My perspective -- What Constance thinks

The United Methodist Church Cleans House
Setback for Apostasy

Yesterday, the United Methodist Church’s Supreme Court defrocked a lesbian minister. It also reinstated a minister defrocked for denying membership in his congregation to a practicing homosexual. It was between two bookstores, both close to my downtown Detroit law offices in the Year of Our Lord 1981, that I discovered the first ugly traces of the New Age Movement. One bookstore, in my building, was the Doubleday one located in the Penobscot Building. The other bookstore was across Larned Street facing the Penobscot Building where my offices were then. The bookstore was “Cokesbury Books.” It was operated by the United Methodist Church. I purchased my first copy of The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ there. I looked for that book because of a happy reference to it by author Marilyn Ferguson in her 1980 book, THE AQUARIAN CONSPIRACY. She has just released a new book which I shall be reviewing here soon called AQUARIUS NOW. Looking at the references she found gladdening and I found distressing in THE AQUARIAN GOSPEL, I knew I had stumbled onto very direct evidences of a movement clearly designed to advance the path and progress of the antichrist.

I would eventually write a book about my findings. That book which stayed in print for over 20 years was called THE HIDDEN DANGERS OF THE RAINBOW. I soon found I had support from just about segments of every denomination including the United Methodist Church. I also had opposition from segments of just about every denomination including the United Methodist Church.

My assistant, Ezella, has been reorganizing my office materials on the New Age Movement in the wake of the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library’s archival of my papers. As part of her search, this weekend, I rediscovered and replayed the tapes of Marilyn Ferguson’s lengthy talk at Detroit’s Unity Church. I heard them before – in 1981. I heard her speak personally there in 1982. I was eventually to meet and talk with her on several occasions. Her talks have been considerably toned down since she discovered there was opposition to the movement she so enthusiastically and energetically promoted with vivid detail. She had talked happily in 1981 about the New Age’s incursions into the military (Jim Channon and his First Earth Battalion), education, religion, and she called not so subtly for a war against fundamentalists such as Jerry Falwell. (Maybe she did not know about Falwell’s own now very public apostatizing with the New Agers vis a vis Rev. Moon and Unification Church – also a powerful arm of the New Age Movement.)

When I found the shocking materials in the Cokesbury bookstore in Detroit in 1981, I would show them with shocked looks to the manager. She would reassuringly say, “I know, honey, but its all the young ministers seem to want anymore.” The apostasy in the United Methodist Church raged to the extent that some of its bookstores were actually carrying as “Christian literature” Benjamin Crème’s THE REAPPEARANCE OF THE CHRIST and David Spangler’s various books extolling such “virtues” as “Luciferian initiations.”

The United Presbyterian Church was facing similar crises and carrying similar literature on its tables. So were the Mennonites and too many Baptists. The Evangelicals were shamelessly promoting Jeremy Rifkin and as the very brilliantly written Herescope columns (referenced with a link on my blogspot) show, they were bringing New Age thought leaders such as Willis Harman (Marilyn Ferguson’s personal mentor) into to advise revising of Evangelical thinking for the expected “new era.”

Then we came along and upset their little apple carts. They responded by marginalizing yours truly and all others honestly reporting on the issues as “promoting a Conspiracy Theory.” Then they worked to blackball all honest reporters from their midst. In evangelical circles, this came to one ugly head in October 1987 when a secret conference was held between New Age leaders and Evangelical leaders at the New Age Gold Lake Ranch conference center at Boulder, Colorado. The meeting was convened by Doug Coe of Washington’s Fellowship Foundation supposedly because he had children involved with the New Age Movement and thought there should be better understanding between Christian parents and New Age leaders. Denver Seminary personnel such as Dr. Gordon Lewis were in attendance. So were people from Dallas Seminary and Spiritual Counterfeits Project of Berkeley, California. A vow of silence was exacted from all participants. The evangelicals kept their vows. Fortunately for all, the New Agers did not. David Spangler gave a speech about the doings immediately after – at Boulder’s Episcopalian Church. Local Christians sensitized to the New Age Movement and related Christian apostasies were in attendance and promptly mailed me Spangler’s tapes. The cat was out of the bag.

The battle has continued to rage and the apostasy spread even to the sanctification of homosexuality in Christian circles. The Presbyterians, the Methodists, and even Evangelical Lutherans were effected. The Catholics began to clean house with varying results. The Episcopalians ordained an openly “gay” bishop living with his “partner” in an open “gay lifestyle” arrangement. Shocked African Anglicans broke communion with their denomination until condemnation of the U.S.A. and Canadian practitioners take place, if ever.

Yesterday and happily, God won a round in the United Methodist Church. A state of Virginia minister had been defrocked for denying fellowship to a practicing homosexual. He appealed upwards in the church judicial process. A practicing lesbian minister had been ordained. That also was appealed by those unhappy about this last insult to plain Scriptural warnings of what should not be found among us. The Supreme Court of the United Methodist Church has reinstated the Virginia minister. It has defrocked the lesbian minister.

Onwards and upwards. Occupy till he gets here! But yesterday and happily at least one small blow was struck for righteousness. Congratulations to the United Methodist Church. This is not to say that God does not love sinners. He does – enough to send his son to die for their salvation. This is only to say that God does not condone sin – much less the desecration of his houses of worship.

There is an interesting Revelation prophecy concerning the “inner:” and the “outer court” of the sanctuary. The outer court was to be left out as it was given over to the gentiles for 42 months – the time of the reign of the antichrist. Congratulations to the Methodists for relocating to the inner court.