Apartheid Church No More

by Pastor Don Elmore

September 21, 2014

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 2:14-15:

The Foursquare Church is continuing the vision of Aimee Semple McPherson to reach out to the Jewish community through the efforts, service, and support of the Foursquare Rabbis Caucus. “It is important at this stage that we carefully nurture the seed of Messianic hope that's been planted here tonight,” said Kurt Reust, a licensing Foursquare Messianic leader from The Rock, a Foursquare Church in Anaheim, California.

This Inaugural Messianic Passover Seder is intended to be the first of many. As the Foursquare Rabbis Caucus grows and matures, it hopes to sponsor similar events in order to build bridges between the Messianic Movement and the Church, bringing together Jew and Gentile to further the Kingdom of God. “For God Himself is our peace, who made both  groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall... that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace” Ephesians 2:14-15.

How does a nation go from banning all jewish people in their former country to welcoming them with open arms into their churches in the present country?  Why do Christians seek the children of the murderers of Jesus Christ, their Savior, by eating a Passover Meal with them? What kind of anti-Christ church is this?  Jews and gentiles eating a Passover meal together is blasphemous!  The Passover meal is fulfilled to all true Israelites…the death and resurrection and has already occurred. 

The Scripture references that the Rabbis gave is not really about “jews and gentiles;” but it refers to the two house of Israel:  Judah and who the Bible refers to as “gentiles” -- Ephraim.  In the three preceding verses it says:

Ephesians 2:11-13

11) “Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles [former Northern Kingdom of Israel:  nations] in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands [Judahites];

12) That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:

13) But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”

The Bible tells us of three main groups of people who were living in Palestine at this time:

The covenant people of God:  the Israelites.  They were in the beginning one nation, but because of their sins, they were divided into two main groups:

1. The Judahites, the Southern kingdom, which also included the Benjaminites and the priestly tribe of the Levites

2. The House of Israel:  which included the men, women, and children from the tribes of Reuben, Gad, Manasseh, Ephraim, Naphtali, Asher, Zebulun, Issachar, Simeon, and Dan.  These are called in the Scriptures in many places the “nations” or “gentiles.”   For almost 1000 years before Ephesian, chapter 2 was written, the nations were cut off from the covenant that God had made with their fathers.  They were:
    

   1. Uncircumcised,
   2. Without the anointed people of God,
   3. Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
   4. Strangers from the covenants of promise,
   5. Having no hope and,
   6. Without God in the world.

   But the Apostle Paul writes that they were now brought back into the covenant by the blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  These people who had no hope were told that their Messiah had died on their behalf.  What a wonderful story of God’s love to His people.

   But the Apostle Paul writes that they were now brought back into the covenant by the blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  These people who had no hope were told that their Messiah had died on their behalf.  What a wonderful story of God’s love to His people.

Jews:  descendants of Esau, Canaan and Cain.  These adulterated enemies of Israel were let into the holy land when they were told that they had to agree to keep the laws of God, which they couldn’t do.  They soon were the rulers of Israel in Israel’s own Promised Land; this was true when our Savior was born.  They were the king, the majority of the Pharisees, along with being the majority of the Sadducees as well as a few other groups.  They have always attempted to overturn God’s decision against them:  they want to be the recipients of His covenant promise to rule the world.

Their main weapon is the power of deceit.  In fact, the first time the word “Jew” is used is in the King James Bible is not until 2 Kings 16:6; and it is when Syria and the House of Israel is fighting a war against Judah and the Jews.

Kabballah Tree of Life and the Chakras   This chart shows the jewish Kabballah Tree of Life and the Chakras, which Kundalini yoga uses to awaken the serpents who reside at the base of the spine to begin it slithering climb up the spine to the third eye: which will illuminate the crown.

Don’t Christians remember in Genesis that our ancestors were told not to participate in the eating of the Tree of Life? 

Foursquare Gospel Church

When was the foursquare gospel church begun?  In the first century?  In the Middle Ages?   When?

The Foursquare Church was started by a woman in the year 1923. God has never indicated in any way in Scripture that He has used females to teach or exercise authority over men.  His apostles, pastors, evangelists, teachers, elders and deacons exercising authority over men and churches have been men in the Scripture.  There were no women chosen in any of these categories; absolutely none.  None were qualified. Why did not the LORD appoint a female apostle?  All twelve, and later thirteen, were all males.

As for the prophets, while there have been a few women (prophetesses), they have not been in positions of authority; with the exception of one, and, even there, Barak was free to decide for himself.  Deborah could not and did not exercise authority in his life in the matter recorded.   Miriam was a prophetess, but she was not there to teach men or exercise authority over them.  So with Huldah and others.

Aimee Semple McPherson was a sensationalist, a celebrity, a deceiver, an actress, a deluded soul, an adulterer, a twice divorced woman; but she wasn’t a woman of God.  The International Foursquare Church was begun by her.  Those involved in this Church are deceived because they do not serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sister Aimee McPherson welcomed everyone.  She was a Universalist.  She preached to the social elite of the day and also reached out to the poor and to the disenfranchised members of society.   She evangelized in the South at a time when segregation was rampant.  She broke down racial barriers everywhere she ministered. Sister Aimee established many Hispanic ministries in Los Angeles and established ministries to German, Japanese, Czech, deaf, and other communities also. She recognized no gender, ethnic, or racial line in her ministry.

And her contribution to race relations?  She followed in the footsteps of the women evangelists who came before her: for example, Jarena Lee whose audiences in the 1820s included both “White and Colored.”  Aimee Semple McPherson also preached at racially integrated services.

Aimee was born 11 years before what happened at the Topeka, Kansas Bible School and 16 years before the Azusa Street revival began.  The central figure at Azusa Street was a Colored man:  William Joseph Seymour.  Seymour was born in Louisiana and as a child was a somewhat mystical Baptist.  As a young man, he moved to Indianapolis, Indiana where he joined a mostly white Methodist church.  He later joined the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), a Holiness group also known as the Evening Light Saints.  Seymour, hungry for more Bible knowledge, attended classes at God’s Bible School in Cincinnati (we have had five people who have gone to this school become members of our church) led by Martin Wells Knapp, and later at Parham’s Bethel Bible School in Houston, Texas.

Contrary to stereotypes, Seymour was a soft-spoken pastor known in the Black church as a teacher rather than as a dynamic preacher.  He was a deeply spiritual man who impressed all who met him.

William Durham said Seymour was “the meekest man I ever met,” a man who maintained a “helpless dependence upon God” and a man who was “so filled with God that you felt the love and power every time you got near him.”

The Azusa Street revival also brought women’s ministries to the forefront.  One of the most influential ladies at Azusa Street was the Colored lady Jennie Evans Moore, who married William Seymour in 1908.  She served faithfully at his side during the great revival days and often filled the pulpit while her husband was away.  After her husband’s death in 1922, she pastored the church until 1931. She died in 1936.

Other Colored women who played leading roles were Lucy Farrow and Julia Hutchins. Farrow, Seymour’s prayer warrior, prayed hundreds of seekers through to the tongues experience.  She later led a missionary group to the African nation of Liberia where she planted Pentecostal churches.  Julia Hutchins, who had locked Seymour out of her church, soon became a Pentecostal and helped run the Mission.

Other important women at Azusa Street were Florence Crawford and Clara Lum.  These White ladies served as staff at the Mission and helped with church administration. When Seymour started his paper Apostolic Faith, in 1906, Lum and Crawford were the leading editors and promoters of the paper.  At its height, Apostolic Faith was mailed free to 50,000 subscribers.  Lum was important in that she had served earlier as private secretary to Phineas Bresee, founder of the Church of the Nazarene.

In 1909, Crawford and Lum moved to Portland, Oregon, where they founded a congregation using the same name as the mother church in Los Angeles — Apostolic Faith Mission. When Lum moved, she took the Apostolic Faith mailing list with Seymour’s initial blessing and continued publishing the paper from Portland.  This cut off Seymour from his followers and caused the eventual decline of the Azusa Street Mission.

Jennie Moore, Lucy Farrow, Julia Hutchins, Clara Lum, and Florence Crawford became the first of many women Pentecostal ministers who spread the message around the world.  Women preachers had flourished in Holiness circles for decades before 1900, Maria Woodworth-Etter being the best known.  After Azusa Street, Ida Robinson, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Kathryn Kuhlman carried forward the tradition. Indeed, Crawford, McPherson, and Robinson founded entire denominations.

One reason women flourished in the Pentecostal movement was the anointed use of the gifts of the Spirit.  Using the prophet Joel as a guide, Pentecostal women included themselves in the “sons and daughters” who would prophesy and the “servants and handmaidens” on whom the Spirit would be poured out at the end of the age (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17).  

Looking back, Azusa Street was a significant breakthrough for the cause of women in ministry.  If the Pentecostals had just read the preceding verse in Joel that would know that Joel was writing about the Israelites:  “And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and none else:  and my people shall never be ashamed.”  How they could apply these verses to Colored women and also Acts 2:17, when Acts 2 happened during Pentecost.  Did the Colored people keep Pentecost at this time:  during the 1st century?  Did they travel all the way to Jerusalem?  In fact, Pentecostals apply these two verses to anyone in the world.

A far-reaching and rarely noticed legacy of Azusa Street is the new style of worship music that ultimately spread around the world.  Since Azusa Street was a mixture of both White and Black Holiness worship styles, it was inevitable that the music ethos of Black Pentecostalism would have increasing influence among Pentecostals. Even though Azusa Street worshipers sang the old Methodist and Holiness hymns such as the Azusa favorite “The Comforter Has Come,” the Black musical ethos gradually spread and ultimately influenced White churches.  

The fact Elvis Presley was raised in a Pentecostal church helps explain the development of today’s popular music styles that reflect the influence of both country music, and rhythm and blues that eventually became rock ‘n’ roll.  Rock ‘n’ roll was let into the church via the jesus people who brought it in by means of a pastor, Chuck Smith, who grew up in the Angelus Temple and went to school at its ministerial training center.

Around the world today, churches of many traditions are singing worship songs inspired by the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. Along with the music are Pentecostal styles of worship such as lifted hands, singing in the Spirit, prophetic utterances, and prayer for the sick.

Perhaps the most far-reaching legacy of Azusa Street is its teaching and practice of Holy-Spirit empowerment for evangelism.  Above all, Azusa Street was a missionary movement.  Many missionaries were coming and going during the revival.  A few months after the meetings began, the Apostolic Faith reported Pentecostal revivals in New York, London, Oslo, Stockholm, and India as well in other places in the world.

Not since the days of the early Church had a revival movement spread so far and so fast. The fascination with tongues, healing, and exorcisms attracted multitudes — without the use of advertising media.  Throughout the glory days, Azusa Street did not advertise with local newspaper ads or posters.  News of the revival was spread locally by word of mouth.  The Los Angeles newspapers wrote scurrilous and racist articles, but this only drew more crowds.

In the end, Azusa Street pilgrims spread the news worldwide, thousands of churches were planted, and millions of people were supposedly converted. Today, it is estimated that most conversions from paganism occurred under Pentecostal and charismatic evangelism efforts.  A century after the opening of services on Azusa Street there are more than 600 million Pentecostals and charismatics in the world.  This attests to the evangelistic success of the Movement.  But this is not true; they are just deceived into believing in another incorrect form of Jesus!

Aimee Semple McPherson

Aimee Kennedy was born on a farm in Canada. Her father (James) had almost two separate families. His first wife had three children but then she became seriously ill and could no longer do the chores of a farm wife; so the family took in a 15-year old orphan named Minnie to do the work that his wife could no longer do.  

After his wife died, James proposed to Minnie, 35 years his junior and much younger than his own children.  They went to Michigan to marry and she added seven years to her real age on the marriage license, and he subtracted eight years from his. Their only child, Aimee, came along in due course.  Her father was a little bit over 50 years old; her mother a little bit over 15! Thus, mother and daughter were close in age and almost like sisters; rather than mother--daughter.

Though James was a Methodist, Minnie was a member of the Salvation Army.  Evangeline Booth, General Booth’s trusted daughter, led the Army in Canada (at this time), and she pioneered the illustrated sermon, complete with costumes and props, using vivid word pictures to portray the mire and despair to which sin leads, with Jesus as our only hope.  Aimee, who heard (and watched) Evangeline preach, would later take the illustrated sermon to a new level and receive the praise of Hollywood actors, such as her friend Charlie Chaplin, for doing so.  As a side note, Chaplin was considered as “one of Hollywood’s parlor Bolsheviks” and was kept a close eye on by the F. B. I. as he was one of the left-leaning Hollywood stars during the height of Senator Joseph McCarthy. 

Minnie had dedicated Aimee to be God’s servant for the salvation of the world and took her to the Salvation Army meetings and taught her the Bible, so that Scripture and Army customs became second nature to her daughter.  Interestingly, part of the Salvation Army wedding service contained the proviso that ministry came first, before spouse, the marriage or children.  That indeed proved to be the case in Minnie and Aimee’s life.

Salvation Army red shield of the Rothschilds The Salvation Army is an organization that crosses church lines.  The National Commander received an annual compensation of $126,920 in 2006.  It is primarily a religious organization, but it is not a church.  The Salvation Army supports and respects the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.  They respect and support Mary worship and the making of images and bowing before them.  They respect and support the doctrine of pagan purgatory!  They ignore the many scriptures that warn us not to be “partakers with idolaters, not to eat with them or to bid them God’s speed, lest we be partakers with them in their sin and share in their plagues.” Notice what the insignia of the Salvation Army now is: 

The Red Shield of the Rothschild’s is the insignia of the Salvation Army.

When Aimee was 17 and the Azusa Street revival was still going strong, the Pentecostals came to town and this proved a turning point. After much struggle, she gave in to God and fully consecrated her life to Him. After agonizing prayer, she experienced the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” and spoke in tongues.  

This created quite a stir in the Kennedy home.  James and Minnie didn’t know what to do with their teen-age daughter who kept skipping school in order to pray with the Pentecostals. Minnie said she would withdraw Aimee from school if she kept it up. Aimee, by now quite the match for her mother (and well beyond her elderly father’s control), countered with her own demand.  

Minnie had to show Aimee from the Bible that the Pentecostals were wrong. Minnie spent the whole day searching the Scriptures but in vain. When Aimee got home, her mother admitted the Bible was on the side of the Pentecostals.  Aimee had won this round between mother and daughter.  But who was right; the Pentecostals or the Salvation Army? 

The visiting Pentecostal preacher was Robert Semple from Ireland who was in his mid-20s and Aimee was smitten.  They married in 1908, the same year that William Seymour married his wife at Azusa Street; Jennie Evans Moore, and then the Semples did itinerant work in the Midwest. 

They went to Chicago for about a year and studied under William Durham.  Durham had spent a little time in Azusa Street, where he was baptized in the Holy Spirit.  “His mighty power came over me, until I jerked and quaked under it for about three hours,” Durham testified.  Later, Durham return to Azusa Street and attempted to wrest the pastorate from Seymour; he took 600 people from Azusa Street to another place in Los Angeles.

 While they were with Durham at Chicago, the Semples accepted the call to China as missionaries, arriving there in mid-1910.  Zion City had already been built and John Dowie had died just a couple of years before they arrived there. 

While in China, they did not know that local vegetables were grown in human waste and as a result of eating these vegetables Robert got dysentery and died less than three months after their arrival.  Aimee was eight months pregnant.  She returned to the United States with her young daughter, Roberta, named after her father.  Aimee never got over the death of the only man she ever loved and respected.

Aimee made her way back to New York, where she went and lived.  She accepted a job, thanks to her mother, in the Salvation Army, collecting money from the public.   During this time she met a restaurant accountant, Harold McPherson, who she married. 

She moved to Rhode Island and had a son with him.  She tried to live as a traditional housewife, but failed.  She became very depressed and had several major surgeries including a hysterectomy.  As she was lying in the hospital bed, she heard a voice tell her, “Would you now go.”  She quickly recovered after she answered “yes!”

She left her husband and went to Canada to live with her mother.  She soon was on the road as a traveling evangelist. With her mother and children, she traveled up and down the Atlantic Coast pitching a tent, playing piano, and perfecting her very personal evangelist technique.  They slept many nights either in the car or on the ground; they had very little clothes or money.  She traveled in a 1912 Packard touring “Gospel Car” with the words: “Jesus is Coming Soon-Get Ready” on one side, and the question “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” on the other side.

She soon asked her husband to join her which he did.  But this was before women could even vote!  He set up her tents and did all of the many other things that were necessary, but he soon left and went back home, divorced her and eventually remarried.  Aimee sinned by not being a subjective wife to her husband. 

Aimee Semple McPherson healing a blind man in Boston  After crisscrossing the nation for seven years, in 1918, like many other Americans at the time, Aimee traveled west.  It is believed that she and her mother are the first women, or one of the first, to have traveled alone across the country in an automobile without a man.

By this time, Aimee's name was spreading across the country, and people were flocking to hear her emotionally based sermons.  But true fame came in 1921 when Aimee helped a crippled woman in the audience rise from her wheelchair, and the audience proclaimed her a “faith healer.”  She modestly refused any credit, saying, “I am not a healer…Jesus is the healer. I am only the little office girl who opens the door and says, ‘Come in.’”

On January 1, 1923, Aimee opened the $1,500,000 Angelus Temple in Los Angeles.  It was one of the first megachurches in the United States.  One of her followers said the Aimee put the COST in PenteCOSTal.  The elaborate service came to a climax with an altar call; where members of the congregation were urged to come forward and receive the new birth.  A lot of the members of Azusa Street formed the basis of the membership of Angelus Temple. 

A huge white dome-like structure, the Temple could accommodate 5,300 worshipers and came to serve as the “Western center for evangelism.”  Topped by a rotating, illuminated cross visible for fifty miles, the Temple had two huge choirs, a brass band, and a pipe organ. A broadcasting station, KFSG sent the Foursquare Gospel messages beyond the Temple in 1924, and a “Miracle Room” displayed stacks of crutches, wheel chairs and braces from faith cures.

Over the next few years, Aimee created a crusader magazine called Bible Call (monthly) and the The Foursquare Crusader (weekly).  She reorganized the church as a “Salvation Navy,” establishing over 400 branch churches, or “lighthouses,” and sponsoring 178 mission stations throughout the world.

Throughout her lifetime she traveled on over 250 foreign missions.  In 1925, the L. I. F. E. (Lighthouse of International Foursquare Evangelism) Bible College was opened to train young men and women for service in ministry.  Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel was raised in Angelus Temple and went to her school, although he never met her.  It was his church that brought in rock ‘n’ roll via the Jesus people and Evangelistic Lonnie Frisbee.  And another man who bore much fruit in the Pentecostal movement was Jack Hayford, who also is an alumni of this school, and has as one of his elders, Pat Boone, and two of his church members were Paul and Jan Crouch who are the heretical founders of TBN.

But the climax of Aimee's public sensation came on May 18, 1926, shortly after she returned from a trip to the Promised Land. It was then that she mysteriously disappeared after she had been swimming in the Pacific Ocean.  Immediately her followers plunged into a state of panic, camping on the shore of the beach where they believed that she had drowned in the ocean.  Her mother, Minnie Kennedy, received a ransom note from “kidnappers,” demanding $500,000 for Aimee's return.  Minnie, however, was convinced her daughter was dead, and she discarded the note.  Boats patrolled the water, one heartbroken girl dove into the water after Aimee and killed herself; and scuba divers searched for her body underwater--one even died of exhaustion.

Just when everyone had assumed Aimee lay dead on the ocean floor, Aimee knocked on the door of a cottage in Agua Prieta, Mexico 32 days after her disappearance, claiming she had been kidnapped and taken to a shack in the Mexican desert.  But skeptics thought Aimee had staged one of the most clever—and successful—scams in history: she had faked her own kidnapping.

Although she said she walked across the burning sands, her shoes were unscuffed. And coincidentally, Kenneth G. Ormiston, the married engineer for her radio station, had not been seen during Aimee's absence—and many believed the two were having an affair.  On June 23, 1926 a crowd of at least 50,000 people gathered for her homecoming, which was the largest crowd that had ever gathered to greet anyone arriving in Los Angeles—including sports figures, presidents, politicians or movie stars.

Further investigation into her disappearance revealed that chambermaids, room clerks, hotel registers, and scraps of paper in her handwriting indicated that Aimee and Ormiston met in a seaside cottage during the month she claimed to be a prisoner in the desert. The evidence, however, was inconclusive, and the investigation ended in 1927.  Nevertheless, her disappearance produced “a turmoil that convulsed Los Angeles, divided the state of California, and enthralled millions of onlookers who watched the unfolding extravaganza turn the medium of the press and radio.”

In 1926, a deep-sea diver prepares to search for Aimee's body after she mysteriously disappears into the ocean.

Aimee's mysterious—and still unresolved—disappearance was not the only source of controversy in her life. Battles between her mother, Minnie Kennedy, and daughter Roberta over control of the church in the 1930s were widely publicized in the press, and Aimee ended up ousting them from the church and not speaking to them at the end of her life.  There were several rumors that she had her face lifted and her legs slimmed.  Aimee was married three times, widowed once, and divorced twice.  A total of 55 suits were entered against her for a variety of damages.  

But regardless of these controversies, the public continued to come to her Temple, listen to her radio broadcasts, and attend services around the world. As Aimee once said, “I have the passionate devotion of thousands. If the papers tomorrow morning proved that I had committed eleven murders, those thousands would still believe in me.”

Throughout the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Aimee launched a series of relief efforts including soup kitchens, donations, and free clinics.  The Angelus Temple took care of more people than the government.

On September 27, 1944, when I was just about two years old, she was found unconscious in her hotel room after speaking the night before to a crowd in Oakland, California.  The coroner's verdict was an “overdose of barbital compound,” or sleeping pills, which was ruled to be “accidental.”

Aimee's church ministry continues today with foreign missionaries in over seventy countries, and two periodicals. In the United States, membership in Foursquare Churches numbers over 600,000; in churches started by Angelus Temple:  millions.

Conclusion

Not since the early Church had a revival movement spread so far and so fast. This is a movement which used women in a role that the Bible does not allow.  Eve was deceived, Adam was not.  As a result they had two different punishments.  Aimee and her hosts of imitators are trying to nullify the punishment that God gave them.

And even worse, it also used other people from other races in their movement.  And it doesn’t matter if they cite Acts 2:4 or Acts 2:17; the people who the Bible is talking about in these verses is not the people that the Pentecostals say it is describing.  Verse 4 is the disciples of the LORD, who were mainly from the tribe of Benjamin, with a few possibly from the tribes of Judah and Levi, who were filled with the Holy Spirit. 

These Israelites spoke in tongues so they could communicate with their brethren in Jerusalem who came from other countries.  They spoke to them in their own languages.  There were no women who were given the spirit; there were no other races who were involved either.  For no stranger could enter the Temple, for if he did, the penalty was death.  Verse 17 is a quote from the prophet Joel.  It is addressing that prophecy will come on the women, but it is not all women; but the women of Israel. 

No wonder the Church that McPherson started is having Rabbis build the bridge between the Messianic jew and Christians.  The serpent is in the sheep herd! 

Here is Aimee's legacy given seven fold, it could be much more:

1. Her use of the dramatic arts to reach the lost was unprecedented in her time.  It imitated the Salvation’s Army’s technique to dramatize the Scriptures.  She was an entertainer in the entertainment city.  The Angelus Temple had two large choirs and a large brass band.  There was much singing at every service.
2. She used the latest technology to further the gospel.  She was the first woman preacher to use the radio and was going to be the first women to use television; but she died before she could begin.  Today she would be a tele-evangelist.  At the Angelus Church today, they are still carrying on what Aimee taught them.  In four days, they will have as their speaker, Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Clayton Kershaw.  
3. She baptized Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jeane Baker or Mortenson) when she was a baby (December 6, 1926).  She gave John Wayne his first acting job.  Anthony Quinn played saxophone in her orchestra.  Charlie Chaplin helped design her sets.  Richard Nixon and his family attended the Temple from time to time.  She supposedly had an affair with her ghost writer, and jewish comedian Milton Berle (Mendel Berlinger) wrote in his autobiography the he had an affair with her two times in the early 1930s.  She was the most famous person of her time.
4. Finally, she reached out to the poor to provide when others could not.  She was better at doing what the government was attempting to do at this time.   The soup line at the Temple fed more hungry people of any race, creed or color following the church’s long standing tradition of integration.  Aimee was also the number one seller of War Bonds in the nation. 

She no doubt healed many people or as she would say that she was just the conduit.  But so did many false prophets before her.  Her life demonstrated the fallacy of the feminist movement.  Twice divorced, she had a couple of affairs, at least one with a married man; she danced, drank beer, wore short dresses, wore make-up, etc.   She converted finances that did not belong to her to live personally as the wealthy live while demanding that her sacrificing disciples “give their all for Jesus” in the midst of The Great Depression.  She built in 1929 Aimee’s Castle, a five bedroom, six bathroom mansion in Lake Elsinore. 

But she was a woman and women are not qualified to have authority over a man.  The Scripture teach that a pastor or deacon is to be the husband of one wife.  Aimee failed to be qualified.

When Aimee was 28 years old, she went to Indianapolis to see Maria Woodworth Etter at her church.  It was just six years before Mother Etter died, when it is said that Aimee heard her speak at the service. It is here that the Pentecostals say that the mantle passed from Mother Etter to Aimee, later from Aimee to Kathryn Kuhlman, and finally from Kuhlman to Benny Hinn.

And she broke down segregation in the church.  Aimee died just three years before Jackie Robinson broke the racial barrier in the Major Leagues.  Aimee actually had her young daughter, Roberta, baptized by a Black minister.  She had this Black man take her daughter out into the river in the Key West, baptize her, because for McPherson, this was a symbol of her effort to reach out to people of all races.

She was the new preacher in America; she was an entertainer and a big time celebrity, but she didn’t teach the Scriptures.  Aimee was a Baal worshipper.

She taught a faulty gospel message and regularly saw thousands of healings and miracles in her meetings. She saw an unprecedented growth in ministers and missionaries; churches and large growth of people who followed what she taught. 

But women were not to exercise authority over men.  And the other races were not in the covenant; and were forbidden to go to White churches.  That is what she failed to teach.

Unfortunately, her weaknesses in relationships caused discredit on her ministry, and opened her to ridicule and criticism.  But it didn’t stop its growth.  It has continued to get bigger and bigger; worse and worse.   

There have been 68 healings at the Roman Catholic lake at Lourdes, France, as investigated by doctors of the Lourdes Medical Bureau, are “medically inexplicable.”  Aimee is also known for her extensive “divine healing” work.  No wonder she attracted large crowds.  But with her violation of Scripture and heresies, no true Israelite should have gone.  If they needed healing, they could call for the elders of the church, and they could anoint and pray for them.   

And who was baptized by the Holy Spirit in Acts 2?  I know the Pentecostals say everyone who is saved can show that they are baptized by the Holy Spirit by speaking in tongues.  But that is not what the Holy Scriptures say.  It was the disciples of the LORD who were Israelite men.  And the women who should prophecy are Israelite women. 

The Pentecostals teach that “The initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gives utterance.”  This comes after the experience of the new birth.  Anyone who trusts in Jesus for salvation is a non-Spirit-filled Christian, while Spirit-filled Christians have experienced a second work of grace known as the baptism of  the Holy Spirit—an infilling of God’s Spirit with power and gifts for ministry.  Normally, Pentecostals believe speaking in tongues proves that one has received the Holy Spirit.  This is nothing more than a misinterpretation of what the entire Bible is about.

Aimee was a faith healer.  But what is true with most other faith healers, they all helpless when it comes to their own lives.  John Dowie couldn’t heal himself; Kathryn Kuhlman couldn’t heal herself; neither could Aimee.  What was she doing taking barbiturates anyway?  I have, as of now, outlived John Dowie by 12 years; Aimee by 18 years; and Kathryn by 3 years.

Aimee failed to warn her congregation about the Federal Reserve; she failed to warn about the Income Tax; she failed to warn about Women Suffrage; she failed to warn about the Social Security System; she failed to warn about World War I and World War II; she failed to obey her own teaching about developing a kinder gentler spirit as she fired those that she saw as rivals, even her own family; she failed to teach women to be good wives and mothers; she failed to keep Israel separate; she failed to keep the Israelite churches separate from the other races; she failed to be a part of any existing Israelite church but she started another church and denomination!

What a mess we are now in.  A little over 100 years ago a movement began which is now the largest Protestant denomination in the world.  It is a multi-racial, women led movement—how far could it be from the truth?  Jezebel had nothing on Aimee. 

Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.