Category Archives: black church
An Ode to the “black church”
“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here,
for Herod wants to kill you.” And he said to them, ”Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ’Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Luke 13:31-35
As I read these words from My Savior, I thought of this an appropriate message to “the black church”.
Ode to the black church
When the word of God is taught/preached in a complete and sound method (expository), you will always have those who obfuscate the truth. Meaning they will purposely teach and lead their listeners into confusion and error. They do not present what the bible says with clarity and understanding to bless those who hear it. But again they pose as real God-fearing, bible believing teachers, when in reality they are nothing more than spiritual dung beetles who desire the spotlight. 
One need no more than to look around at the majority of Christian “bible” teachers on the media scene today. Most, (and it saddens me to say this) have no more bible knowledge than a cockroach has lips, yet they are loved and lifted up as the Men of God for today! While those who labor in the word both day and night suffer for righteous sake, are frowned upon, rejected and scorned for their exclusive, non ecumenical, uncompromising message, which is exactly what our Lord and Savior preached.
The only way to fight lies and error?
By boldly presenting, teaching, preaching, and living out the TRUTH (God’s word). But one must first grasp the truth before they can teach it. One must fully know and understand the truth, before attempting to distribute it to others.
So let’s make one thing clear
By the grace of God I know the truth, not to sound boastful, but its true. I know the truth, and it’s because I know the word of God. You can take that statement as you want, but understand that the truth is not my truth. It didn’t originate with me, nor am I its author. The truth comes from God. It belongs to Him, and He gave it to us. When I preach my authority comes from God. For His words are the authority.
Where can we find that truth?
Only one place….His Word. His open letter to us concerning Him, His Righteousness, His Holiness, His Peace, His Salvation, and His Glory. The Autobiography of His Son, The Christ, The Messiah, The Anointed One, The Mighty God and Everlasting Father.
This Truth is the Truth (John 1:1-3). He is both Lord of all and Savior to those who believe.
So why in the world would people (in the church) tolerate a person who comes not in the name of the Lord to bring Him glory, but in His own name with doctrines of demons and lies that lead to hell? Why would the church completely reject sound teaching and doctrine that is taught for their spiritual health and soul salvation? That question is a glaring one, bold and rebellious sitting right in the faces of so-called church leaders who have turned from God and have embraced humanism. Humanism that will never ever be able to save the souls of those who hear it. Humanism that teaches man that they can be good and better people without ever leading them to the only one who is good. GOD! (Mark 10:18)
The wisdom of men will do that to you. The wisdom of men will raise up large religious cults (Jehovah’s Witness, Mormonism, Islam) that fall vastly short in addressing man’s biggest problem. Sin! The wisdom of men will try to change a sinful world by engaging in politics and legislation to change the laws of the land, but never successfully changing the nature of men, thus keeping them dead in their sins.
When did we lose sight of what truth is?
How have we (the church) fallen so far away from the very thing that was given to us to lead us into the truth? Why is it that churches no longer preach the gospel message? Preferring instead to lure in the sinners with music concerts, kids jams, raffles, and free gas offers. Why have we left the gospel? Don’t we understand the gospel is the power of God that changed our lives? (Romans 1:16) Don’t we remember the dread, the anguish, and condemnation that pressed heavily upon our hearts sending us into hopelessness when we found out that our sin totally separated us from God, and exposed us as hell bound sinners deserving of every ounce of wrath that God would pour upon us? Don’t we remember the sweet and loving peace that fell over us when we finally understood that Jesus Christ died for that very sin, He drank the wrath of God, to save us from that awesome and terrible day?
How dare we rob people of the same conversion! How dare we look at God in the face and tell Him His message in out of date no longer needed to save the lost!
Who do we think we are?
That’s our problem. We are what the world tells us. We are great and special and somebody. And even if we don’t feel that way the world tells us to embrace it anyways. We reject what the bible says about us being hell bound sinners in need of a savior. No, we would rather hear how diverse and unique we are. How we should be ourselves and embrace ourselves not knowing that as we do that, we are embracing the very disease (SIN) that God hates, and sent His Son to die for so that those who believe might be saved.
In other words man has an identity crisis.
Is there any hope?
I’ll echo the words Paul Washer uttered to a man who asked Him if He could be saved: “I don’t know….”
If the church, who claims to know God and His Son Jesus Christ, will repent and turn back to Him. If…
COGIC Bishop booked on sexual battery charges
New Orleans – The Times-Picayune reported last night that Bishop Charles E. Brown, I, bishop of the Church of God in Christ Greater New Orleans Jurisdiction was booked on charges of sexual battery in June. Brown was released after posting a $25,000 bail. But the story quickly raised more troubling issues about Brown, his past, COGIC’s so-called zero tolerance sexual abuse policy and his association with the church’s presiding bishop.
According the paper, Brown seemed to have made a very foolish decision to contact the woman he is alleged to have molested. [source]
The spiritual head of a local Pentecostal denomination has been arrested and booked with sexual battery on a teenage girl more than 23 years ago. New Orleans court records show that Bishop Charles E. Brown, 58, was released on $25,000 bond.
Brown, who since Hurricane Katrina has divided his time between New Orleans and Houston, is the jurisdictional bishop for Greater New Orleans in the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal denomination with headquarters in Memphis. He is also pastor of a local congregation, Full Gospel Church of God in Christ.
Brown was arrested June 28, according to police records.
Several attempts to contact Brown at his home in Houston were unsuccessful. Court records did not list a lawyer. And denominational officials in Los Angeles and Lafayette who would know about the arrest either were unavailable or did not respond to an inquiry.
A police affidavit supporting the arrest warrant said an unidentified 39-year-old woman called the department’s child abuse unit in March to report that Brown molested her between the ages of 14 and 16.
The woman said at the time Brown was her aunt’s boyfriend, and the acts occurred at his home.
She told police Brown recently reached out and asked to “friend” her on Facebook. She told him she knew him to be an abuser and decided then to go to the police, the affidavit said.
Brown originally was arrested and booked with aggravated rape. But Magistrate Commissioner Harry Cantrell said the specific facts alleged by the woman supported only the lesser accusation of sexual battery.”
Brown, pastor of Williams Temple COGIC in Houston and two other churches, was a prominent figure in pre-Katrina New Orleans. His bio connects him with several powerful civic and religious leaders around the country including serving as a board member with Dr. Fredrick Price of LA, Bishop IV Hilliard in Houston, as the “spiritual advisor” to former Katrina-era NO mayor Ray Nagin and ironically as a board member of Bishop Blake’s “Save Africa’s Children” charity. Within his denomination, Brown was the former Chief Operating Officer of the church until he resigned after a fallout with Blake over a Houston church he now pastors.
What’s troubling is that the police report alleges the crime occured about 23 years ago. That would put the timeline of the crime about 1990-91. During that time, according to Brown’s bio, he was
- Director; Youth Church, [COGIC] UNAC/AIM 1980-1997.
- Executive Board Member; General Assembly of the Church of God in Christ, 1984 to present.
- Board Member; Fellowship of Inner City Word of Faith Ministries (FICWFM), Dr. F. K. C. Price, Founder. (1990-Present).
The woman alleges that Brown committed the crime while he was her aunt’s boyfriend. Just a few weeks ago, we told you about the case of adulterer and deadbeat father Joseph Hogan. The biblical requirements for the office of a bishop mean nothing to COGIC leadership. If blatant adultery and sexual immorality doesn’t disqualify a man from the office, what will? Sources told Report COGIC Abuse that despite the hard evidence on Hogan, COGIC will consecrate him to bishop.
Brown was arrested in June, but still holds his office of pastor and bishop in the Church of God in Christ (see this unconfirmed comment). Report COGIC Abuse has learned that the denomination passed a resolution giving bishops the power to immediately remove a local church pastor upon allegations of sexual misconduct or criminal sexual activity until an investigation is concluded. But there was no clause for the bishops to remove those in their own ranks.
As the Times-Picayune story noted, church officials aren’t responding even though there is evidence that all members of the church’s “general board” —including Charles E. Blake— were made aware of Brown’s situation prior to the story going public.
This story was cross-posted at COGIC Abuse Watch.
NAACP speaker out of sync with Baptist convention theme
Are Baptists circumventing their own theme?
Based on his past activities supporting homosexual rights, NAACP director Benjamin Jealous doesn’t have solidarity with the National Baptist Convention’s theme “Solidarity with the Savior”. Any person who claims that homosexuality is not a sin, isnt in solidarity with Jesus or the Bible either. So its ironic that the NBC would invite Jealous. In order to be in solidarity with the Savior (Jesus) wouldn’t you also have to be in agreement with his word?
The nation’s largest black religious organization is planning to have Jealous speak at a mission event during its upcoming conference in Orlando. Asked by the Daytona Times about “formally recognizing” deceased Orlando Pastor Zachery Tims, Morris Tipton, the denomination’s director of media made a passing allusion that the NBC wouldn’t do so because Tims died in an unrepentant state. [source]
“We also fully believe what the Bible says in 1 John 1:9; ‘If we confess our sins (to Him), He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’,” he continued.
The events have instead scheduled a full list of other activities, with NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous holding the task as the keynote speaker at the Annual Home Mission Board “Mission Train” Awards Luncheon.
The central theme of the Assembly will be “Solidarity With the Savior.”
Tipton said, “Our goal as a Convention and as individual Christians should always be in harmony with the will of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, every ministry and program that we involve ourselves in as a body of believers is to be in solidarity with the Savior.”
While it seemed to disavow Tims because he was “not in solidarity”, the NBC misses the same problem with Jealous. In Matthew 19:3-6, Jesus upheld and strengthened Old Testament laws which condemned any sexual activity other than covenant marriage between a man and a woman.
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
If you’d like to test it on homosexuality, play the role of the pharisee and rephrase the question. It would probably look something like this:
“Is it lawful for a man to have another man as his sexual partner for any cause”?
Jesus’ answer:
“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
If you notice, the answer remains the same.
Black is the new gay?
Ready for the NAACP to be co-opted by a National Association for the Advancement of Gay People? Some are already heralding that blacks are a yesteryear minority and that gays are the new minority du jour. In other words, if you want to score points as a civil rights crusader, you would need to take a trip through the homosexual community first. And with white homosexuals desperately seeking to rain money into the depleted coffers of the NAACP, Jealous is the perfect fit.
Under Jealous, the NAACP is fervently ramping up its homosexual coalition building efforts more than ever before.
Last year the NAACP came out against California’s Proposition 8, the recently overturned ballot initiative banning gay marriage. And in July, at its annual national convention, the NAACP rolled out an LGBT Equality Taskforce, a seven-member committee designed to stay on top of justice issues within the gay community.
But it seems as if these activities may have been merely preludes to the upcoming One Nation Working Together march. Led by the NAACP, the Oct. 2 event will find President Jealous and his colleagues stepping out with more than two dozen LGBT partner organizations, an unprecedented showing of public support for gay-rights activists of every stripe.
Homosexuality makes strange bedfellows.
RA Vernon on homosexuality
With a golden bed as a background prop, Cleveland pastor RA Vernon takes about 29 minutes to talk about sexual issues and in particular homosexuality.
A summation of the teaching:
1. Covers some biblical history on homosexuality including homosexual incest with Noah and the Sodom and Gomorrah story. He broadens the sin of Sodom into being out of place with God.
2. Covers gay christian theology by telling people that gay theologians are fairly adept at mishandling scripture.
3. Homosexuality (and all sin) is intended to feel good, but feelings are no measure of righteousness.
4. The word homosexual via translation is problematic because it didn’t exist in Greek or Hebrew.
5. The creation of man and woman was natural because it was God’s plan.
6. Sin is man’s predisposition, but each person has to live according to the truth of God’s word.
COGIC prepares to ‘consecrate’ sexually immoral pastor
ATLANTA – Ignoring an impassioned letter for reform in the nation’s largest black pentecostal denomination, Bishop Charles Blake, Sr and his cadre of fellow Church of God in Christ (COGIC) bishops are preparing to consecrate [Superintendent] Joseph E. Hogan, Jr. as a bishop. In November, Hogan will be promoted and has been selected to allegedly head the “North Central Jurisdiction” comprised of about 30 odd churches siphoned off the Central Georgia jurisdiction after the death of Bishop Chandler Owens.
Sources (whom we cannot identify for fear of retribution) very close to this story told COGIC Abuse Watch the selection of Hogan was a “travesty”.
The right choice?
Billing himself as the “right choice”, Hogan used this video to promote his candidacy for bishop of the church’s Central Georgia Jurisdiction, But after much politicking, legendary COGIC infighting and a vote, he did not win. To pacify him, Hogan was given approximately 30-45 (per his victory speech video) churches out of the 100 to start a new jurisdiction. In the end, politics and bad judgment won.
If the bible says that among believers there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people, what of the widespread sexual immorality among leaders?
Who is this man?
Hogan, pastor of New Life Tabernacle COGIC located in SE Atlanta, is a superintendent in COGIC, a midlevel administrative position generally supervising five or more churches. In the video, Hogan says he has been serving in the Central Georgia Jurisdiction for some 52 years and pastoring 32 years. He has been married 39 years.
A deadbeat gone wild
In 2005, Hogan (then serving as a ranking official under Bishop Chandler Owens (d. 2011), impregnated Sherry Adams, the wife of his assistant pastor, a man who had served with him for some twenty years.
Public records from Clayton County (GA) Superior Court show that Hogan initially denied the child was his, but after a paternity test, he was ordered to pay child support. In 2011, Hogan stopped child support payments and was subsequently sued and arrested. The case was dismissed “without prejudice” which in legal terms means that he could be sued and/or arrested again in the future for the same offense.
An elder who has served for a number of years in the Central Georgia jurisdiction told Report COGIC Abuse that the child Sherry Adams sued Hogan for child support is only one of several illegitimate children. He suggested that Hogan’s sexual wild cards are a result of the lack of discipline by his two former supervising bishops. In his campaign video, posted just five months ago, Hogan only acknowledges 4 children by his current wife. But according to the court documents, the statement is intentional deception.
What does the bible say about men who desire the office of a bishop?
If a man desires the office of a bishop in the Lord’s church, the scriptures are clear and direct in its qualifying stipulations for that man.
The Apostle Paul wrote that if a man desires the office of bishop, he desires a good work. Its important to understand that the office of a bishop while spiritual, is also equally administrative. Thus, “desiring” to administrate (oversee others in organization, supervision) is a good thing. However, because it has serious spiritual ramifications for those under such a person’s supervision and for the body of Christ at large, the prerequisites are intended to prevent unqualified individuals from accessing the office.
Those 16 qualifications are found in 1 Timothy 3rd chapter:
A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt at teaching; not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for filthy lucre, but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one who ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all dignity. (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) He must not be a novice in the faith, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover he must have a good reputation with those who are outsiders, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
Just by the adultery, lying, covetousness and deception alone, Hogan fails to meet a minimum 4 of the 16 qualifications. Sources also charge that Hogan does not reside with his current wife due to his repeated cases of sexual immorality. Sound familiar?
Doesn’t Bishop Charles Blake know this? If he does, why would he go against the scripture to elevate a man who clearly is unqualified for the office of bishop? If Hogan’s life is out of control now, what excesses will he be able to indulge in once he is given the power of a bishop’s office? For context, Hogan was a faithful disciple of one of COGIC’s most notorious homosexual sex offenders, Bishop John Husband (d. 1991). Incidentally, the church’s current presiding bishop also served as a “youth pastor” under Husband. Are the errors of the past about to resurrect themselves for another Georgia “jurisdiction”?
Warning before a great fall?
COGIC’s stunning disregard of biblical directives in its leadership selection processes has produced numerous high profile embarrassments for the denomination. That’s why COGIC’s former Chief Justice, Bishop Samuel Nesbitt of Jacksonville, FL wrote Bishop Charles Blake a sweeping and detailed letter warning him that the denomination’s habit of allowing sexually immoral men (among other things) into leadership would be its undoing. Strongly suggesting that COGIC was being intentionally deceitful —and hypocritical— against its public proclamations of holiness, Nesbitt wrote:
“Based on my study of (the etymology of the word lying, and relating it to die meaning of the words hypocrite, deceiver and pretender, I conclude that whether the deceit is uttered (orally) or by an overt act, it is a lie. A hypocrite, a deceiver or a pretender may be classified as “a liar in action.” For this reason, we should be careful what we do and what we say. We are also obligated to place persons in nasttions of leadership who meet the moral standards, as prescribed in the WORD, and the standards which the title represents. A person should not be made to think that he is what he is not In Galatians 5:3, St Paul says: “If a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.” It is not difficult to see how a deceived person may cause harm to others who may rely upon him to produce that which he is not qualified to perform. As leaders of the Church Of God In Christ, Inc., we are obligated to take every reasonable precaution to see that we don’t place persons in positions who lack the qualifications to produce what the title is known to represent When we knowingly place persons in positions, for which they are not qualified, we may be guilty of making a person think that he is what he is not: That is deceit”
Blake never responded to nor acknowledged the April 13, 2011 letter. Read and download the entire letter.
Hogan specifically thanks Blake and the COGIC “board” for a “unanimous” decision.
This story was cross-posted at COGIC Abuse Watch
Breaking! Barack Obama comes out of the closet
Surprised? Shocked? Upset? You shouldn’t be. The signs have been there all along. The neon evidence glaring to anyone who had even the slightest measure of spiritual discernment. America’s 44th president is casting off his political downlow status and has come out of the closet on gay marriage.
Obama’s short two year tenure in the White House has been marked by a stunning succession of gay culture worship, meetings, parties, homosexual proclamations, deceptive tactics about his true intentions, multiple appointments of homosexuals in his administrations and the passage of more homosexual rights laws than all his predecessors combined.
In contrast, he has done little to nothing for African Americans who are suffering under staggering unemployment figures, poverty, crime and the loss of their once prominent place as a respected minority. But then again, the perceived savior of black America never really pretended to be black. He just cunningly used black [church support] as a convenient prop while he went about replacing them with the homosexual community.
With mammon from his chosen people, SOTUS led the charge to strike down laws that kept our collective sanity in place. He instituted mild anarchy with a wry smile.
His tenure has also presided over a rolling succession of natural disaster phenomenons all across the country (floods, tornadoes, fires, heatwaves, winter storms, etc), each of them breaking all previously set disaster records. Death tolls from these disasters have similarly broken all previous records. But with a teleprompter-induced laugh and a joke, Obama is unfazed as he presses forward to achieve his crowning victory.
Based on his unprecedented affinity for homosexual rights, the gay community will have in Barack Hussein Obama its ultimate hero: the first openly homosexual president.
Emboldened by the passage of same sex marriage in New York, Obama announced his support to overturn the 15-year-old Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) a law prohibiting federal recognition of same sex marriage. It is also the last line of defense for some 30 plus states that use DOMA as its “states rights” justification for banning same sex marriage. Hearings on the law that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman are scheduled for this week.
From the Christian Post [source]
President Obama is “proud to support” the Respect for Marriage Act, the White House announced Tuesday.
“The president has long called for a legislative repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which continues to have a real impact on the lives of real people, our families, friends and neighbors.”
The Department of Justice defended DOMA in federal court for two years before announcing in February that it would no longer assert the constitutionality of the law.
DOMA was passed by both chambers of Congress by huge margins and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.
Black Christian News Network’s headline screamed today: “President Obama, Who Is a Christian According to His Own Testimony, Takes One Step Closer to Officially Endorsing Same-Sex Marriage, Yet He Acts Flabbergasted that This Country Is Catching So Much Hell from Every Direction”
But Obama is neither a Christian nor is he flabbergasted about the rapidly degenerating state of this nation. He has been one of the architects of its demise. Like his spiritual father, he uses a form of godliness, a facade of religiousity, generous flatteries, just enough to appear as an angel of light and a savior to certain segments of the population. He set the stage for his own coming out party and no natural disaster, no death toll, no country on the brink of financial disaster, no overseas war was going to stop him from achieving his goal.
The handwriting was on the wall. It said “The election of Barack Obama is a signal of my judgment upon this nation. You will have the independence from me you desire. And you will bear the burden of his wickedness which reflects the wickedness in your own hearts”
Edward Whelan, who currently serves as president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, testified earlier this year that Obama is knowingly playing political games when it comes to appearing to at first defend DOMA. Whelan expressed doubt that the president who is versed in constitutional law could change his stance on gay marriage 180 degrees because a Massachusetts judge chose to rule in favor of gay couples in two DOMA-related cases.
“This is yet another step in President Obama’s stealth campaign to promote same-sex marriage,” Whelan wrote in a statement to The Christian Post.
Indeed, the closet door has come off at the hinges, and the monster we all knew was lurking in its shadows has emerged.
Types and foreshadows
Don’t be deceived, this is another trial run orchestrated by the spirit of the antichrist which, according to scripture, is currently at work in the earth. Daniel prophetically declared what the end run will look like. Obama is but one of a long line of antichrist foreshadows who come to precondition the people (with the help of the apostate church) to accept this false image of Christ.
And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits. And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days. Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help: but many shall cleave to them with flatteries. And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed. Daniel 11:32-35 KJV
