Quote:
Originally Posted by MikhailianInception
Hi Acolyte,
Thank you for sharing with me this link. Although it's a long read and I haven't started yet. I watched the YouTube video, which was pretty disturbing I did, however, read this on your website - https://energeticprocession.wordpres...cri-documents/
This letter contains some pretty damning stuff about Hank Hanegraaff. So, he was really that incompetent in terms of theology and apologetics? The letter also alleged that the way he treated his staff was like that of a tantrum.
Question for you: Did Hank Hanegraaff write "We Were Wrong" in the CRI journal (about the Lord's Recovery) to prevent his ministry from being sued? I know that's a theory I have because of the way the LC was suing Evangelical Churches for defamation. Was it a bribe?
Were you ever a part of the Lord's Recovery movement, Acolyte?
Thank you,
- M.L. |
Yes, Hank was pretty clueless. I worked in the radio studio for about a year so I could see what was happening in real time. Shows had to be edited because Hank made major theological mistakes that the regulars on the show did not make. Or those shows had so many errors in them that their recordings were never made public.
And he is not formally educated. Everything is memorized, which is why if you get him off what he has memorized, he is helpless. This is why he doesn't do debates. He did one debate I think in 2011 on the date of Revelation and got annihilated. He can't debate because he can't construct an argument and he never bothered to become educated in that or any related field. To my knowledge he has one year of undergrad education at Calvin College and then dropped out.
For example, Hank used to always say that the members of the Trinity were "separate." Well that would make them three Gods. He knew practically nothing about church history as well. I recall one caller who was a Wiccan who called in and was blasting Hank about the Crusades. Hank didn't even know when they took place.
And then of course all the calls now are highly screened. And he has a computer he can look up material in advance and just read from or for the monologues he has a teleprompter, so it is all pretty much fake. The callers are real, but it is the same basic stuff over and over again. On top of that, the vast majority of the research staff have been eliminated by the late 90's
That letter was written by Mike Stephens who was the head of the Broadcast dept, so he was higher level staff so he got to see more of Hank behind closed doors, but other senior staff report the same thing. There are about another three dozen letters just like that.
Yes, I have read Elliot's piece, but I thought it was pretty weak. The irony is that Jack Sparks and Jon Braun who did the original work on the LC became Orthodox priests, and I know for a fact that they never changed their position about the LC. And of course, Hank's own church considers the LC as heterodox as well, and that is even if everything in the Journal piece is true and exculpatory.
I don't think the shift was due to the threat of litigation. I think Paul Young got duped, I think Hank saw an opportunity for include a group he could squeeze in and make some money at the same time. That is his typical MO in my experience.
If memory serves, CRI's income spiked in 2009 to 9 million from about 5. I don't know in this case where that extra 4 million came from, but I do know when I was there int he early 1990's that when a deal was made, members of a given group would flood CRI with donations. It was a convenient way to cloak the transfer of funds.
And no, I was never a member of the LC.