Petition Update

The Petition to get Pat Robertson to apologize has petered out at 429 signatures. That's about how many people read my blog on a daily basis, and I was hoping for a little synergy.

I can't delete it or close it, but I'm losing interest. I'll make one more update next week about it if we get any more signers.

Comments at the Petition

A fellow named Jim Miller left this comment at the petition:

It "might" happen; it "might not" happen. However, would the judgement of God be wrong and out His holy character if it did happen? Some wag said something to the effect: "If God does not judge America, He should apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah." Remember how after 9/11 the nation was so "religious" for a short while? We need a good "dose" of Daniel 9:3-19. The petition is great, but the prevention is better!

Jim: this petition is actually part of the prevention measures. This is not a question of whether God may ever use Pat Roberston as a prophet: it is about whether he ever has in the past, and the answer is plainly "no".

Thanks for asking.

Petition update

As of this morning, about 8:30 AM, we have 300 signatures on the petition, excluding the phony "Pat Robertson" signature which some wise guy dropped in. That means we're getting about 6 signatures an hour on-average.

However, by comparison, the petition to WAL*MART to keep the full-service fabric department has 7700 signatures, and the petition to keep the Penguins in Pittsburg has over 13,000 signatures.

I don't want to take this more seriously than it ought to be taken, so if we don't have 1,000 signature by next Wednesday, I'm going to let it drop. But if the 300 people who have signed so far will get 4 each to sign, it's a done deal.

Go get it.

Not to be outdone

This is what I'm talking about. Read about Project Witness, and then go sign the petition.

They are the same thing. A witness has a testimony which says, "this is true -- this is what I have seen", and also "that is false -- it contradicts what I know to be true".

Be a witness.

Neither Dulia nor Latria

My friend Doxo said this in yesterday's meta:

I signed, so don't take this the wrong way...

Will a petition matter to a person who claims to receive direct and personal revelation from God?

See: we're signing this petition to Pat Robertson to tell him that his self-appointed station as Prophet is a sort of public shame which brings ill repute to the church and the Gospel. Because he's a false prophet, yes?

So will it do good? I mean, Doxo's point is a pretty good one: Pat thinks he gets mental IM's from God, so why would the words of men change his mind? Wouldn't God tell him to lay off if God wanted him to lay off?

Here's my purpose, and you can take it for what it's worth.

[1] I do not think Pat Robertson is going to stop making prophecies. Not even if we kidnap him and hide him in a basement. That is, we will not kidnap him and we will not hide him in a basement, but even if we did he would still claim God was speaking to him. So the point of this petition is not to make Pat stop. He won't stop.

[2] However, I do think that there is a big question at stake: what kind of people are Christians? I think that when we let a guy like Robertson off the hook for falsely using God's name to make his opinions sound more important (because let's face it: many of his opinions are mediocre at best and ignorant at worst), we send a message to those who are not Christians which is two-fold:
{a} We are people who will let anything pass for the word of God.
{b} What we believe is exactly the same kind of trash that Pat Robertson is espousing.

[3] In that, I think the Gospel is at stake. The Gospel! Listen: if 1Cor 15:1-4 is the same kind of "word of God" that Robertson's apocalyptic affirmations represent, we believe the crumbiest, lousiest flim-flam ever spoken in language. We are dupes and idiots. So it is important, if we are declaring what the Gospel is, to make it clear what the Gospel is not.

The petition is posted and open to sign to be given to Pat Robertson, but Robertson's response is almost irrelevant -- in fact, in many ways, I hope he does nothing in response to the petition -- to demonstrate fully what kind of fraud he is.

What is at stake is not Robertson's position at CBN or as chancellor of his own university: what is at stake is whether or not God's people will allow themselves and the message of Jesus Christ to be represented by a puffed-up fraud who cannot tell the difference between his own passing thoughts and the word of God which is like a fire, and a hammer, and a two-edged sword.

This is why you ought to sign this petition: for the sake of the Gospel and the credibility of the Christian church. You don't have to be a baptist to be this disgusted -- you don't even have to be a cessationist. You just have to care about whether or not the lost should put the message of salvation from sin in the same filing cabinet with Pat's prognostication that a tsunami was going to hit New England in 2006.

Updated: Robertson Petition

This doesn't even cost you anything.

I started a petition to send to Pat Robertson on-line. Read it, and if you agree with it, sign it. If you are a blogger who thinks it's a worthy cause, link directly to it.

There comes a time and place when we have to do something other than complain about stuff like this in our blogs. This has nothing to do with being a continualist or a cessationist -- unless, of course, you would agree that having someone represent that they have the gift of prophecy when in fact they do not discredits the actual gift of prophecy.

Stand up and be counted. If enough people sign it, I'll send it to CBN and see what they say. I have no idea how many "enough" would be -- probably more than the average number of unique hits I get a day.

Oh brother -- I was looking around out of curiosity, and it turns out that Robertson is an ordained minister ...

(wait for it)

... in The SBC! He's a Southern Baptist minister who prophecies and speaks in tongues! Somebody call the IMB! Or NAMB! Somehow we have a charismatic running around calling himself a Southern baptist!