They Asked Me to Wait...

(The following is an excerpt from the blog Talk to Action and written by Bruce Wilson...)

If Sarah Palin may hold apocalyptic end-time beliefs or believes that she has a divine mandate to initiate an end-time conflict, American voters have the right to know about the doctrines taught in Palin's Alaska churches. These churches are closely associated with a movement, called the Third Wave or New Apostolic Reformation, which holds views that are highly controversial, particularly among other conservative Christians who are most aware of this fast growing international phenomenon. The activities of the movement have been condemned as heresy by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, to which two of Palin's churches currently belong. Accusations even stronger than `heresy', decrying the "Third Wave" religious movement, have been launched from Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christian groups.

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Our focus on Palin's churches does not "bash religion" and has been praised by conservative Christians for its academic rigor. We are examining the religious views promoted at Palin's churches because the Third Wave / New Apostolic Reformation movement rejects pluralism and its followers believe they have been anointed by God to lead a unified superchurch into the final age - both of which have public policy implications.

Sarah Palin has every right to hold whatever religious views she chooses but, by the same token, the American people have every right to know what Palin's religious beliefs are - especially to the extent that they may include the view that all other religious and philosophical views but her own are under the influence of demonic powers and that believing Christians must conquer the Earth and cleanse it of evil in this final generation.

Palin's Churches and the Holy Laughter anointing

LAUGHTER'S GRIP

They asked me to wait. To wait for God to come laughing,
Wait on His voice to destroy the golden temples of man,
Hold my tongue until His powerful breath was upon me,
And from His loving casualties I’d at last know the Savior.

They asked me to wait. To wait for God to come laughing,
Wait for His followers to die away their persuasive babble
And the murder of Islam to breach the walls of the earth
As the many damned souls drowned under holy laughter.

“O! The Lord God is looming! On his way with God’s wrath!
We are to take up swords and send evil howling back
to die their well deserved and slow death!
Their faces popped and spattered these words as they fell back,
Caught in His fiery presence, twisting their tongues into drivel
And thrashing their minds in the glory of an Eden unlike any other.

And then the snake planted his venom
Through the laughter of their gyrating madness.
Tears emptied their pockets, spirits came crashing,
And the anointed rapture of their making grew tired,
Weary of such euphoric trotting and wheezing
And falling over one another in ecstasy.

I did not wait.

© 2008 mrp/tpm

A tip of the hat to Talk to Action for their post on Sarah Palin's church

A fine read- Spiritual Warfare and the Third Wave Movement. A Critique.

Side note that might or might not be relative...
The Third Wave was an experimental demonstration of Nazism movement undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his Contemporary History class as part of a study of Nazi Germany. The experiment took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, during first week of April 1967. Jones, unable to explain to his students why the German citizens allowed the Nazi Party to exterminate millions of Jews and other so-called "undesirables", decided to show them instead. Jones started a movement called "The Third Wave" and convinced his students that the movement is to eliminate democracy. The fact that democracy emphasizes individuality was considered as a drawback of democracy, and Jones emphasized this main point of the movement in its motto: "Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride".

The experiment was not well documented. Of contemporary sources, the experiment is only mentioned in Cubberley High School student newspaper "The Cubberley Catamount". It is only briefly mentioned in two issues, and one more issue of the paper has articles about this experiment, but without much detail. The most detailed account of the experiment is an essay written by Jones himself some six years afterward. Several other articles about the experiment exist, but all of them were written after a considerable amount of time had passed.