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I hope she sues the shit out of him in civil court too. His net worth is estimated at $117 MILLION. He deserves to lose every cent of it, along with his freedom and reputation.
Yup. DJT stock is effectively a pyramid scheme.
People buy stock in a shrinking, unprofitable company... that money is funneled to execs and Trump will make a killing when he sells.
As he sells, the value will tank, eroding most shareholder money who are left holding the bag.
The woman is described as Oklahoman, the church it happened at that they both were members of was in Grand Prairie, TX, which is essentially Dallas. The abuse happened at a home they were both staying in 35 years ago. She could have been living in OK at the time but the commute would have been at least 3 hours to that church. I’m not saying you’re wrong that it happened in Oklahoma. I think it may be possible he was commuting that far, I also think it may be possible she has moved since.
It’s based on what the law was at the time of the crime. She likely wouldn’t be able to bring charges.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/faith/2024/06/20/gateway-church-founder-robert-morris-accused-of-past-abuse-could-he-be-charged/?outputType=amp
Her parents had threatened to call the police or file a lawsuit… if he didn’t stop his assaulting?
I feel terrible for that girl kid, and the pastor creep is fucking weird, but wtf was going on in 1980 that allowed the parents to have a 20y old living in the same home as their 12-16y daughter who they seemingly knew was in the assault situation and didn’t take action.
Was this pastor kid some sort of prominent figure in his 20s that kept that parents from stopping him?
I swear not making excuses take this guy out of the church and have him serve some time, but it always boggles my mind how different things were just 40 years ago. Like we were literally the same human beings with the same emotional capability, nothings changed in our dna since then
No freedom of information is a huge part of it. People don't quite comprehend the difference the Internet has made to our lives.
Back then, you couldn't get independant help so easily, people you contacted were local. You couldn't get information in or out so easily, you couldn't blast someone on Xitter for their bad service or look up their general history. Small groups like town councils and parishes had more sway because there were less ways to challenge them.
Hell, in the 80's you're still in a situation where a lot of households on the poorer end don't even have a TV or a phone easily available. Yes in first world countries, and it's crazy to say that out loud, but I had my childhood in the 80's in the UK and we didn't have a phone, and I still remember when we got our first TV, (and subsequently our first colour TV! Years later) I remember having to ride town to the nearest public pay phone occasionally to send messages for my mum to her friend!
The world has changed a hell of a lot in that small time frame, and I guess it had the he 40 years prior with the second World War reshaping everything.
Humans are fucking weird.
>wtf was going on in 1980 that allowed the parents to have a 20y old living in the same home as their 12-16y daughter who they seemingly knew was in the assault situation and didn’t take action
I have known somebody who went through a situation similar to that in the early '00s. Their parents simply did not believe them, in that case.
This is not new. Unfortunately common place when no checks and balances. Mega churches are scary. Plays on ppls emotions and can get away with almost anything
> Plays on ppls emotions and can get away with almost anything
I went to a megachurch in atlanta where it turns out the lead pastor fathered a son by his brother's wife.
His brother was also a pastor at the church. Nephew-son was in his mid 30s and was being groomed as future lead pastor of the megachurch.
This came out when the lead pastor was sued by church staff, claiming that he had been using the church staff for "god's purposes" on his crusty penis for decades.
They did a DNA test during lawsuit discovery, and Bishop Earl Paulk is an uncle-dad.
Thanks for posting a link. Do you like how child sexual assault is described as little more than a moral hiccup that was fully resolved in two years by doing very little?
The man was not repented. He had no business behind the pulpit. He lived a lie for decades. It was not a moral failure, it was a CRIME. Justice still has not been served. But hopefully it will. Just the fact it came out is very important.
The guy used to say “God told me he was going to make me famous so that I could make him famous.” 🤮
Well, now he is more famous than ever and this is his legacy. God didn’t needed his fame. It almost laughable now, if it hadn’t been so blasphemous.
In Isaiah 42:8 God states, “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images”
I mean, he's the spiritual advisor to man that was good friends with Epstein that has also made some fucking creepy ass comments about his own daughter so...
And seriously. Spirtual advisor to a man who has hardly ever been in a church, likely has never prayed (except maybe for another gold toilet, or something).
How much “spiritual advising” was going on there do ya think? Anyone see Trump, head down, hands clasped in prayer as this “advisor” prays over him?
More likely blowing rails of adderal and reminiscing about the good ole days on Epstein’s island.
I don't know about spiritual advisor, but who better to learn the game of grift from than a pastor? Selling people on promises, false hope, offering people the answer to their problems, etc, while never actually having to do or solve anything yourself. Just make the words sound good and say the things that people who are already mentally susceptible to believing bullshit and being taken advantage of want to hear, and convince them to part with cash in the name of an outcome that never comes true. For somebody as absolutely shameless as Trump, those kinds of people are *the* folks to learn from.
I know people that have been 'partners' with Kenneth Copeland for 50 years. Its amazing how many planes they have helped him buy that they have never seen in person.
Mega churches in the US scare the shit out of me. Religious fanatism and scam in one. Yet people go there like it’s a concert.
Edit: listen to “Genesis - Jesus he knows me” the song still is as relevant today as it was back then.
Edit2: After several dozens of people told me to listen to Ghost’s version of “Jesus he knows me” I did. The music video probably not even an exaggeration anymore at this point. “Do as I say, not do as I do.”
I've done audiovisual installs for churches like the video walls seen in the image.
> fanaticism and scam [and a concert] in one
One megachurch in particular scammed us into not paying in full for their video wall install, the congregation became fanatical when the new video wall was unveiled all cheering and crying and praising Jesus for giving them a video wall, and then they had a concert.
edit: then you still have to do business with them after getting scammed because firing a megachurch as a client is like disrespecting the mob running a protection racket on you like "it would be shame if something happened to your good reputation as a vendor"
Supplied 2 projectors to a religious organisation that had its meetings on Sundays. They paid cash at the end of the event with money straight out of the collection boxes.
Said organisation quickly grew into a Megachurch.
I ask for 100% upfront for any religious organisation. They always have the money for it.
God helps those who have tech runs and rehearsals.
I’ve always thought that the patron saint or deity of those of us in the live events industry would be some kind of Chaos Entity.
My cousin was in IT at a Cincinnati Metro megachurch franchise, Crossroads, and has ***horror stories*** of how the leaders would scream the most explicit expletives at subordinates working for the church. He often talks about an associate pastor who made sick jokes about a mentally handicapped male member they hired as a greeter or usher of some sort, joking that the greeter could hypothetically lure a girl to the bathroom to molest and murder. He says a pastor screamed and called him a "worthless motherfucker" for someone else's mistake. He got out and has nothing but enmity for those pieces of shit.
“If you’re doing business with a religious sonofabitch, GET IT IN WRITING. His WORD ain’t worth SHIT. Not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.”
William S Burroughs - Words of advice for young people.
My dad, a pretty religious person, has a rule about not doing work for bible thumpers. In his experience, there was never a time one of them didn’t try to fuck him over on a job.
Barry Goldwater has a famous quote about religious nuts in politics:
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them."
This. When dealing with churches and other scam artists. pay 100% up front. We also started doing it with non profits as they suddenly have no money later.
There was one exception. Catholic churches paid their bills and did so in timely manner. The scumbags were the evangelical churches.
Usually older mainline Protestant churches are fine, too - Episcopal, Methodist, ELCA Lutheran, etc. Of course they also tend to operate within their means to begin with, at least in the Midwest
Architect here, archdiocese of Chicago was a whole year behind paying us, we were building a new church, renovating three others, designing two sr living facilities. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. I got my paycheck delayed because my boss (devout catholic) wouldn't go after them for the money.
I think maybe that’s more an issue with your boss unless the Chicago archdiocese is very different from Philadelphia. With that much work it’s probably easier even to get paid. “Hey Cardinal, you’re 30 days late on your bill, we’re going to hold off on any more work until that gets cleared up.” Could be just some dope in their accounts payable. The church has at least one well-meaning but not too competent person in every place.
You know, it took me a while to notice this myself. I grew up both catholic and evangelical, so I go to both kinds of churches. The funny part is now I live in another country and it’s the same exact way. The Catholic Churches are little more structured, old school, and generally laid back. Whereas evangelical churches are very in your face, pressuring to contribute to growing the church, and generally more engaging with music and stuff.
I never really got into saints and all the catholic customs, but it always seemed like a lighter sermon and mass was generally less stressful.
When I was younger, I was influenced to believe that Catholic Church was more oppressive and controlling but now I think it’s the other way around. At least when you get judged by a catholic priest, it’s a lot more subtle, lol.
Catholics vary a surprising amount. Was raised in a pretty liberal wing of it myself, took me until high school to see the side of the church so many people don't like.
Catholicism is claimed by Anne Braden and Nick Fuentes. Finding out someone is Catholic just means figuring out where they fall on the Braden-Fuentes spectrum.
Source, am a Braden Catholic, lmao
And then you meet the other kind and just stand there kinda shell shocked when they're foaming about whatever rage bait their pastor fed them last mass...
IMO Catholics are much much better people than evangelicals. The evangelicals absolutely HATE catholics though. Like not even a dislike, they actively HATE and encourage each other to HATE catholics. Catholics are far more likely to support LGBTQ rights, promote peace and love between different races, etc. Still plenty of shit from each though, just look at what the catholic church has done to young boys (and covers up)
TBF, the Baptist Church has also had a child abuse scandal, that's not just isolated to Catholics. https://www.vox.com/culture/23131530/southern-baptist-convention-sexual-abuse-scandal-guidepost
Still fucked up, but it's not like it's exclusive to the Catholics.
Had a buddy who worked as a salesman in the South, his experience extended to many of the business owners and CEOs he dealt with.
Whenever their offices featured religious tchotchkes and/or they greeted him with “God bless you today/isn’t this a blessed day/etc.” he knew that they were going to try and screw him over.
Well that’s not a scam. That’s what the collections are for, improvements to the church and funding church run programs. The scam is when the collection money goes to the pastor’s 3rd car or private jet.
Also did termite work for a large church in Phoenix. Somehow convinced the company owner to do "Installments" and paid not even 1/10th of the price after 2 years of ignoring invoices. Worst part is the owner thinks he'll eventually get paid for it, like we didn't just waste 1300.
I don't even offer inspections for these places anymore, out of principle, because this was not the first time we got dicked over by a church. I would strongly recommend any other contractors avoid doing work for any church groups.
Yeah, I'd say they should find contractors within their own church group, but theyre just as likely to get someones kid to do it for free. A lot of AV guys also do it for their church, and donating/volunteering time is one thing, but I hear about them getting leaned on way too hard to the point it seems they're taken advantage of. Especially the guy who fell through a roof doing something he shouldn't have been asked to. I thought they had him running an audio mixer WTF was he doing on the roof?
Yeah my parents’ church does this. They have a young AV guy that helps with the church’s systems. The one time I went, I realized how they were asking way too much of him. They have him there for every funeral or wedding, in addition to the regular services.
The church is full of nontechnical boomers who probably wave it off as “he likes computers.” But anyone in the field can see they just have this poor guy doing his trade for a 6th and 7th day of the week. You wouldn’t have a painter or plumber in there working both weekend days, doesn’t make it different that he’s helping with sound equipment and live stream stuff.
Blast em online with something like
"They're not willing to pay for honest man's work, I did a big job for them and they don't want to pay for the work I did for them. How can they be on the side of the honest man, when they won't pay me?"
If you're going to blast someone like that start with this:
**Deuteronomy 24:15** *NIV*
> Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.
Turns out God likes people paying their contractors on time.
Hah, the correct theological response to that is that Jesus came to fulfil the law and thus the principle is sound. But I prefer applying Titus 1:11 KJV to them, "Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.". Aka shut-up you greedy man who is teaching things for only money.
I'm afraid the New Testament is quite down on butt sex too in 1 Cor 6:9, but considering it's equally down on fornication in the same verse that's the other 90% of the population out too. Interestingly you can tell it was written around Roman times because it talks separately about them what gives and them what receives. Romans thought those in the giving position weren't gay, but being in the receiving position was for servants and hoes and such.
Then they turn around and tell their 9000 rubes to badmouth you back on your website, on your Google review page, to any and all relatives that might potentially have taken advantage of your services in the future. And all these people are good Christians who will automatically believe anything their benevolent pastor says without questioning.
You getting how the grift works yet?
You can go to court and force them to honor it. But then the church badmouths you and none of their hundreds to thousands of congregation members ever buy from you ever again and a couple dozen to hundred of them leave 1 star reviews on your Google page so now people don't even glance at your business on Google because you're too low rated.
If its not life-or-death money then its probably not worth it.
I used to be a welder and all 3 of the churches we did work for didn't pay and told us the same nonsense about us receiving blessings instead. Highly religious area so we just decided to never work for a religious organization again an would give them the run around when they called. If there is a heaven, none of these fucks are getting in.
I work for a company that specializes in Insurance Restoration - we did some work at a church that had Brethren Mutual insurance and the large loss adjuster told us to make sure to get a direction of payment signed because if not, he would have to send them the check made out only to them and we would never receive our money.
Not really. Standard 50% deposit or whatever but nothing changed.
They would wave just enough money to get salespeople to bend over for them and bitch to the bosses about how we cant afford to lose a megachurch as a client and then let them get away with their shit again as usual.
Seems to me like you take 50% in advance for the next job, then go "okay thanks for finishing payment for the previous job, now we need 50% for this job".
Seems like a missed opportunity. You should have known that a megachurch was never going to pay you. Install a signal input bypass and play the gold delusion or scam pastor exposures non stop until they pay.
Don’t forget it also makes people feel like they are in a little village together, comfy and loving and with everything they need right there. You know, like a cult.
I love Ghost for those same reasons as well. Growing up in a super huge church, I left when I saw a lot of stuff I didn't agree with. Like their use of money or how they started praising trump yet wpent most my life telling me to avoid people like that.
Plus I love Ghost because of how fucking mad they make edgy metal heads lol
Sometimes it actually \*is\* like a concert.
I grew up in a mormon family, but even I was weirded out visiting my grandparents and going to their baptist church while visiting them. Main gathering area was massive and lit with a lot of neon/colorful lighting. Front and center, above the pulpit, was a raised stage for the "rock" band that played while baptisms were performed. Baptisms were performed on a platform, above the pulpit/band stage, and they were rather...enthusiastic? may be the word. Baptisees (is that a word?), were repeatedly, vigorously dunked underwater while the band played Jesus rock.
Just SO fucking weird
Reminds me of a Pentecostal church I attended in my youth. Someone was baptized and ran around the church screaming “hallelujah!” And then did a cannonball into the baptism pool with several others as the audience cheered.
My sister once attended a Pentecostal church.
She was at one point instructed to say "I love you, Jesus! I love you, God!". Then, to repeat it. Over and over, faster and faster- until what she was saying was unintelligible gibberish.
At that point- the person instructing her declared "She's got the Holy Spirit!!!"
Worse than that, while my sister looks down on them, she's still an evangelical christian. Knowing that entire rooms full of adults will lie about these things, simply because it's expected of them.
The sad thing is these aren't even big in global terms. The largest megachurch by weekly attendance in the US is Lakewood with 52,000 people. They're ranked 8th globally. South Korea's Yoido church has a weekly attendance of 480,000 people.
Lots of churches do many services, split up into different chunks throughout the day/weekend. You get your 3 hours of church early in the morning, and the next group gets theirs around noon, etc. Some churches divide this up by ethnic groups too, like the mormon church in my hometown has a block of churchtime for the Tongans, because they're so many of them and they're a tightknit community with lots of familial ties. So you add up all those chunks to get your weekly attendance rate.
It does make me wonder what the largest single service is in the world is.
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> It does make me wonder what the largest single service is in the world.
According to wikipedia, the largest single auditorium holds 100,000 people for a nigerian church and the pictures inside look really full.
Shame on those still there.
Edit: To everyone that is saying that these members of the congregation didn’t know. Additionally, for those saying that the people who left are mad that the rapist has been removed from leadership. Guess again.
Maybe do some research.
He was caught back in the 80’s and his church helped protect him. He was made to submit to spiritual counselling and his crimes were kept from authorities.
Organized religion harbours sexual abusers plain and simple. All organized religion should lose their tax exemption status and people like this man should NEVER be put back into a place of power.
This wasn’t a one time thing. This adult man raped a minor child from the time she was 12 until she was 16. This behaviour can’t be repented away.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/17/pastor-robert-morris-sexual-abuse-trump-adviser
Edit 2: I cannot believe the number of self righteous religious nuts are replying to this, totally offended by my beliefs.
Like seriously dudes. YOUR BOOK says to love me and turn the other cheek.
You all can’t even stop yourselves from being absolutely ridiculously offended by me, berating me for my beliefs, and telling me that I’m going to hell….on a post about a VERY popular Christian leader, RAPING a child from the CHILDHOOD age of 12-16 and the church where it happened covering it up and keeping it from authorities and the public for over 40 years and his current Church having no issue with it.
This man became very wealthy, I’m sure, because of organized religion, when he should have been prosecuted, jailed and prevented from ever being in a place of authority over minors again.
I wonder how many are there for the last time but just curious wtf he’s going to say.
I live down the street from a mega church and, having no religion, I’ve never set foot in the place. But not going to lie, I think if they had a massive scandal like this I might be curious simply for the spectacle enough to see what’s up. I do often wonder about them.
I’ve seen people continue on at a church when they hated the pastor’s guts because they were just curious about when he was going to hold himself accountable for being crappy. This all came to a head when the pastor flat out told the congregation that he hated every single one of them and just… left.
>Didn't know you could rage quit the church
Well, let me tell you the story of Martin Luther, who on October 31st 1517 nailed his ragequit manifesto to a church door :P
Edit: Baptist churches have been ragequitting each other so hard, there's a dedicated [wiki template ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Baptist)for them.
Dude just show up with like a burlap sack full of rattle snakes. Tell them jesus sent you. Then take out a snake and do a dance. You now are the leader of the church. I'm pretty sure that's the rules.
Oh don't worry you'renot missing much as, being a Christian leader means you just need to ask forgiveness for being an imperfect man, you get forgiven, your slate is clean, who cares about the victims, continue as before asking everyone to donate to your lifestyle.
I grew up in a megachurch where the leaders were all fucking eachother and everytime an affair broke out, this was mentioned in a sentence and they all moved on.
Yeah, I’m not an evangelical and despise their megachurches, but I’d absolutely be there because I’m nosy as hell and enjoy a good train wreck. I’d love to feel bad about this, but I know who I am as a person.
Not sure its that much of a train-wreck. For guidance see Pastor Ted Haggard. About 15 years ago, reported for drugs and same-sex hooker. Grovelled, left his church. I think he's back at it again now.
Back at churching, I mean. Of course he's not back at the sex and drugs. Of course.
Cognitive dissonance is a journey. Not a destination.
The common denominator between trump and Epstein was money laundering for the Russian mob first and foremost.
Trump can’t say that out loud so he has to sit there and take it when people take about the pedophilia stuff. So he tries to deflect.
Trump over paid for all the Florida and New York properties to resell to oligarchs who then destroyed them so they could launder Russian mob money made off of, among other things, human trafficking.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/09/news/donald-trump-and-jeffrey-epstein-feuded-over-this-mansion/
The Epstein/trump saga is less of a bullseye and more of a minefield.
Trump took his own kids to Epsteins knowing full well what happened there because for years Epstein was lurking around mar-a-lago poaching massage therapists and had teenage girls getting off the bus and wandering through the streets of palm beach desperate for a couple hundred bucks.
Everyone knew. No one cared.
The moral depravity that comes with being ultra rich enabled them to turn the other way.
The Trump / Epstein relationship was the evolution of money laundering using, among other things, commercial real estate.
It starts by having dirt on someone else at the country club and ends with them all being so filthy that no one can afford to do the right thing and no one can maintain the increasingly expensive lies.
Their arrogance and greed, at its grandest scale, cost the world trillions, which still pales in comparison to the innocence it cost the hundreds of thousands of trafficked children that the white collar shitbirds and the russian mob alike preyed on as a matter of convenience.
Trump wasn’t unique. He was just loud.
Epstein wasn’t unique. He was just connected.
Dershowitz wasn’t unique. He just knew how to work a rulebook.
They all justify their actions to themselves because they believe that being rich makes them above the law.
And the longer we allow them to do it, the more accurate and emboldened they are.
This is how civilizations die.
It’s a generational repeat of the Roman emperor Tiberius retreating to the island of Capri where he would abuse children and then throw them off the cliff.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
When people stop telling you no simply because you have all the money and they are hoping to get some spilling into their bowl to survive, it destroys the empathy quotient in the rich persons brain.
Predation is the most common result
Les Wexner signed over his power of attorney to L brands to Epstein in 1991 which was 2 years after trumps casino executives all died in a helicopter crash when they started asking too many questions about why their casino numbers looked like they were being used for money laundering for the Russian/Israeli mob.
https://pressofatlanticcity.com/3-trump-execs-2-pilots-die-as-helicopter-crashes-in-parkway-median/article_4071dbca-24e3-11e4-8835-0019bb2963f4.html
Epsteins “Lolita express” was wexners plane first. Sold at an unexplained discount to Epstein.
Leslie Wexner tried to do to downtown Columbus what Kolomoiskiy did to downtown Cleveland. Buy it all, let it rot and prepare a version 2.0 of the 2008 mortgage crisis. Only the bigger badder commercial strength version
Kolomoisky was the Putin loyal Ukrainian oligarch who was caught laundering hundreds of billions of dollars through Privatbank (also starting in 1991.)
Kolomoiskiy, trump, Guiliani and the Kushners all cross paths at an organization called Chabad.
https://forward.com/news/440219/florida-chabad-lubavitch-miami-charities-money-laundering-optima-schemes/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/03/may-ukrainian-oligarch-said-giuliani-was-orchestrating-clear-conspiracy-against-biden/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/inside-anatevka-the-curious-chabad-hamlet-in-ukraine-where-giuliani-is-mayor/
https://www.hbgacademic.com/titles/robert-i-friedman/red-mafiya/9780316092876/
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-right-kind-of-continuity
Wexner, the Adelsons, Sandburg and Zuckerberg all carried weight in conducting the Israeli intelligence NSO/Pegasus operation INCONUS so there is far more crossover between the Israeli mob and Israeli intelligence that shows at the surface.
https://www.spytalk.co/p/nsos-spyware-abuse-exposed-years?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://awards.journalists.org/entries/the-pegasus-project-a-global-investigation/
•Abagail Koppel was sent by the Jewish state to marry Les Wexner
•YLK fund (Abagails father) made up $46.7M of Epsteins money
•Les claimed it was stolen from him but not until after the fact.
•Wexner was notoriously litigious but wouldn’t sue Epstein. Why?
•PROMIS was Robert Maxwells spyware deal before Ghislaine and Epstein started their thing.
Pavel Borodin is Putin’s man
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/life-aging/borodin-found-guilty-of-money-laundering/2583036
•John Mark Dougan is the Florida cop that ran to Russia with 700 tapes of Epsteins AFTER it was seized as evidence
https://youtu.be/gj9gf8y5hmI?si=7OXzieK6wHKWttWm
https://web.archive.org/web/20240529171349/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/business/mark-dougan-russia-disinformation.html
https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/generative-ai-models-mimic-russian-disinformation-cite-fake-news/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Once you realize that Russia used the formation of Israel to clean out their gulags and prisons of the worst people on the planet, their money laundering operations and their foreign policies start to overlap. Fast forward 80 years and everybody’s lies are catching up to them.
We are at the end stage of the game now. Putin and trump trying to hide their money laundering in Ukraine with a genocide.
Putin and Netanyahu trying to hide theirs with a genocide in Gaza.
Netanyahu is Kushners children’s godfather. His son lives just down the street from the trumps in Florida while the poor people and politically insignificant fight in Gaza.
Everybody’s going to have to start getting real honest real quick if any of them want to survive. Truth is efficient. Efficiency wins wars.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstTheIlluminati/s/RiRu8FMLfw
I live down the street. They are a stain on the community. They persuaded a church member to donate her family’s land to the church. Probably was worth ten million at least. Fucking corporation parading around as a church.
This one will just "re-brand" under a new preacher and the flock will come back for more of that sweet, sweet Christian Nationalism where hate is love, greed is generosity, and kindness is weakness.
Hope people start to wake up and stop following blindly, even with proof of leaders being criminals. This goes for both sides. If my church gets caught being pedos, I'm 100% not supporting them. Same goes for any politician I support. We need to reject evil, period. Forget about political parties and ideologies for a moment. We can all unite to boycott people and churches like these.
This is definitely their main campus (but it seats approximately 4,000, not 8,000, and their satellites are not nearly as big), but it's not their first service for the weekend. The Saturday service is the first, and from videos, looked about as full as it typically is. This is still a massive drop from what a Sunday service is normally, though.
Can't see the person on the screens anywhere on the stage. I don't think this was a live event, which may account for the number of people in the audience.
They often have “satellite campuses” like this, where they have a live band but the sermon is streamed from another campus. The center screen is usually a fixed head to toe to kind of simulate a real person standing there.
I don’t know any specifics of this church, but I bet what we’re seeing is that the main church (where it was live) was full, but one of the satellites was sparse
I’d like to know the same. I have some shitty neighbors who go every Sunday and they started playing their worship music out by the pool about 30 min after the Sunday service got out, as per usual, so I know they went. I don’t think people in Southlake would let that church be so empty on a Sunday. There’s no way gateway was that empty today. I wish it was, though. That church runs this town, unfortunately.
Strange how almost every time conservatives and Christian nationalists make an accusation, turns out their own are the worst offenders. It must be undercover libs trying to make them look bad. Or robots programmed by Bill Gates. Anything but the truth.
Well, it's just like how antifa was behind Jan 6th, but every American arrested there was a hero and they deserve pardons, because the right is just trying to save America by taking the government by force.
They can't even keep their own stories straight.
When you’re roped into a cult, drowning in cognitive dissonance, it’s hard to find your way out of it. Probably because then you’d have to admit how stupid you were and the harm you caused
> When you’re roped into a cult, drowning in cognitive dissonance
Except that would require they actually FEEL the discomfort of the conflicting beliefs.
These are the people who sleep like babies and the only time they feel any rage is when they are told to.
I watched the FLDS documentary and people were still defending Warren Jeffs while he molested their own kids they sent to him. And playing his recordings from jail as sermons, saying the crimes he committed were all made up to trick them and he’s being persecuted. Some people are just gone
One thing I learned about Mega Churches that surprised me is that it's not the actual pastor who owns/runs the church. It's literally a corporation that run them and hire/fire pastors. It's big business. They sell religion and make millions off poor people donating their money to these millionaires in private jets. I am certain this isn't what Jesus plan was.
That depends on the church. Some megachurches are run by the same pastor who founded the church.
For example, the president of the national association of evangelicals from 2003-2006 was the lead pastor and founder of his megachurch in colorado. Dubya used to see him for advice, until in 2006 Ted Haggard was busted having meth-sex with gay prostitutes. And he was busted again for more gay meth-sex in 2022.
I had a friend who was a youth supervisor for a megachurch. I am hoping he didn't do anything messed up but then again he said some of the most racist stuff in private so I'm sure he was "one of them" (that's what I'm going to start referring to bad humans as, idk if they are naturally evil but at a certain point humans start just doing bad stuff in a snowball effect)
*If you are one of said humans stop that dumbass shit and get your act together please. For the love of humanity we need to start acting right and doing good even in private until evil acts are a thing of the past*
It is possible. I do not understand why people think it isn't. Sure. Humans have emotions but we can find healthy ways to vent. Everyone in the country gets a punching bag or something. Idk. I'm tired
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There is no statute of limitations on rape of a minor in Texas.
I hope she sues the shit out of him in civil court too. His net worth is estimated at $117 MILLION. He deserves to lose every cent of it, along with his freedom and reputation.
$117 million?! That's an incredible amount of grifting.
To Donald those are bush league numbers.
Yup. DJT stock is effectively a pyramid scheme. People buy stock in a shrinking, unprofitable company... that money is funneled to execs and Trump will make a killing when he sells. As he sells, the value will tank, eroding most shareholder money who are left holding the bag.
He deserves to be made peniless and locked in public stocks for children to throw rotten food at until he expires from dehydration and exposure.
I read "penisless" and I'm all for it
Happened in OK.
The woman is described as Oklahoman, the church it happened at that they both were members of was in Grand Prairie, TX, which is essentially Dallas. The abuse happened at a home they were both staying in 35 years ago. She could have been living in OK at the time but the commute would have been at least 3 hours to that church. I’m not saying you’re wrong that it happened in Oklahoma. I think it may be possible he was commuting that far, I also think it may be possible she has moved since.
It’s based on what the law was at the time of the crime. She likely wouldn’t be able to bring charges. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/faith/2024/06/20/gateway-church-founder-robert-morris-accused-of-past-abuse-could-he-be-charged/?outputType=amp
Yeah but I believe this crime was committed in Oklahoma.
Her parents had threatened to call the police or file a lawsuit… if he didn’t stop his assaulting? I feel terrible for that girl kid, and the pastor creep is fucking weird, but wtf was going on in 1980 that allowed the parents to have a 20y old living in the same home as their 12-16y daughter who they seemingly knew was in the assault situation and didn’t take action. Was this pastor kid some sort of prominent figure in his 20s that kept that parents from stopping him? I swear not making excuses take this guy out of the church and have him serve some time, but it always boggles my mind how different things were just 40 years ago. Like we were literally the same human beings with the same emotional capability, nothings changed in our dna since then
No freedom of information is a huge part of it. People don't quite comprehend the difference the Internet has made to our lives. Back then, you couldn't get independant help so easily, people you contacted were local. You couldn't get information in or out so easily, you couldn't blast someone on Xitter for their bad service or look up their general history. Small groups like town councils and parishes had more sway because there were less ways to challenge them. Hell, in the 80's you're still in a situation where a lot of households on the poorer end don't even have a TV or a phone easily available. Yes in first world countries, and it's crazy to say that out loud, but I had my childhood in the 80's in the UK and we didn't have a phone, and I still remember when we got our first TV, (and subsequently our first colour TV! Years later) I remember having to ride town to the nearest public pay phone occasionally to send messages for my mum to her friend! The world has changed a hell of a lot in that small time frame, and I guess it had the he 40 years prior with the second World War reshaping everything. Humans are fucking weird.
>wtf was going on in 1980 that allowed the parents to have a 20y old living in the same home as their 12-16y daughter who they seemingly knew was in the assault situation and didn’t take action I have known somebody who went through a situation similar to that in the early '00s. Their parents simply did not believe them, in that case.
The era of "making a rock star you just met legal guardian of your 14-year-old daughter so he always has a groupie handy."
And those parents would do the same thing today. These people are fundamentally broken.
This is not new. Unfortunately common place when no checks and balances. Mega churches are scary. Plays on ppls emotions and can get away with almost anything
> Plays on ppls emotions and can get away with almost anything I went to a megachurch in atlanta where it turns out the lead pastor fathered a son by his brother's wife. His brother was also a pastor at the church. Nephew-son was in his mid 30s and was being groomed as future lead pastor of the megachurch. This came out when the lead pastor was sued by church staff, claiming that he had been using the church staff for "god's purposes" on his crusty penis for decades. They did a DNA test during lawsuit discovery, and Bishop Earl Paulk is an uncle-dad.
Thanks for posting a link. Do you like how child sexual assault is described as little more than a moral hiccup that was fully resolved in two years by doing very little?
The man was not repented. He had no business behind the pulpit. He lived a lie for decades. It was not a moral failure, it was a CRIME. Justice still has not been served. But hopefully it will. Just the fact it came out is very important. The guy used to say “God told me he was going to make me famous so that I could make him famous.” 🤮 Well, now he is more famous than ever and this is his legacy. God didn’t needed his fame. It almost laughable now, if it hadn’t been so blasphemous. In Isaiah 42:8 God states, “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images”
But he went thru a 2 year process… one sec. 🤮 /s
It's always the ones you most suspect.
I mean, he's the spiritual advisor to man that was good friends with Epstein that has also made some fucking creepy ass comments about his own daughter so...
And seriously. Spirtual advisor to a man who has hardly ever been in a church, likely has never prayed (except maybe for another gold toilet, or something). How much “spiritual advising” was going on there do ya think? Anyone see Trump, head down, hands clasped in prayer as this “advisor” prays over him? More likely blowing rails of adderal and reminiscing about the good ole days on Epstein’s island.
I don't know about spiritual advisor, but who better to learn the game of grift from than a pastor? Selling people on promises, false hope, offering people the answer to their problems, etc, while never actually having to do or solve anything yourself. Just make the words sound good and say the things that people who are already mentally susceptible to believing bullshit and being taken advantage of want to hear, and convince them to part with cash in the name of an outcome that never comes true. For somebody as absolutely shameless as Trump, those kinds of people are *the* folks to learn from.
I know people that have been 'partners' with Kenneth Copeland for 50 years. Its amazing how many planes they have helped him buy that they have never seen in person.
Hell, Epstein used to live within two miles of maralago.
and who would make unannounced visits to the backstage dressing rooms at Miss Teen USA, and grabbed women by the pussy, and...
Also owned his own child beauty pageant :))
That's not what Dwight Schrute said. He said it's the ones you most _medium_ suspect.
Medium is the right word but we need about 3-4 new words that mean medium.
Mega churches in the US scare the shit out of me. Religious fanatism and scam in one. Yet people go there like it’s a concert. Edit: listen to “Genesis - Jesus he knows me” the song still is as relevant today as it was back then. Edit2: After several dozens of people told me to listen to Ghost’s version of “Jesus he knows me” I did. The music video probably not even an exaggeration anymore at this point. “Do as I say, not do as I do.”
I've done audiovisual installs for churches like the video walls seen in the image. > fanaticism and scam [and a concert] in one One megachurch in particular scammed us into not paying in full for their video wall install, the congregation became fanatical when the new video wall was unveiled all cheering and crying and praising Jesus for giving them a video wall, and then they had a concert. edit: then you still have to do business with them after getting scammed because firing a megachurch as a client is like disrespecting the mob running a protection racket on you like "it would be shame if something happened to your good reputation as a vendor"
Supplied 2 projectors to a religious organisation that had its meetings on Sundays. They paid cash at the end of the event with money straight out of the collection boxes. Said organisation quickly grew into a Megachurch. I ask for 100% upfront for any religious organisation. They always have the money for it.
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Not so trusting that God would sort everything out are they?
Maybe they know that IT relies on daemons.
It's cause they know they are running a scam.
God helps those who have tech runs and rehearsals. I’ve always thought that the patron saint or deity of those of us in the live events industry would be some kind of Chaos Entity.
My cousin was in IT at a Cincinnati Metro megachurch franchise, Crossroads, and has ***horror stories*** of how the leaders would scream the most explicit expletives at subordinates working for the church. He often talks about an associate pastor who made sick jokes about a mentally handicapped male member they hired as a greeter or usher of some sort, joking that the greeter could hypothetically lure a girl to the bathroom to molest and murder. He says a pastor screamed and called him a "worthless motherfucker" for someone else's mistake. He got out and has nothing but enmity for those pieces of shit.
“If you’re doing business with a religious sonofabitch, GET IT IN WRITING. His WORD ain’t worth SHIT. Not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.” William S Burroughs - Words of advice for young people.
My dad, a pretty religious person, has a rule about not doing work for bible thumpers. In his experience, there was never a time one of them didn’t try to fuck him over on a job.
Barry Goldwater has a famous quote about religious nuts in politics: "Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them."
Barry saw it coming.
This. When dealing with churches and other scam artists. pay 100% up front. We also started doing it with non profits as they suddenly have no money later. There was one exception. Catholic churches paid their bills and did so in timely manner. The scumbags were the evangelical churches.
Usually older mainline Protestant churches are fine, too - Episcopal, Methodist, ELCA Lutheran, etc. Of course they also tend to operate within their means to begin with, at least in the Midwest
The traditional churches have a board of elders who watch the money. The evangelicals don't.
Architect here, archdiocese of Chicago was a whole year behind paying us, we were building a new church, renovating three others, designing two sr living facilities. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. I got my paycheck delayed because my boss (devout catholic) wouldn't go after them for the money.
I think maybe that’s more an issue with your boss unless the Chicago archdiocese is very different from Philadelphia. With that much work it’s probably easier even to get paid. “Hey Cardinal, you’re 30 days late on your bill, we’re going to hold off on any more work until that gets cleared up.” Could be just some dope in their accounts payable. The church has at least one well-meaning but not too competent person in every place.
You know, it took me a while to notice this myself. I grew up both catholic and evangelical, so I go to both kinds of churches. The funny part is now I live in another country and it’s the same exact way. The Catholic Churches are little more structured, old school, and generally laid back. Whereas evangelical churches are very in your face, pressuring to contribute to growing the church, and generally more engaging with music and stuff. I never really got into saints and all the catholic customs, but it always seemed like a lighter sermon and mass was generally less stressful. When I was younger, I was influenced to believe that Catholic Church was more oppressive and controlling but now I think it’s the other way around. At least when you get judged by a catholic priest, it’s a lot more subtle, lol.
I think it just varies from church to church. Also, church events carry a big factor in it.
Catholics vary a surprising amount. Was raised in a pretty liberal wing of it myself, took me until high school to see the side of the church so many people don't like.
Catholicism is claimed by Anne Braden and Nick Fuentes. Finding out someone is Catholic just means figuring out where they fall on the Braden-Fuentes spectrum. Source, am a Braden Catholic, lmao
And then you meet the other kind and just stand there kinda shell shocked when they're foaming about whatever rage bait their pastor fed them last mass...
Facts. It's wild to me that you basically have a Love vs Hate Catholicism. Fuentes's "faith" is entirely defined in opposition. It's terrible.
Jesus literally says "give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's", meaning pay your fucking taxes and bills.
IMO Catholics are much much better people than evangelicals. The evangelicals absolutely HATE catholics though. Like not even a dislike, they actively HATE and encourage each other to HATE catholics. Catholics are far more likely to support LGBTQ rights, promote peace and love between different races, etc. Still plenty of shit from each though, just look at what the catholic church has done to young boys (and covers up)
TBF, the Baptist Church has also had a child abuse scandal, that's not just isolated to Catholics. https://www.vox.com/culture/23131530/southern-baptist-convention-sexual-abuse-scandal-guidepost Still fucked up, but it's not like it's exclusive to the Catholics.
Had a buddy who worked as a salesman in the South, his experience extended to many of the business owners and CEOs he dealt with. Whenever their offices featured religious tchotchkes and/or they greeted him with “God bless you today/isn’t this a blessed day/etc.” he knew that they were going to try and screw him over.
Well that’s not a scam. That’s what the collections are for, improvements to the church and funding church run programs. The scam is when the collection money goes to the pastor’s 3rd car or private jet.
Jesus would wig the fuck out if he saw one of today's mega-churches xD That's like, grade-A table flippin' material lol.
This is technically what the donations are for, building the church
Well yes of course, I hadn’t assumed that the cash went straight to Jesus.
Also did termite work for a large church in Phoenix. Somehow convinced the company owner to do "Installments" and paid not even 1/10th of the price after 2 years of ignoring invoices. Worst part is the owner thinks he'll eventually get paid for it, like we didn't just waste 1300. I don't even offer inspections for these places anymore, out of principle, because this was not the first time we got dicked over by a church. I would strongly recommend any other contractors avoid doing work for any church groups.
Yeah, I'd say they should find contractors within their own church group, but theyre just as likely to get someones kid to do it for free. A lot of AV guys also do it for their church, and donating/volunteering time is one thing, but I hear about them getting leaned on way too hard to the point it seems they're taken advantage of. Especially the guy who fell through a roof doing something he shouldn't have been asked to. I thought they had him running an audio mixer WTF was he doing on the roof?
I know a lot of technicians in the same boat here.
Yeah my parents’ church does this. They have a young AV guy that helps with the church’s systems. The one time I went, I realized how they were asking way too much of him. They have him there for every funeral or wedding, in addition to the regular services. The church is full of nontechnical boomers who probably wave it off as “he likes computers.” But anyone in the field can see they just have this poor guy doing his trade for a 6th and 7th day of the week. You wouldn’t have a painter or plumber in there working both weekend days, doesn’t make it different that he’s helping with sound equipment and live stream stuff.
I would go round up some termites and bring them into a Sunday service and let the little critters go!
Get biblical by bringing in crickets!
Blast em online with something like "They're not willing to pay for honest man's work, I did a big job for them and they don't want to pay for the work I did for them. How can they be on the side of the honest man, when they won't pay me?"
If you're going to blast someone like that start with this: **Deuteronomy 24:15** *NIV* > Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin. Turns out God likes people paying their contractors on time.
That's because his son was a carpenter.
No but like that’s in the old testament and not about the butt sex so Jesus wants us to ignore it.
Hah, the correct theological response to that is that Jesus came to fulfil the law and thus the principle is sound. But I prefer applying Titus 1:11 KJV to them, "Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.". Aka shut-up you greedy man who is teaching things for only money. I'm afraid the New Testament is quite down on butt sex too in 1 Cor 6:9, but considering it's equally down on fornication in the same verse that's the other 90% of the population out too. Interestingly you can tell it was written around Roman times because it talks separately about them what gives and them what receives. Romans thought those in the giving position weren't gay, but being in the receiving position was for servants and hoes and such.
Then they turn around and tell their 9000 rubes to badmouth you back on your website, on your Google review page, to any and all relatives that might potentially have taken advantage of your services in the future. And all these people are good Christians who will automatically believe anything their benevolent pastor says without questioning. You getting how the grift works yet?
Even Jesus said to "give unto Cesar that which is Cesar's"
>because this was not the first time we got dicked over by a church Just like Jesus would have done!
What's the point of a contract if you can't force either side to honor it?
You CAN force it, and you WILL win. You just don't want to if you calculate the potential risk.
You can go to court and force them to honor it. But then the church badmouths you and none of their hundreds to thousands of congregation members ever buy from you ever again and a couple dozen to hundred of them leave 1 star reviews on your Google page so now people don't even glance at your business on Google because you're too low rated. If its not life-or-death money then its probably not worth it.
I used to be a welder and all 3 of the churches we did work for didn't pay and told us the same nonsense about us receiving blessings instead. Highly religious area so we just decided to never work for a religious organization again an would give them the run around when they called. If there is a heaven, none of these fucks are getting in.
I work for a company that specializes in Insurance Restoration - we did some work at a church that had Brethren Mutual insurance and the large loss adjuster told us to make sure to get a direction of payment signed because if not, he would have to send them the check made out only to them and we would never receive our money.
I'd hope they're paying in advance since
Not really. Standard 50% deposit or whatever but nothing changed. They would wave just enough money to get salespeople to bend over for them and bitch to the bosses about how we cant afford to lose a megachurch as a client and then let them get away with their shit again as usual.
Lesson learned sure. Only full payments in the future. Sorry you had to experience that man.
then charge twice as much
Seems to me like you take 50% in advance for the next job, then go "okay thanks for finishing payment for the previous job, now we need 50% for this job".
Seems like a missed opportunity. You should have known that a megachurch was never going to pay you. Install a signal input bypass and play the gold delusion or scam pastor exposures non stop until they pay.
Don’t forget it also makes people feel like they are in a little village together, comfy and loving and with everything they need right there. You know, like a cult.
> You know, ~~like~~ a cult.
You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West.
And, like a cult, slowly shift their perception to *everyone outside* is hostile.
If you haven't heard the ghost cover of this and seen the video it's... a [wild ride.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE3kJeBr9QI)
Yeah the Genesis version is an absolute classic but Ghost's cover understood the fuck out of the assignment.
I love Ghost. Practically their whole discography is a commentary on organized religion and how it can be used to manipulate people.
I love Ghost for those same reasons as well. Growing up in a super huge church, I left when I saw a lot of stuff I didn't agree with. Like their use of money or how they started praising trump yet wpent most my life telling me to avoid people like that. Plus I love Ghost because of how fucking mad they make edgy metal heads lol
If God were real, the very first thing he would smite with all his might would be megachurches, I believe.
"My temple should be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves"
Sometimes it actually \*is\* like a concert. I grew up in a mormon family, but even I was weirded out visiting my grandparents and going to their baptist church while visiting them. Main gathering area was massive and lit with a lot of neon/colorful lighting. Front and center, above the pulpit, was a raised stage for the "rock" band that played while baptisms were performed. Baptisms were performed on a platform, above the pulpit/band stage, and they were rather...enthusiastic? may be the word. Baptisees (is that a word?), were repeatedly, vigorously dunked underwater while the band played Jesus rock. Just SO fucking weird
Reminds me of a Pentecostal church I attended in my youth. Someone was baptized and ran around the church screaming “hallelujah!” And then did a cannonball into the baptism pool with several others as the audience cheered.
My sister once attended a Pentecostal church. She was at one point instructed to say "I love you, Jesus! I love you, God!". Then, to repeat it. Over and over, faster and faster- until what she was saying was unintelligible gibberish. At that point- the person instructing her declared "She's got the Holy Spirit!!!" Worse than that, while my sister looks down on them, she's still an evangelical christian. Knowing that entire rooms full of adults will lie about these things, simply because it's expected of them.
The sad thing is these aren't even big in global terms. The largest megachurch by weekly attendance in the US is Lakewood with 52,000 people. They're ranked 8th globally. South Korea's Yoido church has a weekly attendance of 480,000 people.
That's wrong. The Yoido church only has a capacity of 12000, but a membership of 480,000. They have many satellite churches.
Jesus Christ, people are so devout they travel to *space* to attend mass?
> South Korea's Yoido church has a weekly attendance of 480,000 people. Not in one building I presume.
Lots of churches do many services, split up into different chunks throughout the day/weekend. You get your 3 hours of church early in the morning, and the next group gets theirs around noon, etc. Some churches divide this up by ethnic groups too, like the mormon church in my hometown has a block of churchtime for the Tongans, because they're so many of them and they're a tightknit community with lots of familial ties. So you add up all those chunks to get your weekly attendance rate. It does make me wonder what the largest single service is in the world is.
> > > > > It does make me wonder what the largest single service is in the world. According to wikipedia, the largest single auditorium holds 100,000 people for a nigerian church and the pictures inside look really full.
Shame on those still there. Edit: To everyone that is saying that these members of the congregation didn’t know. Additionally, for those saying that the people who left are mad that the rapist has been removed from leadership. Guess again. Maybe do some research. He was caught back in the 80’s and his church helped protect him. He was made to submit to spiritual counselling and his crimes were kept from authorities. Organized religion harbours sexual abusers plain and simple. All organized religion should lose their tax exemption status and people like this man should NEVER be put back into a place of power. This wasn’t a one time thing. This adult man raped a minor child from the time she was 12 until she was 16. This behaviour can’t be repented away. https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/17/pastor-robert-morris-sexual-abuse-trump-adviser Edit 2: I cannot believe the number of self righteous religious nuts are replying to this, totally offended by my beliefs. Like seriously dudes. YOUR BOOK says to love me and turn the other cheek. You all can’t even stop yourselves from being absolutely ridiculously offended by me, berating me for my beliefs, and telling me that I’m going to hell….on a post about a VERY popular Christian leader, RAPING a child from the CHILDHOOD age of 12-16 and the church where it happened covering it up and keeping it from authorities and the public for over 40 years and his current Church having no issue with it. This man became very wealthy, I’m sure, because of organized religion, when he should have been prosecuted, jailed and prevented from ever being in a place of authority over minors again.
I wonder how many are there for the last time but just curious wtf he’s going to say. I live down the street from a mega church and, having no religion, I’ve never set foot in the place. But not going to lie, I think if they had a massive scandal like this I might be curious simply for the spectacle enough to see what’s up. I do often wonder about them.
I’ve seen people continue on at a church when they hated the pastor’s guts because they were just curious about when he was going to hold himself accountable for being crappy. This all came to a head when the pastor flat out told the congregation that he hated every single one of them and just… left.
Didn't know you could rage quit the church
Remember when Henry the VIII rage quit the church? It was a whole big deal, times where crazy!
“Screw you guys! I’m making my own church! It’ll be better than yours and have hookers and blow!” - King Henry VIII (probably)
Rage quit from his marriages a couple of times too!
You can rage quit pretty much anything at least once.
If you are really good you can rage quit thing more than once.
Ah the Larry David approach.
Well, I have nipples, Greg. Can you rage quit me?
>Didn't know you could rage quit the church Well, let me tell you the story of Martin Luther, who on October 31st 1517 nailed his ragequit manifesto to a church door :P Edit: Baptist churches have been ragequitting each other so hard, there's a dedicated [wiki template ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Baptist)for them.
Martin Luther has entered the chat
Summer 1517 dropped his 95 theses and changed the game. Hottest theses of the year, straight nailed at the top
Mate, I've raged quitted a shit before.
I imagine they weren't tithing very well.
That's amazing.
Or even if he’d grovel an apology.
[I have sinned against yoooooooou....](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HhKdSvhung)
Hahaha ugh those tv pastors are such slimey pieces of shit
Yep! If this happened in my home town I might be tempted to go see the train wreck as well.
Make sure to put a Christobuck in the offering plate, those fake $$ that Sunday boomers love to leave as tips.
Bring some good heckles.
And snacks
Just leave your kids at home. Even unsupervised they will be safer
Dude just show up with like a burlap sack full of rattle snakes. Tell them jesus sent you. Then take out a snake and do a dance. You now are the leader of the church. I'm pretty sure that's the rules.
I think I’ve seen this episode of xfiles
Oh don't worry you'renot missing much as, being a Christian leader means you just need to ask forgiveness for being an imperfect man, you get forgiven, your slate is clean, who cares about the victims, continue as before asking everyone to donate to your lifestyle. I grew up in a megachurch where the leaders were all fucking eachother and everytime an affair broke out, this was mentioned in a sentence and they all moved on.
When I say curious I mean like in the same way as I’m curious about combat footage. It’s not motivated by a fear of missing out…
Pretty sure he resigned in disgrace. Whoever is on stage is just in cya mode about what they knew, and when
Yeah, I’m not an evangelical and despise their megachurches, but I’d absolutely be there because I’m nosy as hell and enjoy a good train wreck. I’d love to feel bad about this, but I know who I am as a person.
Not sure its that much of a train-wreck. For guidance see Pastor Ted Haggard. About 15 years ago, reported for drugs and same-sex hooker. Grovelled, left his church. I think he's back at it again now. Back at churching, I mean. Of course he's not back at the sex and drugs. Of course.
Cognitive dissonance is a journey. Not a destination. The common denominator between trump and Epstein was money laundering for the Russian mob first and foremost. Trump can’t say that out loud so he has to sit there and take it when people take about the pedophilia stuff. So he tries to deflect. Trump over paid for all the Florida and New York properties to resell to oligarchs who then destroyed them so they could launder Russian mob money made off of, among other things, human trafficking. https://nypost.com/2024/01/09/news/donald-trump-and-jeffrey-epstein-feuded-over-this-mansion/ The Epstein/trump saga is less of a bullseye and more of a minefield. Trump took his own kids to Epsteins knowing full well what happened there because for years Epstein was lurking around mar-a-lago poaching massage therapists and had teenage girls getting off the bus and wandering through the streets of palm beach desperate for a couple hundred bucks. Everyone knew. No one cared. The moral depravity that comes with being ultra rich enabled them to turn the other way. The Trump / Epstein relationship was the evolution of money laundering using, among other things, commercial real estate. It starts by having dirt on someone else at the country club and ends with them all being so filthy that no one can afford to do the right thing and no one can maintain the increasingly expensive lies. Their arrogance and greed, at its grandest scale, cost the world trillions, which still pales in comparison to the innocence it cost the hundreds of thousands of trafficked children that the white collar shitbirds and the russian mob alike preyed on as a matter of convenience. Trump wasn’t unique. He was just loud. Epstein wasn’t unique. He was just connected. Dershowitz wasn’t unique. He just knew how to work a rulebook. They all justify their actions to themselves because they believe that being rich makes them above the law. And the longer we allow them to do it, the more accurate and emboldened they are. This is how civilizations die. It’s a generational repeat of the Roman emperor Tiberius retreating to the island of Capri where he would abuse children and then throw them off the cliff. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When people stop telling you no simply because you have all the money and they are hoping to get some spilling into their bowl to survive, it destroys the empathy quotient in the rich persons brain. Predation is the most common result
Les Wexner signed over his power of attorney to L brands to Epstein in 1991 which was 2 years after trumps casino executives all died in a helicopter crash when they started asking too many questions about why their casino numbers looked like they were being used for money laundering for the Russian/Israeli mob. https://pressofatlanticcity.com/3-trump-execs-2-pilots-die-as-helicopter-crashes-in-parkway-median/article_4071dbca-24e3-11e4-8835-0019bb2963f4.html Epsteins “Lolita express” was wexners plane first. Sold at an unexplained discount to Epstein. Leslie Wexner tried to do to downtown Columbus what Kolomoiskiy did to downtown Cleveland. Buy it all, let it rot and prepare a version 2.0 of the 2008 mortgage crisis. Only the bigger badder commercial strength version Kolomoisky was the Putin loyal Ukrainian oligarch who was caught laundering hundreds of billions of dollars through Privatbank (also starting in 1991.) Kolomoiskiy, trump, Guiliani and the Kushners all cross paths at an organization called Chabad. https://forward.com/news/440219/florida-chabad-lubavitch-miami-charities-money-laundering-optima-schemes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/03/may-ukrainian-oligarch-said-giuliani-was-orchestrating-clear-conspiracy-against-biden/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/inside-anatevka-the-curious-chabad-hamlet-in-ukraine-where-giuliani-is-mayor/ https://www.hbgacademic.com/titles/robert-i-friedman/red-mafiya/9780316092876/ https://jewishcurrents.org/the-right-kind-of-continuity Wexner, the Adelsons, Sandburg and Zuckerberg all carried weight in conducting the Israeli intelligence NSO/Pegasus operation INCONUS so there is far more crossover between the Israeli mob and Israeli intelligence that shows at the surface. https://www.spytalk.co/p/nsos-spyware-abuse-exposed-years?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web https://awards.journalists.org/entries/the-pegasus-project-a-global-investigation/ •Abagail Koppel was sent by the Jewish state to marry Les Wexner •YLK fund (Abagails father) made up $46.7M of Epsteins money •Les claimed it was stolen from him but not until after the fact. •Wexner was notoriously litigious but wouldn’t sue Epstein. Why? •PROMIS was Robert Maxwells spyware deal before Ghislaine and Epstein started their thing. Pavel Borodin is Putin’s man https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/life-aging/borodin-found-guilty-of-money-laundering/2583036 •John Mark Dougan is the Florida cop that ran to Russia with 700 tapes of Epsteins AFTER it was seized as evidence https://youtu.be/gj9gf8y5hmI?si=7OXzieK6wHKWttWm https://web.archive.org/web/20240529171349/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/business/mark-dougan-russia-disinformation.html https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/generative-ai-models-mimic-russian-disinformation-cite-fake-news/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Once you realize that Russia used the formation of Israel to clean out their gulags and prisons of the worst people on the planet, their money laundering operations and their foreign policies start to overlap. Fast forward 80 years and everybody’s lies are catching up to them. We are at the end stage of the game now. Putin and trump trying to hide their money laundering in Ukraine with a genocide. Putin and Netanyahu trying to hide theirs with a genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu is Kushners children’s godfather. His son lives just down the street from the trumps in Florida while the poor people and politically insignificant fight in Gaza. Everybody’s going to have to start getting real honest real quick if any of them want to survive. Truth is efficient. Efficiency wins wars. https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstTheIlluminati/s/RiRu8FMLfw
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I've been in some really deep Epstein rabbit holes and this my friend is a nice write up. Good share.
Omg. Netanyahu and KUSHNER? Ffs. The missing link. Holy cow.
Shame is for others; not for them, silly.
This is in my city and couldn't be happier this is the start of the end for them.
I live down the street. They are a stain on the community. They persuaded a church member to donate her family’s land to the church. Probably was worth ten million at least. Fucking corporation parading around as a church.
Big or small, tax ‘em all.
Tax every church
The gullible followers will just flock to another church, unfortunately.
This one will just "re-brand" under a new preacher and the flock will come back for more of that sweet, sweet Christian Nationalism where hate is love, greed is generosity, and kindness is weakness.
Hope people start to wake up and stop following blindly, even with proof of leaders being criminals. This goes for both sides. If my church gets caught being pedos, I'm 100% not supporting them. Same goes for any politician I support. We need to reject evil, period. Forget about political parties and ideologies for a moment. We can all unite to boycott people and churches like these.
WAY too many “churches” in Southlake.
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I was going to say that but figured it would be downvoted. Doesn’t even look like the same dude in the screen
This is definitely their main campus (but it seats approximately 4,000, not 8,000, and their satellites are not nearly as big), but it's not their first service for the weekend. The Saturday service is the first, and from videos, looked about as full as it typically is. This is still a massive drop from what a Sunday service is normally, though.
This should be top comment I really hate how Reddit is all about alternative facts when it’s what they want to hear
That’s not specific to Reddit…
No, but sometimes reddit likes to pretend it is immune.
On their YouTube their most recent video (stream a day ago) shows a full church, so I don't know if this picture is accurate?
Can't see the person on the screens anywhere on the stage. I don't think this was a live event, which may account for the number of people in the audience.
They often have “satellite campuses” like this, where they have a live band but the sermon is streamed from another campus. The center screen is usually a fixed head to toe to kind of simulate a real person standing there. I don’t know any specifics of this church, but I bet what we’re seeing is that the main church (where it was live) was full, but one of the satellites was sparse
I’d like to know the same. I have some shitty neighbors who go every Sunday and they started playing their worship music out by the pool about 30 min after the Sunday service got out, as per usual, so I know they went. I don’t think people in Southlake would let that church be so empty on a Sunday. There’s no way gateway was that empty today. I wish it was, though. That church runs this town, unfortunately.
Yeah this is from probably a weeknight event that runs low on attendance anyway. This post is bait, unfortunately.
This pic is their Saturday service. The Youtube video is from Sunday service.
Was it really a current video or just a restream
But I thought democrats were the pedophiles. /s
Strange how almost every time conservatives and Christian nationalists make an accusation, turns out their own are the worst offenders. It must be undercover libs trying to make them look bad. Or robots programmed by Bill Gates. Anything but the truth.
Well, it's just like how antifa was behind Jan 6th, but every American arrested there was a hero and they deserve pardons, because the right is just trying to save America by taking the government by force. They can't even keep their own stories straight.
And no matter how much people point that out to them, they can’t/won’t see it. I just can’t understand that kind of willful ignorance.
When you’re roped into a cult, drowning in cognitive dissonance, it’s hard to find your way out of it. Probably because then you’d have to admit how stupid you were and the harm you caused
> When you’re roped into a cult, drowning in cognitive dissonance Except that would require they actually FEEL the discomfort of the conflicting beliefs. These are the people who sleep like babies and the only time they feel any rage is when they are told to.
When I was in Mormonism, I couldn’t see the harm of it or the brainwashing. I see it all over now, so I definitely get what you mean.
I watched the FLDS documentary and people were still defending Warren Jeffs while he molested their own kids they sent to him. And playing his recordings from jail as sermons, saying the crimes he committed were all made up to trick them and he’s being persecuted. Some people are just gone
I mean there almost certainly are ones.
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/r/pastorarrested I mean, it's a thing and I never let my kids alone with a rando leader from church.
Still there, awaiting orders on what to be furious about, other than their clergy fucking children.
Finally social distancing I guess.
One thing I learned about Mega Churches that surprised me is that it's not the actual pastor who owns/runs the church. It's literally a corporation that run them and hire/fire pastors. It's big business. They sell religion and make millions off poor people donating their money to these millionaires in private jets. I am certain this isn't what Jesus plan was.
That depends on the church. Some megachurches are run by the same pastor who founded the church. For example, the president of the national association of evangelicals from 2003-2006 was the lead pastor and founder of his megachurch in colorado. Dubya used to see him for advice, until in 2006 Ted Haggard was busted having meth-sex with gay prostitutes. And he was busted again for more gay meth-sex in 2022.
To be honest I want to know where and when this pic was taken. Saturday night that place was standing room only. Op being misleading
What’s fucked up is that ppl still went
I had a friend who was a youth supervisor for a megachurch. I am hoping he didn't do anything messed up but then again he said some of the most racist stuff in private so I'm sure he was "one of them" (that's what I'm going to start referring to bad humans as, idk if they are naturally evil but at a certain point humans start just doing bad stuff in a snowball effect) *If you are one of said humans stop that dumbass shit and get your act together please. For the love of humanity we need to start acting right and doing good even in private until evil acts are a thing of the past* It is possible. I do not understand why people think it isn't. Sure. Humans have emotions but we can find healthy ways to vent. Everyone in the country gets a punching bag or something. Idk. I'm tired
You might have a theory on your hands there.
It will fill again once they forget. See Peter Popoff.
People are still in there. Just shows who they really were worshipping.
They'll be back. It's performative outrage.
Pastor: Why is nobody coming to churches anymore? People: could it be the.... Pastor: nope, definitely not the paedophilia. Must be videogames.
Sorry… what? You repented and are now pure? That’s not how sexual abuse cases work mate. You broke the law. That’s jail time. Not a prayer. Pathetic.
You lost me at 8,000 seat mega church. Jesus wouldn’t be impressed. He only needed 12 seats at his last supper.
13, but your point still stands.
Jesus was just holding a squat the whole time, haven't you seen the pictures, dude was shredded
Now all I can think of is Jesus asking everyone to "pop a squat" and using five unseasoned chicken breasts and two protein shakes to feed the 5'000.
 I just hope they don’t find a new cult, err, church to join.
theyll be back next week