Hodeuon's Commentary on 8 May:

It IS Thursday :)

There is a vast humanitarian crisis in Myanmar (ie. Burma) with more than 10,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of people in grave need of clean water, food and shelter after the cyclone that flooded 5'000 square km of their land and the GGers are discussing about getting Carl's booklets there! For what? Toilet paper?

If they have access to "a network of 68 churches", don't they find any other use for those than deliver booklets? How about some help first? No. That is not the GG style.
:wacko:

I just read there are over 22 thousand confirmed dead and over 49 thousand missing and estimates of over 100 thousand dead are not unrealistic...of course what they need now is doctrine about a finished work god of love...giving them such an incongruous message to wrap their frazzeled brains around at a time of untold pain and sufferring is all that matters to a brainwashed idiot.


Tragedy spells opportunity...desperate victims of natural disaster after all are a captive audience. Get em' while the pickin's good.

May the real ministries that share the real Jesus Christ in love and compassion reach these desperate people before the cults do!!!!

I listened to 12-15 min. of gh yesterday. Heard part of Stevens' sermon, and then part of Scibelli's monolog afterwards.

Stevens' sermon: it was all meaningless gobbeldygook! Delivered in a bombastic tone, but all nonsense.

If you are offended by that and want to defend the man's preaching skills, I'll prove it to you. Email me. I'll transcribe and send you a few minutes of one of his sermons. You then take that transcript to 3-5 different gg preachers, one at a time, and ask them to explain it to you. I guarantee each one will interpret it completely differently. Because it made no sense!

Go ahead -- ask them (separately, so there's no collusion) about channels A and B. Ask them to explain decussation of pyramids. See how many of them agree with one another on those made up doctrines.

How can this be? Is the Bible really so confusing that a bunch of "seminary" graduates can't understand things? Where would such confusion come from?

The meaning of a church sermon should be clear enough that at least other preachers who claim Carl as their spiritual daddy should all be able to understand it, don't you think? If the meaning is so obscure as to mean something totally different to all who hear it -- what good is it?

(Actually, it meets Stevens objective perfectly: make things so damned impossible to understand, you NEED him to keep feeding it to you...)

Scibelli's monolog: was yet another one of rants agianst all the other churches in the world who don't do all the cool wonderful things he and his do. Steve, since you have so little to do with any other churches, how do you have such godlike knowledge of them and their practices? How do you know none of them love, teach the finished work or evangelize?

Or -- are you just making it all up, and no one has the courage to challenge you?

I know Schaller doesn't. I once asked him about challenging you if you use his pulpit to teach lies. He won't do it. I asked Jim Morrison the same thing, and he said there was no way Schaller would stop you.

Why is that? Could it be that in gg, pastor worship, familiarity and sentimentality are far more important than the truth?

GHC, 19 May 2008

As John C. has pointed out many times, the words have lost their meanings in the GGWO. To an analytical person it is a nightmare to try to find his/her way through the jungle of CHS' often unexplained terminology and evolving definitions.

If the personality is what makes us all different from each other, what does he really mean if he tells people not to live in who they are? Isn't it legalistic, if you are told not to be who you are, but to be someone you are not? If you can't, fake it! Is that any different from making up the tongues as some people do to be "better" Christians?

Due to CHS' and other GG leaders' refusal to use biblical terms people are bound to misunderstand a lot of what is said and they are made dependent upon their teachers. It also makes it possible for the speakers to deny what they said and explain everything in their own favour. Most of the people that sit in the pews never realize that all these sermons (or "messages" in GG terms) serve the one and only purpose of CONTROL.

Most people (I included, when I attended) do not get much out of the sermons. Only impressions which are created by the speaker by changing his tone of voice, effective punctuation by pauses and all the other learned methods of speech. The speaker may be gifted, but in the GGWO he is usually described as "anointed" or that he had "an anointed message." Still he may have revealed nothing or very little of God's word, but by twisting the verses expressed his own thoughts and imaginations and told they were God's.

It is such a shame that the word of God is treaded into the ground in the GGWO and men are exalted instead. It does not serve anyone but Satan himself, but the people perish both in front of the pulpit and behind it. I pray that as many people as possible will be saved from that system that is the synagogue of Satan, to the effect if not literally. This time I do not balance what I wrote with anything.

Looks like what Carl is saying here is:

Don't be yourself and do not think indepentantly as a person AT ALL!!! Act, talk, dress, believe just like the groupies closest to Carl, Tom Schaller etc. and maybe you'll get some acceptance, "love" and attention. Instead of thinking, just blindly obey and follow the pastor and his in crowd and think of that as your reasonable service to God, which of course it really isn't.

You're so right Sibiricus, it is all about CONTROL. They want to use people and control them. They spent years reprogramming the people to become docile little completely controllable robots for the service of the pastors. They reprogrammed the people to not only stop thinking and using common sense, but retrained the people to become totally dependant upon the instructions of the pastor to the point that the people wouldn't know what to do in life without that pastoral instruction. Talk about hooking people in and putting them under bondage while spending all this time talking about grace. A more accurate name for GGWO would be Greater Legalism World Outrage!!!!

Please do not use this analogy, at least not in the Europe. There was no single battle that determined the outcome of the war. It was much more complicated. The outcome of any battle in the WWII can not be compared to what Christ accomplished by his death, resurrection and ascension. To do so is absurd.

"Scibelli talks about how we shouldn’t pressure teens to decide what they’re doing for the rest of their life, but provide them with a good foundation in Bible college instead."

...which is pressuring them to stay in GG, gives them no freedom to seek out an accredited education. What a waste. They pressure the teens all the time down there. All the time. ALL THE TIME.

This is so true Gast. I worked in the GGWO youth "ministry" as a youth worker for years and saw first hand this pressuring of kids to attend GGWO's Bible college. It was widespread and disgusting. One of the kids from my own group that went to that Bible college was so thoroughly brainwashed within a few short months, he became a very different person, lost some of his healthiest interests and started spouted GG doctrine like a robot without even knowing what he was really saying. How very sad!!!

GH Commentary May 29, 2008

I used to know many people IN the GGWO that have cancer, that have died in cancer, that have multiple physical disorders, sleeplessness, ulcers etc. Should those people that are still "under the covering of the GG pulpit" and have the illnesses Schaller listed, believe that their illness is caused by "hatred in the soul" or "not forgiving"?! That is so ridiculous! Tom Schaller should be ashamed for saying those things. He keeps repeating the same lies that CHS repeated before him. Fear tactics to silence the critics both inside and especially outside the church.

Hey Mr. Schaller, I know you have someone to monitor this site. You don't have the guts, that is G-U-T-Z, to face the real world with real people, with real concerns, with real, honest questions. You don't have the guts to be transparent and accountable even to your own church. I believe now that you would not go after the one lost sheep, I believe you would not go after the lost sheep, even if there were 99 if you only had one puppet under control.

You are the one with hate and bitterness and not forgiving. The leaders of the GGWO are right. You don't hear that kind of "messages" anywhere else. You don't hear that kind of bs elsewhere I should say.

From June 6 Grace Hour commentary

"JL talks about Carl’s influence. He says almost 500 churches, including 50 in the US and 6 in Maryland."

Many of us have often questioned and been suspect of how GG determines what is and is not a church. We hear about all the churches in Africa and cannot tell what is really going on there. But 6 churches in Maryland? Give me a break. I am 90% sure they are just outreaches of the Baltimore church. Shaller even made an excuse for the low attendance at a Sunday morning service recently that many were absent because they were ministering at these other "churches". Are the other 5 churches in Maryland truly independent and voluntarily affiliating with GG? Do they have their own leadership structure? Do they have their own bank accounts or do they bring offerings back to Baltimore? I am convinced that their numbers are greatly exaggerated to make GG look bigger and more influential that it really is.

John Collins, Schaller won't challenge Scibelli because they have a pact and are joined at the hip for leadership. They both hate being in Baltimore and take turns getting their missionary fix overseas. Neither one of them can pastor or shepherd--they have neither the people skills nor patience nor empathy. They just like to blitz.

Since Scibelli's stroke, it is very hard for him to read. Last I knew, he doesn't even do emails. So he's running on old information about anything in the outside world.

As far as Burma, they remind me of Marie Antoinette during the starvation in France that led to the French Revolution when some say she said, "Let them eat cake." GGWO says, "Let them eat booklets served on CD's."

These leaders have no hearts. They run GGWO like Amway or any franchise business selling their products. It's Arbonne on steroids.

Hey John, how did you manage to listen to that ranting and raving of CHS for so long? Would you really want to transcribe that crap? How did we listen to it for so long? Thank God for His grace and mercy that gives us a new start and renews our minds.

http://ggwo.com/cms/index.php?page=maryland lists 3, including Baltimore.

http://www.lovemaryland.org/ and http://www.hampdenlife.info/ list a few more Bible studies. My guess is that some of these Bible studies are counted as churches at times. Don't forget, when dozens of gg churches disaffiliated in 2005, Scibelli announced they'd grow to 500 churches within 5 years.

Maybe they'll start counting people as churches.
You know
"the temple of the Holy Spirit" and all.

Wouldn't be much of a surprise would it?

Also, if they make friends with a church, they consider it a GGWO church. That's what Scibelli did in Africa.

Dietrich Bonhoffer was mentioned in today's GH. Something else Bonfhoffer said was cheap grace exists where there is no accountability. I'm sure Guest 300 would throw him under the bus also.

Bonhoffer was part of a resistance movement that sought to kill Adolf Hitler…he was a man full of ambiguity about his own identity and therefore everything he did was really an act of tremendous faith that involved his own innermost gut feelings and intuition…in this sense he was such a real human being…frail, vulnerable…his life never reflected the wooden dogmatism that guest’s posts are saturated with.

…interesting someone said that guest would throw Bonhoffer under the wheel because Bonhoffer believed that we are not only to bandage the wound of the one under the wagon wheel (those who are oppressed by evil systems of government) but that we are also responsible to put a stick in the wheel and jam it from going forward.

Here is a quote from his book “Life Together” that illustrates the huge difference between Bonhoffer’s genuine spirituality and guest’s intolerant literalist mindset…one lives and breathes, the other suffocates and stifles.

“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words. One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.”

I posted the above...thought I was logged in...it's hot and humid in this room.
New Kid

...it is really the second paragraph I found so fitting to this discussion board; it really defines guest well.

"Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words. One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.”

That describes Guest 300 and the dictators of the plaza so accurately. All of them are way too arrogant to listen and learn except from within their own little group. They're so busy trying to convert the world to their narrow minded viewpoint that they won't shut up and ever really listen. No room for that still small voice of God. No room for hurting peoples' cries for help. No room for other concerns people have. No room for correction. No room but for themselves and their empty doctrine. What dead and useless religeon.

Sidethorn,

for what it's worth...I don't think you need all the exclamation points and question marks...in fact I think they distract from the valid points you are trying to make...
perhaps a new writing style is in the works for you...good experiment I think.

side thorn that was new kid above...ddin't log in again.

I am sure that the still small voice is telling you... 'Expose the sin, tell them to repent, they are wolves in sheep's clothing, they are a cult, leave immediately, they win the lost only to fill the coffers, they don't care about the body of Christ like you do, warn others to flee, all they do is slander and tell lies, they live in sin, what in in the world were you doing there all these years, you have been deceived, you have wasted your time and money, you have been taught false doctrine, run for the hills.'

Now that's a mouthful for a still small voice.

You would be wise to heed the warnings brought forth by that voice.

sidethorn,

There is nothing still or small about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So what's your real point?

obvious

Obvious you don't like answering peoples' questions very much while wanting everyone to answer all of your questions.

But that's only because his questions are too easy while ours are too hard.

Re: Christain Radio Stations in Canada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chris...tions_in_Canada

Thanks, Arguendo. Looks like the audience member was misinformed.

It may be harder to set up a Christian radio station in Quebec than in the USA, and that could be why GGWO chose to broadcast to its Montreal audience from upstate New York.

Hodeuon

um...I think the Brit systems are very much different than ours. Their media is more heavily regulated and they don't have the same freedoms are we do.

GH Commentary on 30 Jun 2008:

I think Schaller is being modest: there were many more that have left and thus overcame the addictions. They overcame the addiction of being abused by their pastor, they overcame the addiction of doing things just because it was said from the pulpit, they overcame the addiction of giving money to the con-men, they overcame the addiction of listening to the bs messages from the pulpit over and over again 3 times a week...

You got the point. There is no need for me to go on. I pray there will be more that will overcome addictions just like we did.

There will be more people overcoming their addictions to their GGWO pastors. God will see to that. Our discussions here are helping too. More and more people are seeing the light and are leaving. Others that would have joined GGWO have been warned and never will join. Praise God forevermore!

GH Commentary 2 July 2008

If I understood correctly, no-one that went to the Convention, called in! I am tempted to think that either

1) Hodeuon alone is becoming an ever-growing percentage of the listeners to the Grace Hour or

2) the Convention was so boring that no-one has anything to comment on it. Not even one caller to say the usual "It was the best convention ever" nonsense.

Check out Hodeuon's Grace Hour commentary for today July 8, 2008. The program consists of a taped sermon from Carl Stevens about marriage where one of Carl's points is that men need Carl's teachings to successfully handle their marriages. Like I would want to depend on the counsel of someone that wasn't even faithful to his own wife and repeatedly taught people to put himself above their own spouses just because he was their pastah. Carl's sermons would be the last thing I'd want to listen to when seeking instruction about marriage. People would be better off without Carl's "counsel". Now you have Schaller and Scibelli and the rest of their inner circle still endorsing the teachings of a power hungry adulterer named Carl on the Grace Hour. Looks like nothing much has changed at the plaza. Pastor still comes before one's own spouse. Typical GGWO!

Then during the call in part, Scibelli takes a question from a caller who's asking him what to do when a pastor tells a wife its okay to file for divorce without Biblical grounds. Scibelli tells the caller that they should leave that church. Now, haven't there been posts on this site and Factnet where people at GGWO were counseled to dump their spouses simply because those spouses left GGWO? I think so. That sure sounds like an unbiblical reason to dump a spouse right there. Maybe people should just take that same advice that Scibelli's gave that caller and just leave GGWO!

Well Side,
considering Schibelli's take on children is it any surprise that his take on marriage is so off the mark?
Maybe his view of marriage is consistent with his view on children.
Maybe he thinks that giving your mate attention is unhealthy for the marriage the same way that he thinks giving your children attention is emotionally destabilizing.

What do you want
a rrrrrrrruber bizkit?

(Blues brothers)

:lol:
;)

Oh yeah,
and they have given advice to married people to leave their spouses if they disagreed with GG doctrine or anything GG for that matter.

Remember,
they think that church comes before a persons marriage.

So very wrong they are.

Ain't that the truth Dave. Pastors like Scibelli, Schaller, Love, and CHS himself all wanted to be the center of attention in peoples' lives and wanted to be firstplace in everyones' lives too. They always wanted their church (meaning themselves) to come before peoples' spouses, children, friends, needs, wants, consciences and even the still small voice of God Himself in their hearts. What full blown idolatry! No wonder people I knew and myself included had such a hard time getting along with pastors like this. Unless you were willing to forsake all (inlcuding your marriage and kids) to the GGWO pastors, you were nothing but evil, backslidden, infectious trash in the eyes of those pastors. Well I think I'd rather love my sweet wife and take good care of her and put God firstplace and hear God tell me "Well done, good and faithful servant" when I meet Him in the end. Trying to please those GG pastors is just not worth all the stress. I'd rather not bother at all with that and serve the risen Christ instead!

From July 8 Grace Hour (Thanks Hodeuon)

"Scibelli: “One of the keys to a happy marriage is having a church that is Spirit-led and Spirit-filled.” He states that many churches don’t preach the gospel or grace."

How does he know what other churches preach or don't preach? Has he been to their services? Where is the source of his information? I guess doctrines like not listening to or repeating hearsay and evil reports about Christians, churches or leaders only applies to Christians, churches and leaders affiliated with GGWO and self-appointed jerks like Scibelli can say any thing they want about anyone with no sources or evidence. And he is an elder at GGWO. What a joke!

guest2,

Why don't you first define what the gospel of grace is, then what it means to preach the gospel of grace. After you have done that then tune in to TBN and other Christian networks and see if you spot it there. Then, as you go out on the missioin field for 20-30 years and run into the 100's of churches that are out there, talk and rub shoulders with them and see if you see the grace of God upon them. Do you think that grace is just Ephesians 2:8? That's where it starts. Do you know how many times grace is mentioned in the NT epistles, where we get much of our doctrine? Look it up and come to your own conclusions. See if the Holy Spirit was thorough when it comes to the grace of God in the believer's life that makes up the church. Every time someone makes a statement, especially on radio, they can speak from experience without having to back it up all the time with some kind of proof just to satisfy you. Perhaps Pastor Scibelli was talking about much more than you realize. Perhaps the fool is you and maybe you need to take a long hard look at your own heart and see if it is etablished in the grace of God!