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Gems and gold dust from God...is this common?


Heaps of Eeps

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The churches that picked up on the "Toronto Blessing" thing scared the living daylights out of me. I was a teen when that was going on.

Ironically, we still go to a charismatic type church, and previously went to an AOG church. They just aren't the crazy type. :p

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I went to highschool with a family who I recently found out were fundies, the boy obviously wasnt as he smoked pot, drank and had girlfriends, Im not sure about the girl as she was younger but always sweet.

Anyhow a few years ago a mutual friend was telling me how the parents recieved gems from God and often find themselves covered in gold dust and I was like "whoa what? People believe that?" and mutual friend actually did semi believe it because she had seen the gems and I was like " you can find them on ebay, they are scammers, run"

It has been years since I thought about this so i did a quick google and found that the parents and daughter all run a ministry called Face to Face. Their facebook page has tons of pics of gems..

Anyone run into something like this? How are people so easily fooled? There looks to be a lot of teenagers at the picnic...so weird.

.facetofaceministriesonline.com/

This was really big during the "Toronto Blessing" business, circa 1996 when wild stuff started happening and Rodney Howard Browne came from South Africa to be a missionary to the US and to make a lot of money. It is essentially hypnosis the likes of which Kathryn Kuhlman used. I was at a meeting in '97 when people swore that there was gold dust all over the platform and the keyboard. Kind of a mass hysteria kind of thing.

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This was really big during the "Toronto Blessing" business, circa 1996 when wild stuff started happening and Rodney Howard Browne came from South Africa to be a missionary to the US and to make a lot of money. It is essentially hypnosis the likes of which Kathryn Kuhlman used. I was at a meeting in '97 when people swore that there was gold dust all over the platform and the keyboard. Kind of a mass hysteria kind of thing.

I know this family will invite people over and then suddenly gold dust will be all around the room or in their hair. I remember saying to my friend who saw it that if they were really getting gems and gold from god dont you think theyd be insanely popular and build a huge church or something?

I had never heard of the Toronto Blessing, guess I was too busy going to rock concerts around then!

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The Vineyard Church at that time was really into hosting expensive conferences speed the Toronto Blessing - The conferences usually between $200 to $400 for two and a half days - and they certainly didn't feed you or even give you a glass of water for that cost. There was music and some teaching, but a great deal of time spent with someone blowing into the microphone and people writhing on the floor, flopping like fish and laughing hysterically.

These things would be packed out. There was a couple of Vineyard churches that had large facilities, so they weren't paying rental fees, and while I'm sure the speakers got paid, the conferences were volunteer run, and can't have cost much to run, so they had to be taking in money hand over fist.

Also really popular at the conferences - and in the Sunday services were "worship dancers" they would have dance groups of modestly dressed women waving scarves and flags. They usually wore matching, long flowing satiny skirts in jewel-tone colours, or frumpers made out of flow-y, shiny fabrics. I couldn't find any good examples on Youtube, but this link is a really typical example of the dancing - it's pretty cheesy.

At the time I aspired to be one of the dance groups, but they were really cliquey - you had be viewed as "really having a heart of worship" and it was super spiritual and you had to be invited to join. I was never invited, even though I hung around and hinted and tried to prove myself worshipful enough.

One of the conferences a Vineyard church put on each year was aimed at youth. The church had a massive building and on the last night of the conference they decided to hold a Christian Rave. It was supposed to be some sort of intercessory and evangelistic dance thing. They put flyers out in all the places where regular raves were advertised and then they were totally shocked an appalled when regular ravers, doing regular rave things like dropping ecstasy and having sex in the bathroom showed up at their nice little intercessory dance party. So they turned on the lights, shut of the music and started praying prayers of repentance from the stage.

Man, I forgot how nuts those days were.

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The Vineyard Church at that time was really into hosting expensive conferences speed the Toronto Blessing - The conferences usually between $200 to $400 for two and a half days - and they certainly didn't feed you or even give you a glass of water for that cost. There was music and some teaching, but a great deal of time spent with someone blowing into the microphone and people writhing on the floor, flopping like fish and laughing hysterically.

So Vineyard Church is more than a single church? In the northern Tomahawk town where I used to live, and where my daughter still lives, one of the MO Synod Lutheran pastors left that denomination and started a church called the Vineyard Church. He and his girlfriend (later wife) had had a baby in high school, they placed the baby for adoption. His girlfriend, later wife was Catholic, her uncle was a priest and the family was very, very Catholic. After college they married, in the MO Synod Lutheran church while he was in seminary. Their second child had Down's Syndrome. I've always thought they were dealing with a lot of guilt over their premarital sex, placing a baby for adoption, and then having a child with Down's. They became weirder and weirder when it came to religion. They felt the Mo Synod Lutheran church wasn't biblical enough so they started this Vineyard church. My daughter, who's Catholic, and her husband, who's ECLA (think that's right) Lutheran went once and said they'd never go back.

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So Vineyard Church is more than a single church? In the northern Tomahawk town where I used to live, and where my daughter still lives, one of the MO Synod Lutheran pastors left that denomination and started a church called the Vineyard Church. He and his girlfriend (later wife) had had a baby in high school, they placed the baby for adoption. His girlfriend, later wife was Catholic, her uncle was a priest and the family was very, very Catholic. After college they married, in the MO Synod Lutheran church while he was in seminary. Their second child had Down's Syndrome. I've always thought they were dealing with a lot of guilt over their premarital sex, placing a baby for adoption, and then having a child with Down's. They became weirder and weirder when it came to religion. They felt the Mo Synod Lutheran church wasn't biblical enough so they started this Vineyard church. My daughter, who's Catholic, and her husband, who's ECLA (think that's right) Lutheran went once and said they'd never go back.

I think Vineyard could be called a denomination. It has about 50 churches in Canada. I think the movement started in California though, I'm not sure. I do know that it was started by John Wimber.

Edited to add: a quick wikipedia search confirms it is a denomination with 1,500 churches world wide. Just think - there are that many places where you can fall to the ground and "laugh in the spirit"! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineyard_Movement

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We have a Vineyard in my area. It is in one of the most beautiful churches that I have ever seen. Apparently it is in an old church, and I would love to know the original denomination. We actually have a lot of gorgeous churches like this in my area.

vineyard.JPG

Anyway, I did not know they were fundie until I started reading here, because who would think that this beautiful church could house such evil?

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We have a Vineyard in my area. It is in one of the most beautiful churches that I have ever seen. Apparently it is in an old church, and I would love to know the original denomination. We actually have a lot of gorgeous churches like this in my area.

vineyard.JPG

Anyway, I did not know they were fundie until I started reading here, because who would think that this beautiful church could house such evil?

That is a beautiful building! I'm guessing it probably wasn't a Catholic church previously as there's no real steeple as such. But something fairly traditional with the stained glass windows. Maybe Methodist or Baptist?

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It is a block away from an equally beautiful Catholic church, so I don't think it was RC.

Here is the Catholic church:

stjoes.JPG

The architecture, particularly religious architecture, in my town is amazing. When you walk downtown, it is one gorgeous building after another.

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It is a block away from an equally beautiful Catholic church, so I don't think it was RC.

Here is the Catholic church:

stjoes.JPG

The architecture, particularly religious architecture, in my town is amazing. When you walk downtown, it is one gorgeous building after another.

I really love old churches. New churches just do not have the kind of architecture that makes it stand out as a church and not just another building.

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I tried to find a photo of the Vineyard Church in my daughter's town but here doesn't seem to be one on line. It is a nondescript building that could be a medical clinic, a realtor's office, or just about anything. The senior pastor is the man I mentioned above, the associate pastor is one of his son's, and the youth pastor is another of his son's. I was surprised at that. He is still married to his high school sweetheart. I'd love to know if they are reunited with their now adult child they placed for adoption.

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I tried to find a photo of the Vineyard Church in my daughter's town but here doesn't seem to be one on line. It is a nondescript building that could be a medical clinic, a realtor's office, or just about anything. The senior pastor is the man I mentioned above, the associate pastor is one of his son's, and the youth pastor is another of his son's. I was surprised at that. He is still married to his high school sweetheart. I'd love to know if they are reunited with their now adult child they placed for adoption.

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The Vineyard was started by the late John Wimber, essentially a denomination that is everywhere. The Vineyard churches are very cultic, maintain a very tight control over their members and do a great deal of "speaking into the lives" of their members (micromanaging stuff that is none of their business).

He started out in the Calvary Chapel system and soaked up the cultic practices from them, then he teamed up in the eighties with the crazy Kansas City Prophets who talk to demons who give them information. Recently, all of these nuts like Rick Joyner and Paul Cain and the Charismatic Bob Jones converse with an entity who calls herself "Emma." The followers seem to have no issues with this practice which just blows my mind.

The Kansas City Prophets came from William Branham who used to have an entity appear to him on the church platform who would tell him which people to call out of the group to receive divine healing.

Sierra at NLQ has written about her experience of growing up in a family and church that followed Branham. He hated women, essentially. I remember one notable post called "Hello, Miss Dog Meat," something he actually said in a sermon.

When I attended my crazy charismatic Gothard church in Maryland, we had people who came from the Vineyard when they got into trouble and when people were disgruntled, they would most often start attending the Vineyard. Both followed the "submit to your elders" stuff, so if a member was deemed trouble, they thought they were getting a fair break when they changed to or from the Vineyard. Working in the church office on my days off when they needed help, I learned that those pastors ate lunch together twice a month and shared discipline tips and info about the members that had traded spots. This was true of all of the submission and discipleship churches nearby. All of those "like minded" pastors met together to share information every other month, too.

They also produce some serious altered state of consciousness music that is repetitive and will throw you into a low alpha state and what I think dropped down into a theta state at times, claiming that it brought the Holy Spirit, but what it was really doing was brain wave entrainment into the range of weirdness like out of body experiences and ESP and other strangeness. It's like taking drugs without the drugs.

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They also produce some serious altered state of consciousness music that is repetitive and will throw you into a low alpha state and what I think dropped down into a theta state at times, claiming that it brought the Holy Spirit, but what it was really doing was brain wave entrainment into the range of weirdness like out of body experiences and ESP and other strangeness. It's like taking drugs without the drugs.

I want to hear more about this.

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I want to hear more about this.

Read this: http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2008 ... iving.html

Your body will slow itself to match the music, what is called brain wave entrainment, the whole idea behind binaural sound therapy for people with learning disorders. Critical thought takes place at about 12-15 Htz, then 12-8 is Alpha, then Theta, then delta. The music pushes you into low alpha/high theta. Theta is also the state of fight or flight, and you will also go into theta when you drive a car or run the vacuum. You know, how you've driven somewhere and don't actually remember driving there? A part of your brain dropped down into a slower theta state. Theta is also associated with thinking in the colors of teal and cool blue, hence the phrase "Out of the blue," I'm been taught. It is just above sleep and the state you're in when you're dropping off and suddenly consciously remember someone's name that you couldn't remember earlier in the day.

That kind of music drives you into a theta state, and it's not a good place to be in for an extended period of time according to hypnotherapy.

I've talked with people who moved to Kansas City to be at the International House of Prayer where they pray and play Vineyard music for hours on end so that prayer is offered around the clock. Anyone with any kind of ticks or mental health problems who spent any kind of time there had all kinds of problems, and staying in that state made them nuts. People would bark and flail. I know a kid who had Tourettes who went and just about had a nervous breakdown while at IHOP and he was not there very long.

Those effects have little to do with the Holy Spirit most of the time. I believe that premonitions can be very real, and I always think of my cousin who was pregnant and went into the hospital with kidney stones. I was drifting off to sleep, and I just knew that something was wrong. I called for days and days and almost got in my car to make the drive to their home when I finally got a call from her husband, asking who had told me about her health issues. (This was not a person with whom I had any kind of regular contact -- maybe a call every six months or so.) I believe that's something that the Holy Spirit does, or perhaps it is just some intangible something that happens to us, a way of communicating that we cannot qualify. But that is a world away from people barking like dogs or exhibiting odd behavior.

This guy is into some weird stuff, and I actually got up and left one of his lectures years ago because it was creepy, but on this subject of mass hypnosis, he's done an excellent job of explaining things. He talks about Jonathan Edwards, the Great Awakening minister to read MONOTONE sermons, and when he read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," people started demonstrating behaviors not all that unlike the Toronto blessing stuff. In addition to Sultphen's writings at this link, William Sargent (the British psychiatrist who worked with England's brainwashed Korean War POWs) wrote in "Battle for the Mind" that he also believes that Edwards essentially caused his congregation to drop down into a theta state (though he doesn't articulate it that way). If this is of interest, you can read more at this link: http://www.dicksutphen.com/html/battlemind.html

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The short version. When you're conscious and thoughtful, thinking critically and using discernment to evaluate your environment, your predominant brainwave pattern looks like this:

Betat.svg.png

When you're all relaxed, comfortable and just taking in info without really thinking about what it means, you go into a slower alpha state. This is where that Vineyard music starts to send you. This is the ideal brainwave state for good and effective hypnotherapy and hypnosis.

alpha.svg.png

And the state just above sleep, Theta, is that state of fight or flight, forgetting about actually driving somewhere and just finding yourself there, having ideas pop into your mind "out of the blue." Hypnotherapists don't like to keep people in a predominant theta state.

Theta.svg.png

Cognitive dissonance (lots of conflicting information and required behavior all at once without time to process what is being said) and brainwave entrainment through sound and music used in these religious settings drops you down into a state of suggestibility, and that Vineyard stuff takes it to the next level. Kids and adults with sensory integration disorder, Irlen Syndrome, or migraines (scotopic sensitivity) will go into very fast brainwave patterns in response to florescent lighting which is why it is so bad for some people who have these disorders or damage to the medial geniculate in the spinal cord where visual information is processed. Brainwave entrainment is also the mechanism behind the idea that by playing beta entrainment classical music, you can make infants smarter. Is is also why hypnotherapists will play certain types of new age like music during a session. Brainwave entrainment.

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When you have to sit through 30 hours of Bill Gothard's IBLP, you go right into an alpha state. And he throws so many logical fallacies at you so fast, you lose your ability to keep up. It becomes impossible to think through all of the crazy stuff that he says, but after you've listened to him tear through his material for 30 straight minutes, you're essentially entrained to go alpha. Gazing up 30 degrees above midline will also physiologically slow your brainwaves down. Consider that if you're sitting in an audience looking upward to see a speaker that walks back and forth on a platform, you're literally watching a human pendulum. Deep breathing (in yoga, for instance) will also cause entrainment, slowing your brainwaves so that you cannot think critically.

You move in and out of these states of consciousness all day long, but cognitive dissonance in religious settings is a primary way that they dull your discernment. You end up just soaking it all up, even things that you'd otherwise reject, just because of entrainment. Major manipulation.

I'll get off my soapbox now... ;)

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Um...wow. That's definitely the first I've ever hear of this. The most I've ever heard about is the whole "falling down in the spirit" thing. If God is taking jewlery orders though, I'd like some new diamond earings. I lost one of mine and am very upset about it. :lol:

I have never heard of this either. Does God give Tiffany? :mrgreen:

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I really love old churches. New churches just do not have the kind of architecture that makes it stand out as a church and not just another building.

You should come to England then, if you haven't before! The stereotypical church over here is medieval, though most have of course had bits rebuilt or added over the centuries. My family's church and the two other main CofE churches in my home city were founded in the 10th century AD. The oldest part of my church's current building is 13th century, with other parts dating from the 15th, 18th and 19th centuries. The city's Cathedral is even older.

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The Vineyard Church at that time was really into hosting expensive conferences speed the Toronto Blessing - The conferences usually between $200 to $400 for two and a half days - and they certainly didn't feed you or even give you a glass of water for that cost. There was music and some teaching, but a great deal of time spent with someone blowing into the microphone and people writhing on the floor, flopping like fish and laughing hysterically.

These things would be packed out. There was a couple of Vineyard churches that had large facilities, so they weren't paying rental fees, and while I'm sure the speakers got paid, the conferences were volunteer run, and can't have cost much to run, so they had to be taking in money hand over fist.

Also really popular at the conferences - and in the Sunday services were "worship dancers" they would have dance groups of modestly dressed women waving scarves and flags. They usually wore matching, long flowing satiny skirts in jewel-tone colours, or frumpers made out of flow-y, shiny fabrics. I couldn't find any good examples on Youtube, but this link is a really typical example of the dancing - it's pretty cheesy.

At the time I aspired to be one of the dance groups, but they were really cliquey - you had be viewed as "really having a heart of worship" and it was super spiritual and you had to be invited to join. I was never invited, even though I hung around and hinted and tried to prove myself worshipful enough.

One of the conferences a Vineyard church put on each year was aimed at youth. The church had a massive building and on the last night of the conference they decided to hold a Christian Rave. It was supposed to be some sort of intercessory and evangelistic dance thing. They put flyers out in all the places where regular raves were advertised and then they were totally shocked an appalled when regular ravers, doing regular rave things like dropping ecstasy and having sex in the bathroom showed up at their nice little intercessory dance party. So they turned on the lights, shut of the music and started praying prayers of repentance from the stage.

Man, I forgot how nuts those days were.

ZOMG, a Christian rave. What a buzzkill. I went Googling and found http://www.christianraves.com , but it hasn't been updated in a while, most of the links are dead, and the link to the message boards brings up a 404, so. I guess the movement just didn't get up off the ground.

Anyway, before I read your post, I was thinking that this types of services were like raves without the ecstasy, and then your post, and then the ones talking about alpha states and suggestible states, and yeah. The services are just like raves without the ecstasy, difference being, the rave kiddies know that they are tripping out.

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Thanks for al that, brain sample. I am a psychology grad, so I find this kind of stuff very interesting.

I remember suggesting something like this in class occurring in worship services once. Went over like a lead balloon in my So Baptist college! :lol:

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