Zeusor-

Go for it man!
And get some people from the media to go with you!
Anthony is probably thinking that this whole issue will just blow over.
What is needed is MORE exposure through more avenues of the media.
Has anyone ever thought of contacting Prime Time Live?

Mark

Hmmm...the few people in the media who I have contacted over this seem to have no interest in looking more deeply. I have mentioned the idea of my going over there with counselor47 in the past, and have toyed with it ever since. Any other ideas?

Also, there was a piece on ABC News' [i:75761bb787]20/20[/i:75761bb787] last night about an outfit called Ministry Watch whose mission seems to be pretty much the same as TFI's ostensible mission: helping to ensure financial accountability from, and investigating fraud done by, high-profile "televangelist" ministries. The piece NEVER ONCE mentioned TFI or the name of Ole Anthony. Nice to see an organization other than TFI get some publicity for doing almost the very same work (minus the mag), but without the "ends-justify-the-means" investigative style, mean spiritedness, and authoritarian bent. In the interviews with Ministry Watch's leader (I forget his name) I though he came off as very sincere and down-to-earth. Did anybody else see this piece?

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cherenuff1
Well, the notes are being addressed. Ole really doesn't care what we do with them and the leaders are going through the boxes to find all of them. I've asked Gary to coordinate with me so that I can be there and tell you truthfully that they are gone. I think that I'll just go through and shred them for you all and once done, I'll post back and let you guys know.

Well, I think this is a positive development. Some of the former members have pointed out that we have no way of knowing if this is really being done, which is true, but I think the willingness of the elders of Trinity to address the issue is a step in the right direction. I request that either John or Gary contact me directly when it is done to certify by their word that it has taken place.

Zeuszor-

I saw the piece too. I thought it rocked! If you go to 20/20's site, they probably have it online for reviewing.
Perhaps getting in touch with Ministry Watch would open a door of contact with ABC.

Mark

[abcnews.go.com]

[abcnews.go.com]

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cherenuff1
Everyone here agrees that they should just go ahead and get rid of them if it gives you guys some peace and that's what we are going to do.

Again, I basically see this as a positive development so I do not want to be too critical, but I do need to say something about the magnaminity here. Trinity needs to do this because it is an act of basic human decency, not some great act of mercy. We should not have even had to ask for this, as the notes should never have been kept in the first place.

I notice Ole is holding himself above it all, which was predictable.

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cherenuff1
As for continuing defending Trinity, I'm just tired of it. I know my stand, my beliefs and you all do as well so I just don't want to waste my time defending something over and over again. It just gets tiring.

Besides, the truth defends itself. If Trinity is what it claims to be, it shouldn't need defending. :wink:

From David Upton's blog:

With Easter fast approaching I am reminded of how special it is. Of course we remember Christ’s death and resurrection every time we participate in a communion service but many of us also see Easter as a time for our own spiritual ‘death and resurrection’ by either rededicating our lives to Christ as I did twenty-one years ago or by surrendering to Christ for the first time like my father did six years ago or by acting in obedience by being baptised as some will do at my church this coming Easter Sunday. Those of us who choose Easter as our time of submission, do so because we understand and believe what the Bible tells us about Christ’s death burial and resurrection. It is a wonderful hope of new life and freedom from the bondage of sin and death. We begin to see things in a new way and as we read the Bible day to day, we hear God’s voice helping us and guiding us and making us new. But what happens when some other voice becomes so loud that we can’t hear Gods voice anymore?

‘I Can’t Hear God Anymore - Life in a Dallas Cult’ is a book written by Wendy Duncan who experienced just that. Reading her story was almost like looking in a mirror. I had that feeling also when I read Toxic Faith by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton and Churches That Abuse by Ron Enroth. Wendys’ story is so familiar, not in the details, but in the pattern that seems to fit almost every story of someone in an abusive and oppressive environment. A person is in a broken and vulnerable state feeling rejected by those who should have been there for support and affirmation but weren’t. Then that person looks for or is found by a group or charismatic leader who offers hope, direction and understanding and takes them in. Once in, the person feels accepted, loved and appreciated. Needs of emotional support and affirmation are met giving the person a feeling of acceptance and security. That security then turns into submission of will and thought to the group and/or leader. The group and/or leader then takes advantage of this submission to a level of abuse that is difficult to understand for the outsider. Why would anyone allow someone to abuse them so? Why not just leave?

This is the story told over and over by so many who have left abusive groups. So what has this got to do with Easter anyway?? Easter is a time of hope and new beginnings, new life!! Why on earth are we talking about abusive groups? Why? Because stories like Wendys’ are Easter stories. Christ was betrayed by someone closest to Him. He suffered abuse that none of us can understand unless we have gone through it ourselves. He was beaten, crucified and died but He rose again! Wendy was betrayed by someone she trusted. She suffered abuse that no one can understand unless they have gone through it themselves. Part of her died inside but by the grace of God she overcame it and rose again! Victorious over what she had endured, the power of God gave her the strength and courage to put her story in print and share it with others. I for one am grateful that she did because despite the fact that her story follows a familiar pattern, just like all personal stories, hers is unique. It is unique in that the group she was in and the man who leads it, do not match the typical profile of what we would consider a cult. In some ways it does as it has a single charismatic leader and is composed of a relatively small group of people living communally in a small neighborhood. What makes this group unique is that it is one that I personally could have joined easily even though I have been examining the marks of cults for twenty years!

“How’s that? Come again?” some of you are asking. This group didn’t really live in a small isolated commune but rather a small residential neighborhood and although they did live somewhat communally, sharing everything in common, some members did own title deeds to their own homes and did not hand them over to the leader, although The Trinity Foundation did own property with apartments that members lived in if they chose to. They also ran as a registered tax-exempt charity and did reach out to the homeless and downtrodden. The leader did not demand lots of money, or any money for that matter. Although he did live off the income of his members it was a humble lifestyle unlike the health and wealth televangelist preachers that he helped to expose as frauds, not only to the Christian community but to the secular world as well through nationally televised exposes. For someone like myself in discernment ministry, this looks pretty good! It also looked pretty good to Wendy Duncan who is a licensed Social Worker. Surely someone in that profession and someone like me in discernment ministry would be able to recognize a manipulative cult leader from a mile away. Well you would think so but it looks like we were both fooled. For me it wasn’t so bad since I was never personally involved and have never even visited Texas (once for an hour in the Dallas airport waiting for a stop over flight) but for Wendy it was devastating. I had seen the leader of this group on television a number of times as the secular press began to adopt this person as an expert on religious frauds. He appealed not only to the non-Christian viewers as he exposed ‘Christians’ for they always ‘knew’ about them anyway, as a bunch of frauds after your money but he also appealed to Christian viewers as well as someone who was helping to ‘clean house’ as it were, getting rid of the bad apples in the bunch that make us all look bad. He was appealing to a number of people who lived in the area also as they saw him as a charismatic although man of humble means who accepted them as they were without judgement. Wendy Duncan was one of them.

So who is this guy anyway and if he sounds so good and he is doing good works then what’s the problem with the guy anyway? His name is Ole Anthony and he heads a group known as the Trinity Foundation. We first heard of him when he appeared on Primetime Live With Diane Sawyer, November 21, 1991. Here he was shown with members of his group digging through the trash of Robert Tilton and other health and wealth televangelists. From that moment on good old Ole Anthony became a friend of the networks and someone people could admire for his Christian charity, humble lifestyle and seeming dedication to truth. I say seeming because according to Wendy and others who have left the Trinity Foundation, Ole Anthony had his own definition of what truth was. Wendy’s husband Doug recalls Ole Anthony telling him to “forget everything he learned in the Navigators,” because Ole had the real truth. Wendy also remembered Ole Anthony saying things like, “I don’t care about your silly schools of thought derived by man. I’m about real truth.”

So with that said, it is now evident what the problem is. This is the classic statement made by all leaders of abusive groups. Once they have gained your trust and submission, they then abuse that trust by reinterpreting, twisting, and taking out of context the Scriptures in order to manipulate you into following them instead of God. Wendy quotes Ole Anthony:

” The biggest lie of modern Christianity is the idea of spiritual growth. Any effort on our part to become more like Christ is utter sin - for it is self-effort and God abhors the self. Trying to be a good Christian (reading your Bible, praying more, etc.) by your own self-efforts is pure vanity.”

It almost sounds as if Ole Anthony took his lessons from a Watchtower magazine! The Watchtower discourages independent thinking and independent Bible study and self directed prayer. All cult groups calling themselves Christian will tell members that they cannot understand the Bible by themselves and any showing or demonstration of independence is sin.

I really appreciated Wendy’s inclusion of the definition and description of narcissistic leaders. Wendy quotes Len Oakes:

“The primary characteristics of the narcissistic personality disorder are a pattern of grandiosity, an excessive need for admiration, a sense of entitlement, and a lack of empathy for others. Individuals with this personality disorder have an exaggerated sense of their own importance and a constant need for attention. … An emotionally needy mother may hinder the child’s movement from the symbiotic stage, resulting in an exaggerated sense of entitlement and pattern of grandiosity and that continues throughout the individual’s life.” (Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities [New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997] 2-36.)

This helps readers understand how and why these leaders do what they do to vulnerable unsuspecting people. Without excusing their behaviour and disregard for the Scriptures, we can at the very least have a clearer picture of how people like Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell and many others, including Ole Anthony become the people they are. With this picture in mind we can also have a better understanding of why the church needs to reach out to needy families who are struggling whether they be single parent families or low income families or families on the verge of divorce. All of these men had troubled families regardless of what the ‘official’ accounts tell us. Troubled families that have negative church experiences are breeding grounds for future abusive leaders. That is not to say that all troubled families will necessarily produce cult leaders. That’s absurd, but all abusive church and cult leaders share this characteristic in common.

Wendy understood this. She had been rejected by the church for employment opportunities because of past mistakes and failed marriages. Instead of a healthy recognition of her repentance and subsequent spiritual growth she felt was considered ‘tainted’ by her past which only served to further shame her making her vulnerable and and easy prey for any cult group posing as Christian. They would be willing to overlook her past and accept her for who she ‘is’ instead of judging her for who she ‘was’. Of course there is need for careful scrutiny of anyone being considered for employment in the church or Christian organizations and often a persons’ past is crucial to the decision making process. So we cannot blame the church for Wendy or anyone else joining a cult but more often than not, if you interview any member of any cult, they will tell you that they joined the group they did because it offered them something that the church should have but did not. Walter Martin used to say, “The cults are the unpaid bills of the church.”

Thankfully, there are churches and leaders who are gifted and equipped to to help those who have been taken advantage of and abused by those who would use hurting people to meet their own needs. Wendy and Doug found such help when they finally recognized the trap they were in when year after year, their ’spiritual covering’ aka ‘Ole Anthony’ refused to bless their desire to be married even after seven years of dating. That’s when Wendy cried out, “I Can’t hear God’s voice anymore! Your voice has gotten too loud!” With that statement as an inspiration and epiphany if you will, both Wendy and Doug finally saw what they did not want to see before and left the Trinity Foundation to seek help and begin a new life.

Wendy’s story is an Easter story. She has done what many and probably most Christians do not have the courage to do. That is, to expose abuse for what it is even though it appears to outsiders as a healthy and much needed ministry in the body of Christ. Wendy has looked to the risen Christ for her own salvation and spiritual resurrection from death unto life. Her story serves an example to people who have been abused by those in authority, that they don’t have to be afraid of speaking out against abuse. By abuse I mean ‘real’ abuse of Scripture twisting and manipulation and control of members, not just disagreement over management decisions or office procedures. Her story also serves as a light to those of us in discernment ministries to show us that we are not immune from practicing ourselves the very forms of abuse that we attempt to expose in others. We must now examine ourselves and our own motives for exposing error. Do we do it to protect the body of Christ like anti-biotics protect our own bodies, or do we do it to satisfy our own needs for attention, self-gratification and narcissistic tendencies?

This Easter remember Christ’s death and resurrection. Remember that no matter what your past is like or what your present circumstances may be, you can turn to Jesus as your healer, friend, saviour, and Lord. He died and rose again so that you might have life everlasting by trusting in His sacrifice for your sins so that you might be reconciled to God. There is hope and Wendy’s story is just one of many that we can learn from.

If you or someone you know is in need of this kind of story, in need of a helping hand, in need of a redeemer, then there is no time like the present, Easter time, to share the good news of Christ’s resurrection and hope for all mankind. Share this story with them. It is worth sharing.

Happy Easter and Blessings to you!

David Upton

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counselor47
I request that either John or Gary contact me directly when it is done to certify by their word that it has taken place.

I'm still waiting to hear from them. I'm not sure how long it takes to shred some notes--I guess it depends on whether you have to stop and read them first.

Weeks later and I'm still waiting to hear from them. I wonder if they were ever really serious about this, or if it was just another lie.