If you'll remember, last week I happened upon a a video that leading New Apostolic Reformation "prophet" Rick Joyner put out in which he seemed to suggest that with a good amount of prayer, President Obama could come under "submission" to either him or another "prophet" or "apostle" and join them in their drive to bring about the Second Coming by taking over the world. It didn't seem to track at first. After all, in that same video Joyner says that Obama is "a wicked man" in biblical terms. But then I thought back to my own experience with the NAR--which leads me to suspect that Joyner and his fellow "apostles" and "prophets" actually believe the president is one of them at bottom.
As many of you know, in my freshman year at Carolina I was tricked into joining a campus ministry that was part of one of the more notorious dominonist/NAR groups, Morning Star International (now known as Every Nation--no relation to Joyner's outfit). I thought something was way the hell off about them from the beginning--something which only intensified when they tried to turn me into a Christian Coalition Republican. Nonetheless, they jockeyed with my mind so much that it took me six months to finally get out. In hopes of getting enough on them to get them booted off campus, late in the first semester of my sophomore year I launched what I called "Operation Trojan Fundie." I pretended to rejoin them, having supposedly seen the light and having turned into a 200 percent rabid fundicostal like them.
The thought of doing this crossed my mind when I started getting the impression they were waiting for the Holy Spirit to "convict" me and make me see I walked out on them just because I was too bullheaded to change my ways. That impression was confirmed a few weeks in, when I dropped an email wondering if it was OK to tell people about Jesus even when they didn't want to listen. One of my "sisters" replied that we definitely should, because while the person wants to listen, his or her spirit doesn't because it's "dead to the ways of God and in full response to the ways of the world." Yep, that's right--when someone was either cussing them out or blowing cigarette smoke in their faces, it wasn't because they didn't want to listen. It was because their spirit was closing their ears off. And all 23,000-plus students at one of the most liberal schools in the South (if not the nation) were rabid fundicostals deep down inside. If that doesn't sound loony enough, we were taught that the devil has screwed with our minds so much that they can't be trusted at all. That's why they didn't so much as raise an eyebrow when I pretended to be one of them--and why they didn't know what hit them when they found out I was merely spying on them.
I suspect this is what Joyner is thinking about Obama. In the video, Joyner said that he hoped Obama would receive a "revelation" that will "turn him around." If I had to hazard a guess at what Joyner was thinking, he probably thinks the only reason Obama isn't already a 200 percent rabid fundicostal and "overcomer" who has "submitted" to an "apostle" is that while he may be one deep down inside, it's his spirit that's making him side with the libruls. I know, I know, this is crackpot. But you have to remember, these people have deluded themselves into thinking that since they are Jesus, everyone will eventually have two choices--follow them or perish. It's this kind of megalomania that makes these dominionists very dangerous. And it's another reason that we need to kick them to the margins as soon as possible so they don't become the monster that the "mainstream" religious right is now.