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Faith and Works


mstar1
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I just ran across this awful story in the Washington Post

Rob Foster was 16 when his family unraveled.

He had told his parents that he wanted to leave Calvary Temple, the Pentecostal church in Sterling the family had attended for decades. But church leaders were blunt with his parents: Throw your son out of the house, or you will be excommunicated. And so that December two years ago, Gary and Marsha Foster told Rob that he had to leave. They would not see him or talk to him.

"I was devastated," he said. ...

Under the leadership of longtime pastor Star R. Scott, Calvary opened a school, television and radio ministries, and satellite churches around the globe. The local congregation at one point numbered 2,000.

Scott's followers see him as an inspiring interpreter of God's word. Members pack the church most nights, united in their desire to live as the Bible intended and reject what they view as society's moral ambivalence. ...

In his sermons, Scott teaches that his church is scripturally superior to others and views keeping people in the fold as a matter of their salvation. "Anything that's other than a member in harmony has to be identified and expelled," Scott preached in May 2007.

Don't be afraid of "social services" if you throw rebellious children out of the house, he told the congregation in an earlier sermon, because "you obeyed God." In an interview, he cited scriptures: "Deuteronomy says if your kid doesn't follow your God, kill 'em. That's what we do, but not physically. To us, you're dead if you're not serving our God," he said.

Scott describes those who decide to leave the church as "depraved," and Calvary's practice is to cut them off. When parents have left the church, some young children have been urged to stay; a few have been taken in by pastors. Scott's family has been divided, too: Scott is estranged from his 36-year-old son, Star Scott Jr.

"Jesus said, 'I didn't come to bring peace, I came to bring a sword,' " the elder Scott said about the divided families."

He also said: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." Also: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." And: "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth."

This is the same Pastor that believes God inspired his "racing ministry" with all those cool cars paid for with church funds, and was "instructed by God" to take a virgin bride 35 years his junior less than a month after his wife died.

If someone was a natural born scam artist that never believed in God in the first place I can sort of understand them developing along these lines, but that "thousands' still flock to him as some sort of messenger of God is downright scary.

Bob Dylan

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Truly, a generation of swine. And this one could use some lipstick. Mid-Life Crises from H-ell? goes terribly awry? Talkiing bibles? What's got this guy jumping through hoops, besides the Girl's Basketball team?

He may appeal on several levels -those who don't want anything remotely like what the bible teaches and can feel good about themselves next to this pig.

Or there may be some who figure hey. I have too much money. I need to waste some.

Many possibilities but none that don't make me want to take a brisk shower after considering them.

--------------- these quotes from the article - incredible!

In 2002, three weeks after the death of his wife, Scott, who was then 55, stood before the congregation and announced that the Bible instructed him as a high priest to take a virgin bride from the faithful. A week later, he did -- a pretty 20-year-old who a couple of years earlier had been a star basketball player on the church high school team.

Scott said he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of church funds on a fleet of race cars and until last year devoted many weekends touring the circuit for his "racing ministry."

Scott is Calvary's "apostle" and presiding elder, and in 1996, he named himself the sole trustee, putting him in charge of virtually all of the church's operations, its theology and finances.

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From his Sword of the Spirit website:

Pastor Star R. Scott is Senior Pastor of Calvary Temple in Sterling, Virginia, where he has ministered since 1973. Pastor Scott spent twenty years with the Assemblies of God and earned his degree from The Berean College.

He has served in sectional and district levels as well as speaking at General Councils. He has ministered in the largest churches in both Korea and India.

Still holding to all Assemblies of God tenets of faith, he now works as an independent ministry overseeing and training local pastors. Calvary Temple is a church where the full counsel of God's Word is believed, taught without compromise, and lived in obedience to Jesus' lordship.

Calvary Temple ministries include a Christian school, adult Bible college, media ministry, and an aggressive missions program. In addition to the pastoral gift, Pastor Scott functions in the five-fold offices of apostle and prophet. He has planted churches, and currently oversees the pastors and ministries of numerous satellite churches.

The teaching gift of Pastor Scott is prophetic and visionary to the Body of Christ. It is a ministry which earnestly contends for the faith, insisting upon sound doctrine. For the past two decades, Pastor Scott has ministered on radio and television, and traveled internationally teaching the uncompromised Word of God.

He has ministered to millions in the Sword of the Spirit miracle rallies, mission trips, and pastors' conferences. Many of Pastor Scott's teachings are being transcribed into book form and are being systematically released.

And history repeats itself…

Same information also appears on his racing cars website except he omits the second part of the first para, and the second para, about AoG.

If he is "Still holding to all Assemblies of God tenets of faith," it's reasonable to ask why he needs an "independent ministry" outside the auspices of AoG. Maybe they kicked him out. Maybe he had some difficulty getting his hands on all that lovely money. Maybe they didn't like his racing cars.

Is anybody at the Café smart enough to hack into his website and put a link to the Café and a link to John Knapp’s psych get-the-cult-out-of-your-head website?

BTW I'm very sorry for the son who got kicked out, M&A'd, shunned, call it what you will. 16 is too young to cast your son adrift. But it might be the best thing that happened to the lad. Release from his prison, as it were. It sounds as though he has some sense, disobeying his father and all.

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