Rick Joyner

We have been writing about the growing overlap between the traditional Religious Right and the new brand of self-proclaimed prophets and apostles like Cindy Jacobs, Rick Joyner, Chuck Pierce, and Lou Engle, who have emerged out of the New Apostolic Reformation movement.

In recent years, old-school Religious Right leaders like Tony Perkins and Janet Porter have eagerly embraced leaders like Joyner, Engle and Jacobs and welcomed them into movement, often placing them front and center in their events. 

So imagine our surprise when we took at look at the American Family Association's blog today and saw a post by Marsha West laying out her concerns about the movement and calling out various Religious Right leaders by name for aligning with false prophets like Jacobs:

Last year self-professed NAR prophet Cindy Jacobs’ and General’s International held the May Day 2010: A Cry To God For A Nation In Distress at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial where “local representatives shared about their state’s Christian heritage and lifted up prayers for their state and the United States. National leaders offered up prayers of repentance for seven main issues: family, the church, education, arts and entertainment, business, government and the media.” Janet Porter of Faith2Action had an active role in organizing the gathering. In attendance were such notables as James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Wendy Wright, Jerry Newcombe, Peter LaBarbera, David Barton, Mathew Staver, Robert Knight, Alan Keyes, to name a few. Also in attendance were several NAR leaders including C. Peter Wagner, Chuck Pierce, Dutch Sheets, Lance Wallnau and Rick Joyner.

In April 2010 conservative Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA hosted The Awakening 2010 conference sponsored by the Freedom Federation. They define themselves as “a group of the nation's largest multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational faith-based and policy organizations representing more than 30 million Americans united by core values. The group’s mission is to bring together community leaders committed to mobilizing the Judeo-Christian worldview to preserve freedom and promote justice.”

One of the speakers at the event was Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Other influential leaders include Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, Wendy Wright, Richard Land, Andrea Lafferty, Kelly Shackelford, Ken Blackwell, Mat Staver, Rick Scarborough, and NAR Apostles Cindy Jacobs, Lou Engle, Harry Jackson and Samuel Rodriguez.

What is wrong with this picture? People from the NAR who are in the grip of evil were invited to participate in both of these events. One example is Cindy Jacobs. Jacobs is the NAR’s “lead U.S. National Apostle.” Cindy is supposedly a modern day prophet. But I beg to differ. This woman has uttered more false prophecies than Walgreen’s has pills, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she is no more a prophet of God than Lady Gaga! The truth is, Cindy Jacobs is a false prophet.

Considering that Perkins regularly co-hosts a radio broadcast with AFA head Tim Wildmon and Dobson, Barton, Staver and the like are key ideological allies of the organization, I wonder how they feel about being called out for associating with people "who are in the grip of evil."

Last year, Retired General Jerry Boykin recorded a video for Rick Joyner's Oak Initiative in which he claimed that President Obama was using healthcare reform legislation as cover to establish a private Brownshirt army loyal only to him.

At the Oak Initiative Summit last month, Boykin reiterated and expanded upon that claim ... while also explaining that American Jews don't support the Republican Party because they mistakenly believe that Hitler was on the right when he was really "an extraordinarily off-the-scale leftist":

We have incrementally moved towards Marxism and now I think it's at an accelerated pace. There are lots of indicators as to exactly how we're moving along the lines of the Marxist model - if you look back historically at how societies, what they've done as they've moved toward Marxism, we're doing all of those things.

One of which is, you look at Hitler - and one of the most disgusting things I hear is people who call Hitler "the extreme right." The absolute opposite was true - it was the National Socialist Party, he was an extraordinarily off-the-scale leftist. But many Jews in America, for example, can't identify with the Republican Party because they're called the party of the right and they equate that to Hitler when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. So, that's just a data point.

One of the things that Hitler did was he established the Brownshirts. The Brownshirts where his constabulary force to control the population because, as you're making these radical changes, there has to be some entity that stands by you with the strength and the muscle to allow you to make these over the opposition and the protest of the sovereign, the people. So Hitler had the Brownshirts.

Well, in the lead-up to the election, during the campaigns, our current president said very openly, and you can find it on YouTube, if I am elected President , I will have a national civilian security force that is as large as and as powerful as the US military.

For what? Why do you need a national civilian security force?

Now most people say, well we haven't seen any signs of the administration doing that. Until you go back and read what nobody in Washington read, and that's the health care legislation that lays out a provision for the commissioning of officers to work directly for the President in time of a national emergency.

Now what would bring about a national emergency? An economic collapse, a terrorist attack, a natural disaster - we talked about all those things here - which would then allow for martial law. The foundation has been laid.

Yesterday, Tim Murphy of Mother Jones wrote a good piece about Mike Huckabee's ties to Janet Porter which noted that "Huckabee's greatest asset has always been his ability to speak two languages—one to his base, and one to everyone else."

This is absolutely true, in that Huckabee has managed to develop a reputation as an affable, reasonable Republican in the media while simultaneously maintaining and establishing deep relationships with figures who inhabit the outer fringes of the Religious Right.

And nothing better exemplifies this than the fact that he dedicated a segment on a recent episode of his Fox News television program to discussing the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden ... and he brought on retired General Jerry Boykin as his expert:

Now, the segment itself contains nothing too extreme ... and that is exactly what makes it a perfect demonstration of how Huckabee manages to walk this line. 

After all, if Huckabee brought Boykin on to his Fox program so that he could talk about how he retired from the military after he was caught declaring that the US was engaged in a holy war against Islam and how, since that time, he has become a professional anti-Islam activist and teamed up with self-proclaimed prophet Rick Joyner to form a Spartan-like Christian army that can withstand President Obama's Marxist attempts to create an army of Brownshirts loyal only to him ... well, that just might undermine Huckabee's own well-crafted reputation for aw-shucks reasonableness, now wouldn't it?

Last month, Tony Perkins, Janet Porter, Rick Joyner, Jerry Boykin, Alan Keyes and others gathered for an Oak Initiative Summit in South Carolina.  At the time, we were only able to post cilps based on videos that others had uploaded to YouTube, so we missed a lot ... which is why we ordered the entire conference on DVD.

We just received it today and are starting to work our way through it and will be posting good clips as we come across them ... clips like this one featuring Janet Porter breaking down while discussing how God is using them to stop abortion, save Israel, and defend America:

Ever since the earthquake in Japan, Rick Joyner has been incessantly warning that is a sign that the United States is going to be struck by a massive earthquake of its own, based on prophecies received by Joyner's colleagues over twenty years ago.

And today he was at it again, warning that this earthquake is "imminent" and urging Christians not only to stock up on food and water but also to stockpile Bibles and Bible study materials because, when the quake comes it'll knock out the power grids and people will be unable to watch TV and will need reading material.  As such, this looming disaster will "be one of the greatest opportunities for harvest ever" ... the harvest that comes "at the End of the Age":

In addition to sharing a stage with Janet Porter, Rick Joyner, and Jerry Boykin at The Oak Initiative Summit, Alan Keyes was also a featured attraction on the main stage, where he ranted that God created America so that all citizens would act according to His law and to His will.  But America has squandered that gift and so it is only a matter of time before God destroys this nation ... and the recent earthquake in Japan is proof that such a time is getting near:

Janet Porter lost her radio program after she became deeply involved in Dominionism ... but that hasn't in any way dissuaded her.  And why would it?  Dominionism is an increasingly accepted agenda within the Religious Right.

So, since losing her program, Porter has gone on to fully embrace the movement and its theology, bringing in Dominionist economists to testify on behalf of her "Heartbeat Bill" in Ohio and teaming up with Cindy Jacobs to pray that God will hand the government over to Christians.

So it is no surprise to find out that Porter will again be joining Jacobs for a "Sealed Conference" in August in Arizona where she will once again preach on "Reclaiming the Government":

But before that, Porter will be in South Carolina with Rick Joyner and Jerry Boykin for the "Oak Initiative Summit" this weekend which has just made two key additions - Alan Keyes and Tony Perkins:

I guess it should not come as a surprise to see Perkins lining up with full-blown Dominionists like Porter, Boykin, and Joyner since just last month it was announced that he'd be part of the modern-day Spartan army of Religious Right activists they were forming called "300":

As we have previously noted, right-wing activists have waged a year-long smear campaign against legal scholar Goodwin Liu, who was nominated by President Obama to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year. Liu’s nomination was not acted on in the last Congress; he had his second confirmation hearing on March 2, 2011, and on April 7, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved his nomination.

In the wake of that approval, Religious Right activists are ramping up their rhetoric and demanding that Republican senators block Liu’s confirmation. On Sunday, the Oak Initiative, a dominionist Religious Right group led by self-proclaimed apostle Rick Joyner, sent activists an email alert urging them to contact their Senators and urge opposition to Liu’s confirmation. On Monday, Concerned Women for America posted an interview with Mario Diaz, CWA’s Policy Director for Legal Issues, who repeated the litany of charges right-wing activists have been hurling at Liu since his nomination in February 2010, calling him the nominee of the “extreme radical left.”

It’s worth noting one more time that Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, has publicly endorsed Liu’s confirmation and slammed the smear campaign against him:

However, for anyone who has actually read Liu's writings or watched his testimony, it's clear that the attacks--filled with polemic, caricature, and hyperbole--reveal very little about this exceptionally qualified, measured, and mainstream nominee. ..

He’s not the only conservative legal luminary to endorse Liu. So have Ken Starr and Clint Bolick.

But that hasn’t kept right-wing activists, led the National Review’s Ed Whelan, from waging an all-out rhetorical attack on Liu. Some on the Religious Right are trying to take things further: at the Freedom Federation’s Awakening conference at Liberty University this past weekend, the Family Research Council’s Ken Blackwell said they’d be calling people into the streets of Washington D.C. to stop the nomination.

As we have noted before, Rick Joyner has been warning that the recent earthquake in Japan means that a massive earthquake in California is now "imminent" and that people need to leave that state, based on a prophecy that his colleague Bob Jones received twenty two years ago.

Since the Japan earthquake, Joyner has been posting half-hour long "special bulletins" on a regular basis seeking to explain what it all means - he has posted five to date and I have watched every one. 

Mostly they consist of Joyner talking in circles and rambling on vaguely about signs and prophets and what have you ... but today Joyner began discussing something that caught my attention: namely, that Jim Bakker (yes, that Jim Bakker) is also a prophet who forsaw 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in Japan (it begins at the 7:35 mark):