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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Tim LaHaye, the Richest Divinator in the World All about LaHaye before he co-authored the Left Behind series [Yurica Report Editor's Note: The Bible prohibits using divination of any kind or being “an observer of times,” in Deuteronomy 18:10-11. Christians are not supposed to be trying to figure out what the future holds! Yet millions of evangelical Christians have blindly followed the teachings of Tim LaHaye, but few know that he is the father of a divination system. His so-called “Temperament Theory” is nothing more than a variant form of astrology. It is no wonder then that right wing religious followers of LaHaye are being led into political back rooms where corrupt political ideology is pawned off as “Christian.” In the hope that the backslidden churches will wake up before it is too late, we suggest this essay be passed on to your friends, neighbors and family and to all in those churches who follow men rather than Truth.] An excerpt from The New Messiahs By Katherine Yurica The Humoral Theory of Temperaments When Dr. Tim LaHaye complained that his photograph in Time magazine wasn’t flattering enough, he said it to a national audience. He was chatting amiably with Phil Donahue while Donahue’s audience made up their own minds about his good looks. However, it wasn’t the first time the Southern Baptist minister appeared on a nationally televised program. He was a frequent guest on the Jim Bakker Show, (before Bakker’s conviction and imprisonment) and on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. In fact, his influence spread to the highest corridors of power. He was an honored guest at the White House where he was consulted by Reagan administration officials for his opinion on potential appointees. During the Reagan years, LaHaye and his wife, Beverly, poured financial support into law suits that challenged America’s textbook industry. Not only was he very vocal about the changes he desired to make in the educational system in the country, but as a natural organizer, he set up one successful organization after another. Beverly LaHaye became active herself as the founder and president of Concerned Women for America, an anti-feminist organization with a network of 540,000 women “who were committed to protecting the rights of the family through moral activism.” Impressed, President Reagan appointed her to his Family Policy Advisory Board. Perhaps even more significant, was the political network that was formed when wife Beverly’s organization worked in conjunction with her husband’s other associations. One of them, the American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV, pronounced “active”), had political observers buzzing over its growth. Between 1984 and 1985, over 100,000 fundamentalist pastors joined it. If that weren’t enough to establish his popularity and political acumen, LaHaye burst onto bestseller lists and became the second most popular evangelical author in American history with over seven million books sold. By 1999, his bookselling prowess had not diminished; writing with Jerry Jenkins, a former sportswriter, the two penned a series of “Left Behind” novels that chronicle life on the eve of the Second Coming of Christ and have sold well over 60 million copies. Over a twenty year career, LaHaye’s book sales have placed him well ahead of all other American writers. In one of the more bizarre turns of the modern fundamentalist movement, four of his early books were on temperament analysis, and were in fact, the topic that launched LaHaye’s great influence on the Christian community, which in turn granted him power in political circles. Starting with Spirit Controlled Temperament, which was followed by Transformed Temperaments, The Male Temperament and Your Temperament: Discover Its Potential, all were published by Tyndale House Publishers, a leading evangelical press from Wheaton, Illinois. They were translated into 21 languages and they were used by three missionary societies to train their candidates for the mission field. Notwithstanding the fact that he has had no academic training in the field, he was hailed by fundamentalists as an innovator in psychology. Indeed, LaHaye claimed expertise in psychological counseling and cited his Family Life Seminars as evidence of hands on experience. He said that over the years he literally counseled thousands of people by mail, and he claimed that he developed “The LaHaye Temperament Test,” which he said has been administered to more than 10,000 people at $20 a test. LaHaye claimed his work was scientific and he spoke of his psychological theory of temperament with pride. He’s fond of quoting an unnamed “leading industrial psychologist” about his theory: “It’s the best single theory of human behavior yet devised.”[1] The praise is all the more significant when one considers LaHaye’s academic background. He holds a B.A. from Bob Jones University where he majored in “Bible,” and he earned a “Doctor of Ministry” degree from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary. This latter degree is a nonacademic work-project degree that allows a student to independently pursue his personal and professional interests largely off-campus in his own church. In this case, it was LaHaye’s “counseling” project that earned him his degree. It also earned him his fame and fortune. LaHaye advertised that each mail order participant would receive an impressive psychological analysis: His primary temperament would be identified along with a description of his predominant personality characteristics and a list of his ten greatest weaknesses. The package would also include vocational and marital guidance, special advice to pastors, singles and divorcees and a list of each person’s “spiritual gifts”—all packaged in a “handsome vinyl leather portfolio.” LaHaye assured his readers that his temperament theory “is widely used,” and that modern psychology has found no system with “more acceptance.”[2] Only, as he put it, “non-Christian psychologists and psychiatrists [have] been less than enthusiastic.” Unknown to LaHaye’s readers, however, is the fact that temperament theories like LaHaye’s are regarded by respected modern scientists as a morbid resurrection of a “medieval, prescientific notion” that is “not seriously held by any psychologist or psychiatrist nowadays.”[3] The question is, did he take his theory into the Reagan White House in order to help select candidates for positions in that administration? The Humoral Theory of Temperaments For the fact of the matter is that Tim LaHaye resurrected a discredited pseudoscience that owed much of its success to physiognomy, (the divinatory art of discovering temperaments and character from outward appearance as from facial features.) He simply borrowed his “Four Temperament Theory” from writers who borrowed from the long tradition that grew out of the ancient Greeks’ concept of causes of illness. For centuries, people believed in the notion that four excessive bodily fluids (or humors) caused diseases. This belief later led physicians to the odious practice of bloodletting by using leeches or cupping. But the four bodily fluids were also linked to distinctive personality attributes, and this theory, called the “humoral theory of personality” was assiduously followed by everyone from crackpots to scholars from the early Greeks to the nineteenth century. It gave birth to the term “temperament,” which was used to indicate the prevailing mood of a person, which in turn was based upon the individual’s supposed prevailing bodily fluid. Thus an excess of yellow bile would supposedly cause a person to be chronically angry, hence the word choleric (hot tempered, quick to react), which literally means bile. Similarly, an excess of black bile would supposedly cause a person to be chronically sad and depressed, hence the word melancholy. An excess of phlegm meant a person was slow-moving, impassive and apathetic from the cold, moist influence of the humor, hence the word phlegmatic. And an excess of blood was supposed to produce a warm, pleasant mood, hence the word sanguine, which literally means blood. All that remains of the humoral theory of temperaments today are the four words with their singular meanings still basically intact from the original Greek usage. In fact, the word “temperament” has disappeared entirely from psychology textbooks in the modern western world largely due to the discrediting of such typological theories.[4] However, sometime after 1962, while Tim LaHaye was pastoring the Scott Memorial Baptist Church in San Diego, California, he stumbled upon a little book published by the evangelical Augsburg Publishing House. Temperament and the Christian Faith, by O. Hallesby, had been originally published in 1940 in Norway, and now appeared for the first time in an English translation. The book transformed Tim LaHaye’s life. Hallesby was using the four temperaments as a tool of power in counseling. Realizing that untrained and uneducated Christian counselors could quickly master a system that promised to reveal the characteristics of every troubled soul within minutes and offer “remedies for problems that characterize each temperament,” he vividly detailed the personality characteristics of each of the four types by drawing upon the medieval tradition. This was heady stuff for LaHaye. Not only did he borrow from Hallesby’s book, but he became one writer in a long line of enthusiasts and practitioners who have embellished and enriched the temperament theory since ancient times. Like those before him, LaHaye arbitrarily added characteristics for a type or deleted some. But the direction was consistently toward descriptive embellishment—adding positive characteristics to the basically negative temperaments and negative descriptions to the positive ones. He said that Hallesby’s description of persons of a melancholy temperament was so depressing, “If I were a Melancholy, I believe I would go out and shoot myself after reading this.” Because he evened out the attributes of each type, he was able to gain greater popularity for the scheme. He claimed all individuals—although a “mixture” of more than one type—could be classified by his or her “predominating” temperament but no one need feel inferior. He said, “No one temperament can be said to be better than another.”[5] The next step was to teach others how to detect the four types. Hallesby had explained in his book, “The temperament is reflected in the appearance and actions of the physical form, especially in one’s features and facial expressions.”[6] Hallesby became so competent at the art, he could distinguish a melancholic from a sanguine just by the way a person packed his suitcase. Not to be outdone, LaHaye tells how he was easily able to categorize a whole group of people as melancholic and phlegmatic based upon his observation of the neatness of their desks and the calm atmosphere of their office environment. “The clincher,” he said, “was the petty cash box.”[7] On the other hand, in another office, LaHaye categorized a whole group of employees as sanguine and choleric because of their messy desks and disorganized frenzy. Similarly, LaHaye’s wife Beverly observed deep lines and creases on a “crippled” woman’s face on a bus. She labeled these as “marks of bitterness, resentment and misery,” which in turn indicated to her that she was observing a choleric or melancholic type. Apparently it did not occur to her that physical pain and illness often leave their own traces on a person’s face. Moreover in this grandiose scheme, LaHaye can even analyze the temperament of a whole people. According to him, all Jews can be stereotyped by one man. He writes, “I have been intrigued by the Jewish temperament. After carefully analyzing the temperament of the first Israelite as he is described in the Bible, I have found Jacob to be a ‘dead ringer’ for the twentieth-century residents of Israel.”[8] This is a powerful scheme when you consider that once a person knows the type—he or she also believes that he knows a great deal about an individual. For example, according to LaHaye, if you know that someone’s a sanguine, you know he’s got a problem with lust; he’s a bad debtor; his word can never be depended upon; and he’s unfaithful. You also know what vocation he ought to pursue. That’s a lot to conclude about a man by the lines on his face or the way he packs his suitcase. But once you know someone’s behavior patterns, you can make predictions about a person’s future behavior. And the hidden lure behind the scheme is this: if one can predict the behavior of another person, one can also control that person. As one observer pointed out, the ability to label others is a formidable tool of power. For LaHaye, analytical clues are everywhere. Analyzing a person’s temperament is a matter of observation. Temperaments seem to be almost self-evident. LaHaye writes, “The only person who finds it difficult to diagnose a sanguine temperament is Mr. Sanguine himself....Many a Sanguine has sparked peals of laughter from his friends by declaring, ‘I just can’t figure out which temperament I am.’”[9] So one looks for manifestations of the major characteristics of each type. Thus one looks for the “jolly, outgoing, handshaking, friendly personality” that supposedly typifies people who are sanguines. Or one looks for a person who is moody or depressed, a typical quality of the melancholic. In another of his books, Your Temperament: Discover Its Potential, published by Tyndale House in 1984, LaHaye gives us some more fabulous clues. Cholerics, for example, are poor spellers, excel at speed-reading and “love charts, diagrams, and graphs.” They also like “history, geography, literature, and psychology.” Phlegmatics, on the other hand, are absorbed in detail. LaHaye says, “To some phlegs, balancing their checkbook is the highlight of their month.” More significant, however, is LaHaye’s introduction of graphology as a prime indicator of the temperaments. He writes: “I am not an authority on handwriting, but I have observed that temperament and handwriting analysis are very similar. Our penmanship usually follows our temperament. Everything a sanguine does is expressive and flamboyant, and he writes that way. The choleric usually has poor handwriting. Everything he does is fast; consequently, he does not take time to write legibly. The phlegmatic usually has a small but neat handwriting. Melancholies [sic] have the most unpredictable handwriting of all. They are extremely complex people and usually write that way.”[10] It appears the late psychic, Jeane Dixon agreed with LaHaye. In her forward to Stephen Kurdsen’s book, Graphology, the New Science, Dixon wrote: “Long ago reputable scientists admitted the unmistakable relationship between one’s handwriting and one’s character and of all so-called ‘fortune-telling methods,’ handwriting indentification [sic] is still the only one accepted as evidence in a court of law.” Aside from the fact that “reputable scientists” do not accept the tenets of graphology and graphology is decidedly inadmissible in any court of law (only questioned document examinations are admissible), Jeane Dixon did get one thing right: graphology is still a “fortune-telling method.” (Bear in mind that graphologists are the people who brought us the idea that the way we cross our “T’s” reveals our character: thus a thin bar indicates a “weak-willed” person, but a long bar and to the right indicates “impulsive and creative” individuals.) The real question remains: what scientific evidence do we have that supports Tim LaHaye’s system? Has he or anyone else conducted tests of refutation? Has he tried to disprove his theory? As we have seen, invincibility is not evidence of a scientific theory, rather it is evidence of dogmatism. When I contacted the Family Life Seminars I asked for any information that they might have that would tend to prove the scientific value of LaHaye’s Four Temperament theory. Walter Leveille, who was the Director of Ministry, seemed to think vaguely that the four temperaments were taken from the Book of Proverbs, and therefore needed no scientific support He said, “As far as I know, there is no licensing by the State or local authorities and we have no psychologists on our staff who interpret the temperament analysis.” In support of the temperament scheme, however, he offered this: “We have administered over 10,000 temperament tests in the last four years and have had virtually no complaints. We have received many many letters of praise as to what it has done in the lives of individuals who have taken the test.” Notwithstanding the claim to the contrary, the four temperaments did not originate in the Book of Proverbs. Neither did they originate from the empirical observations of Hippocrates as LaHaye insists in his false history of the typology in chapter one of Transformed Temperaments. LaHaye wrote that Hippocrates, a Greek physician of the 5th and 4th centuries B. C. “...recognized temperamental differences in people and offered a theory to account for these differences.” He claimed that the Romans failed to advance Hippocrates’ work, and that this same theory arrived intact into the nineteenth century.[11] If that were not enough, he then chided the distinguished British psychologist H. J. Eysenck for his alleged ignorance of history. In an incredible statement LaHaye wrote: “So little was done in personality studies that when Galen revived the concept in the seventeenth century, one modern writer, H. J. Eysenck, attributed it to Galen instead of Hippocrates.” Later, LaHaye continues, respected modern psychologists like Wilhelm Wundt took up the scientific investigation of the four temperaments and “...performed exhaustive experiments...” The endeavor thrived in its scientific environment, he tells us, until Sigmund Freud delivered a “devastating blow to the theory.” Alas, the falsehoods in this brief “history” are embarrassing. First of all, if one examines the Hippocratic Collection, one finds that the doctrine of the humors is not stated at all. It is only implied; it is in the background and nowhere are the four temperaments described. Hippocrates obviously had not written a temperament theory. It appears that LaHaye not only did not examine the original documents, he didn’t bother to read even the most basic contemporary sources such as a dictionary or The New Encyclopaedia Britannica under the heading Temperament. If he had, he would have discovered that the idea of temperament originated with Galen, not with Hippocrates. And that Galen was a Greek physician and writer of the second century A.D. and not the 17th century as he so confidently wrote. Contrary to LaHaye’s claims, the four temperaments were originally based upon a physiological theory that was related to the four basic elements of earth, air, fire, and water, with all this culminating in notions of the zodiac. In short, the Greeks were creating a typology of temperaments based on cosmic forces.[12] LaHaye has the wrong man in Hippocrates, and even the right man, Galen, did not do what LaHaye suggests was done. Moreover, LaHaye misrepresented the work of Wilhelm Wundt, one of the two modern investigators who have used Galen’s four terms (H. J. Eysenck is the other). Not only did he fail to inform his readers that the psychologists’ use of the terms (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic) was in an entirely different sense than LaHaye uses them, but he made it appear as if their work proved the validity of the typological theory when in fact both researchers considered it “absurd.”[13] If LaHaye, as a Christian fundamentalist, is embarrassed by the original rationale for the four types—as surely he must be—he is left with a typology of what amounts to four traits: depressed people, happy people, angry fast people or slow apathetic people. However, when modern psychologists have conducted experiments and studies in behavioral traits, they have found that there exists not four basic traits but according to the distinguished psychologist, Gordon Allport, “probably thousands.”[14] They include neuroticism, social extroversion or introversion, conformity, authoritarianism, conscientiousness, culture, agreeableness, aggressiveness, amiability, fearfulness, dependence, and hundreds of others. How many personal traits does the “typical” person possess? No one knows that answer today even though it appears that we are much more alike than different from each other. Most importantly, Gordon Allport has pointed out that there are no adequate diagnostic methods in science today that would enable a psychologist to discover the major lines along which a particular personality is organized.[15] In other words, traits are not at present subject to direct empirical observation and test. There is yet another major quarrel between science, and for that matter, orthodox Christianity, and LaHaye’s temperament scheme. Like astrologers who claim that the stars determine the fate of a person and the sign of the zodiac under which a person was born will control that person’s destiny, La Hay teaches that the future behavior of an unborn child will be largely determined by his genes. Thus the doctrine of inborn behavior traits has become the indispensable backbone of LaHaye’s teaching. This was essentially the deterministic view of Galen and the Greek proponents of the temperament theory. LaHaye for instance claimed that some Indian tribes in Mexico were “shiftless” and “indifferent,” but the Sapotaco Indians were “very industrious.” Their “adaptability and desire to learn” he said, “could only be an inherited trait.”[16] Similarly, Hallesby preached the doctrine, writing, “When the sanguine and the choleric lose their tempers it is because they have an inborn inclination to do so.”[17] In contrast, modern science denies that there is sufficient evidence to infer the existence of inborn character traits such as an explosive temper, a sense of humor, nervousness , or behavior patterns in general.[18] Where does that leave Tim LaHaye’s typology and his temperament test? As the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences points out, typologies serve two basic functions: they codify and they allow prediction. They are appealing because they offer simplistic pigeonholing and an assumed peek into the unknown. Hence they are a form of divination and fortune telling. They can be as entertaining as any parlor game, but the real tragedy of such scheme is that life-and-death advice is being given to people. A “Temperament Counselor” who advises on a lifetime career, marriage and spiritual development is likely to influence people’s lives for good or ill. Moreover, the victims often believe that they are really gaining knowledge about others and often rely upon the scheme to explain and excuse questionable behavior in others and themselves, instead of growing and changing by assuming responsibility. But when the temperament scheme is preached to fundamentalists who are most apt to respond as “true believers,” the practice can spread like wild fire. Ministries and even corporations have been formed to teach the beguiling system.[19] Indeed, if LaHaye took his system into the White House, a cabinet member also used it to make decisions about other people. Fundamentalist James Watt, the former Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan administration, attended a seminar with his wife and children that taught them “Interpersonal Effectiveness.” Leilani Watt was to credit the system she learned that day with saving her family from innumerable fights. “It was the turning point for me in understanding my husband’s personality and myself,” she told the group of women at her table at the annual luncheon for Senate wives at the White House. She explained that the system she and her husband learned from their friend Don Thoren was designed for salesmen: “to help them spot the personality style of a customer and help them to adjust the sales pitch accordingly.” In short, it was a system that the Watt family adopted wholeheartedly and used to handle other people. “If my husband’s critics had known this, they would have changed their tactics,” she said. “There are four styles of personality,” she told the Senate wives. “We all have one developed more than the other, a fact that becomes obvious in almost every group. No style is right or best.” The four personality “styles” she listed were the slightly modified four temperaments of the Greeks and Tim LaHaye’s scheme. The melancholics had become the “analytical style”; the cholerics had become the “driving style”; the sanguines were called the “expressive style”; and the phlegmatics had become the “amiable style.” If the names were different, the characteristics were the same Thus, Leilani Watt identified herself as an “amiable,” her son as and “expressive,” and explained that her husband was definitely the fast paced “driver” type who wanted to skip the details and go to the bottom line. “When the heat is on,” she confided,” a driver refuses to change if he believes he’s made a good decision. He just keeps moving ahead. Drivers make good combat leaders. They say ‘Charge!’ in the face of attack. If the driver is pushed to the extreme, he can walk away and never have to give in. That’s why personal insults or media pressure never intimidate my husband. He just keeps going. So there you have it—the real James Watt!” But people often ask, what is the secret behind the seemingly accurate readings of personalities? Why does James Watt appear to fit the personality characteristics of the choleric? The answer is that the scheme, like many pseudosciences, relies upon circular explanation. It is very much like asking, “Why does aspirin alleviate pain?” Explanation: “Because it is a pain-killer.” Unfortunately, from the scientific point of view, nothing is explained if the state we have attributed to the person from his behavior is now invoked as the cause of the behavior from which it was inferred. Circular explanations give the appearance of a genuine explanation that offers genuine knowledge. But it is only illusory. There is another factor that helps schemes like LaHaye’s to appear accurate and trustworthy. Although there are literally hundreds of personality traits, humans apparently have many traits in common. And because of this commonality it has been estimated that an astrologer, for example, has a fifty/fifty chance of accuracy on every horoscope reading that he does. At least fifty percent of his statements about his client will be true. Lawrence E. Jerome has pointed out in his book Astrology Disproved that the statistical secret of astrology is the fact it has been set up over the ages to disguise the fact that it has “the mathematical structure of a true-false test!”[20] But to my surprise, what is true of astrology may also be true of LaHaye’s temperament scheme. For as I examined it, I found striking similarities between the two pseudosciences. Consider the fact that astrology divides mankind into twelve classifications, depending upon the month and day a person is born, whereas LaHaye divides humanity into four classifications. But what is even more significant is this: LaHaye’s descriptions of the personality traits of the four types were interchangeable with descriptions of the characteristics of at least four astrological types. LaHaye’s sanguines share the same personality characteristics of the sagittarians of astrology. “They are the outgoing, talkative, personable people who are mostly actors, salesmen and public speakers.” The cholerics, on the other hand, are very similar to those born under the “sign of the Scorpion”; “they are the strong-willed yet cruel and sarcastic, determined leaders.” They are the generals and captains of industry. Astrologers say that more presidents of the United States have been born under Scorpio than any other sign. LaHaye says, “Many of the world’s most depraved criminals and dictators have been Cholerics.” The phlegmatics, like astrology’s Taurians, “are the calm, peaceful, easy going personalities that make good teachers and diplomats.” The melancholics are the Virgos of astrology. “They are the intellectuals and perfectionists; they are the moody but gifted artists, musicians, and inventors of this world.” Not to be outdone by Jeane Dixon who once wrote a book titled: Horoscopes for Dogs, a born again believer analyzed the cats in her neighborhood using LaHaye’s charts and readings. According to Dixon, a Virgo dog “can be as observant as the best art critic.” Therefore, an ideal vocation for the pooch “...would be as the guard dog in an art museum.”[21] Similarly, the born again Christian said that melancholic cats, “are highly sensitive and culture conscious creatures. They belong only in the most discriminating homes. They are naturally critical. A melancholic kitty does not make friends easily.” On the other hand, “Sanguine cats are so friendly that they will approach total strangers and ask for a scratch behind the ears.” Because I was intrigued with the similarities between astrology and Tim LaHaye’s system, I went to the library and looked at books I otherwise would never have touched. I opened one at random: The Compleat Astrologer by Derek and Julia Parker (published by McGraw Hill). On page 143 I found a list of descriptions for those born under “Mars-Jupiter” that matched Tim LaHaye’s chart on cholerics almost exactly. Also LaHaye’s descriptions of melancholics matched the astrologers’ descriptions of “Venus-Saturn” types. The best way to see it is to juxtapose the two on a page, and one can clearly see that whatever else may be true of the two systems, it is clear that both are involved in the same kind of character or trait descriptions. As I looked at the two columns, I kept reminding myself that there is one major question that proponents of these divinatory schemes seem to leave out of their books: where, I asked, is the scientific evidence that would tend to prove the truth of the alleged characteristics? Significantly, John Addey, a British astrologer, wanted to prove the truth of astrology, so he gathered statistical studies of polio victims and the aged. Studying the charts of 1,000 ninety-year-olds, Addey was disappointed to find that astrology’s long life predictions for those born under Capricorn failed to materialize. “Capricorns actually survived into their nineties no more frequently” than the allegedly “short-lived Pisceans.”[22] Similarly, astrologers Barth and Bennett conducted another study in order to prove that military careers were pursued by Arians and Scorpios because of the “influence” of Mars. The men analyzed a total of 154,500 entries into the U.S. Marine Corps during the years 1962 to 1970, comparing astrological signs for reenlistments and long-timers with those who dropped out at the end of their first two-year stint. Barth and Bennett found that Arians and Scorpios “pursue military careers no more relentlessly than ‘peace-loving’ Librans.”[23] One could hope for such honesty among fundamentalists. But one will ask in vain for the published statistical evidence that proves sanguines don’t keep their word, or that cholerics do not tithe, or that cholerics are leaders, or that they have messy desks, or that phlegmatics are tithers. Where, in fact, is the evidence that proves that typology is valid—that classifying people into four types is a true model of mankind? After reading Tim LaHaye’s embarrassingly untrue and inaccurate historical facts; and after reading his own assertions that imply acceptance of his system by the scientific community; and after reading his claim that his scheme is not only “Christian” but compatible with the scriptures, I am tempted to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, who after hearing an incredible statement from a theologian said: “After a man has said that, why need one attend to anything else he says about anything in the world?” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 10.
#3. To: Zipporah (#0)
LaHaye is an idiot. He has scammed more people with his false divinity than I could ever hope to count.
I know.. I read a couple of his books back before I had a clue.
He chose his market well. Considering that he sells to people who believe in the unbelieveable, and who hold up the contradictions and absurdities of their beliefs as "proof" of their veracity, he's just doing what W.C. Fields taught: "Never give a sucker an even break". And as Barnum taught, there's one born every minute.
And as Barnum taught, there's one born every minute. One problem is that Christians tend to accept everything one says that professes to be a Christian and gets prominence partically if they're a preacher or pastor.. it's almost considered sinful to be critical in their minds... The tend to not take heed of the scripture that says.. "But test everything; hold fast to that which is good." - 1 Thessalonians 5:21 And this.. and consider LaHaye and company..: 2 Peter 2:1-3 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
I didn't even have to get to the part where his "method" was compared to astrology. It appeared to me that "Temperment" methods belong more on the line of diviners and the occult. I'm pretty much in the camp of "Church" being a bible and a flat rock on a sunny day around 8000 feet.
I'm pretty much in the camp of "Church" being a bible and a flat rock on a sunny day around 8000 feet. I know.. when I objected to some of this stuff at church they thought I was totally wrong.. I'm in agreement re church.. organized religion is either propaganda or a social event. You want to lose your 'religion' get involved with church innerworkings and politics.
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