεου, ζωην ο διδους,
Διο ο κοσμος σε δοξαζει.

[eweiss]

[formercultist]

There is another piece to the Observer story which has just been posted today on their blog. There are some questions being raised about the integrity of the original PrimeTime Live investigation into Robert Tilton in 1991 in which Ole participated. In fact, that investigation pretty much laid the foundation for Ole's subsequent career as a televangelist watchdog. See http://www.dallasobserver.com/blogs/
_________________
www.dallascult.com

[eweiss]

[eweiss]

The new issue of The Dallas Observer came out today, but there were no Letters to the Editor about the Ole Anthony story. Maybe they got so many that they want to wait until next week's issue. Or maybe they got none.

From the factnet forum on Ole by a person who described himself on June 20, 2006 as: "I've been a part of this community and an employee of the Foundation for approxamately three months."

Monday August 7 he posted: "They're for the most part in totlal denial and will barely acknowledge the existence of the article. They won't talk about it. But I do know that this thing has put grave doubts in the minds of more TFI [Trinity Foundation] people than just myself."

and he wrote that he left the group (i.e., Trinity) late Sunday night, August 6, saying: "I'm outta here, man."

(Note: Any spelling errors are from the factnet poster, as all I did was copy and paste.)
_________________
Φως ιλαρον αγιας δοξης αθανατου Πατρος,
Ουρανιου, αγιου, μακαρος, Ιησου Χριστε,
Ελθοντες επι την ηλιου δυσιν, ιδοντες φως εσπερινον,
Υμνουμεν Πατερα, Υιον, και Αγιον Πνευμα, Θεον,
Αξιον σε εν πασι καιροις υμνεισθαι φωναις αισιαις,
Υιε Θεου, ζωην ο διδους,
Διο ο κοσμος σε δοξαζει.

[formercultist]

I think the letters will be in next week's edition. Here is a letter that an old friend of mine whom I knew back in high school (I haven't seen her for at least 25 years, though we have been in touch a little lately via the modern miracle of email) sent, which I have because she copied me on it. She said the Observer emailed her back to get permission to print it, so I think it will be in next week--probably edited for length. However, you saw it here first:

I'm glad someone finally had the courage to publish a book about the real Ole Anthony. Thank you, Wendy Duncan. And thanks to the Observer for having the journalistic savvy to follow up on it.

On the surface, your comical front page last week seems almost as silly as depicting Ole behind a locked compound, handing out Nikes and serving Kool-Aid. Just hard to take seriously. But that doesn't mean that the danger at Trinity isn't real. Unfortunately, the very word "cult" conjures up visions of something evil and extreme, and it's easy to miss the subtle criteria. Does a "cult leader" only earn that eerie title by causing a newsworthy tragedy? Isn't causing personal tragedy enough? Isn't diabolically derailing families a cult-worthy accusation? Ole's ability to maintain such a startling level of psychological control over people's lives for so many years is scarier to me than a flash-in-the-pan madman who blows his cover.

I doubt we'll ever see the dreaded headlines that something snapped and it all got ugly. It only gets personally ugly for people like Doug and Wendy, who trusted Ole Anthony, only to be devastated and disillusioned by his abuse and deception. No wonder they couldn't hear God anymore.

The fact that Ole indeed has an uncult-like "come and go" policy is not comforting, but only indicates that he is successfully persuasive without walls. Somehow, he also manages to stay respectable in the public light -- which all means that he is real good at this. I also see no reason to be reassured by any defense from Ole's camp, glorifying his virtues. If anything, support from his constituency only serves to confirm that in the face of this blatancy, people can still be unbelievably gullible. And aren't cult followers notoriously guilty of being sadly oblivious?

Wendy Duncan's husband Doug was a close high school friend of mine, before and during the time he got into this Trinity Foundation mess. So I've known Ole was bad news since 1977, when Doug initially had some serious questions and wanted me to meet with him to check out his theology. Ole sat uncomfortably close to me in a circular booth at Denny's, with an imposing sensuality that was quite intimidating to a 21-year-old. After first testing my scriptural knowledge, he fed me his twisted revision. His spiritual pitch was about surrendering individual identity in favor of losing oneself in a melting oneness of all believers. He said this was the only way God would accept us in heaven, because expressing individuality meant asserting self, which was sinful. Ole said this was our eternal destiny, heavily implying that it should begin more tangibly in the here and now.

Contrary to Ole, I felt that my relationship with God depended on it being personally intimate. So, the obvious red flag was that if I bought his theology and laid down my identity, then I'd also relinquish my free will and the ability to make my own decisions. No, I wasn't thinking "Run, it's a cult!" But I did get his agenda -- loud and clear.

Doug didn't see things my way, and told me more about Ole's ideas, like the unsurprising revelation that premarital sex was totally fine, because "to the pure all things are pure" (a wildly irresponsible interpretation of Titus 1:15). With this kind of theology, which allowed so-called freedom without offending the Christian conscience, it's no wonder that young people were drawn to Ole. When my friend's strong faith was misdirected so easily, it certainly foreshadowed Ole's uncanny influence. What I didn't see was the years of misery it would cost him.

I've always believed that from it's very roots, Trinity represented something quite foreign from the true Gospel. And it seems from all reports that Ole just continued in that vein and built more falsehood on that faulty foundation. As for his watchdog business, the oldest trick in the book is finding someone worse to criticize to make yourself look better. He did that masterfully by going after the big ministry guns. The bigger the gun, the better it would make him seem. He wasn't one of "them"-- he was the Christian crusader for justice. Or was he?

Being the wife of an ordained minister for many years has put me on the forefront of concern about corruption in the church. I am distraught when people are hurt. But Ole's methods of exposing televangelists were almost gleeful and bloodthirsty. Based on that alone, you gotta wonder what team he's batting for. He is like a surgeon (an unlicensed one at that) who goes after a disease by slicing the patient to death with a kitchen knife. A skilled surgeon will treat the patient, not ravage him. Apparently, he dealt with his own ministry the same way.

I hope that Ole's antics being exposed will curtail others from getting involved with him. I also hope that his career as a watchdog is shut down. Ministers are people too, and inevitably some will do things wrong. There is certainly much to correct. But who should handle the wrong and how? Ole is surely not the "who" and he doesn't have the compassion or a clue about the scriptural way to do the "how". Ole Anthony claims to represent my God? I don't think so.
_________________
www.dallascult.com

[Teri]

[Ian Vincent]

formercultist wrote:

Quote:

His spiritual pitch was about surrendering individual identity in favor of losing oneself in a melting oneness of all believers. He said this was the only way God would accept us in heaven, because expressing individuality meant asserting self, which was sinful.

Yeah, i've come across that, its a real phenomena, a device of the enemy.

Was Ole Anthony prepared to surrender his own individual identity for the common good? ( hypothetically - as i know nothing about him)

Unity, but never on an artificial, or forced, or contradictory/hypocritical level.

Therefore true leaders must have no contradictions in their life, as our Lord and Apostles stipulated. Their life is their message.

ian v.