Just one more thing about Pat

Not that I want to belabor this more than necessary but I would like to offer a few responses to what was said in the counter-petition mentioned earlier.

1) I as a Christian am only a hypocrite if I claim to be sinless. If I claim to be a sinFUL follower of the sinLESS Lord Jesus Christ, where is the "mask", the deception I put on?
For the record, I claim the latter, not the former.

2) Yes, God will judge Pat Robertson.

Deuteronomy 18:18-22 --

18I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. 20But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.' 21And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?'-- 22when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

(I forgot that the death penalty was prescribed in v. 20 in my last post.)
And this is indeed the crux of the question. Would God use as his prophetic mouthpiece a man who prophesies EVEN ONE THING incorrectly? How then could His voice be clearly communicated to His people? Obviously knowing this, God provided, in OT Israel, for the death penalty of a so-called prophet who would say something that would not come true. Even one time is enough for execution.
God takes this deadly seriously. While I don't think Pat R should be put to death, shall we believe him to be a prophet of God? And even Pat R has admitted that his tsunami prophecy was wrong and says "I have a relatively good track record; sometimes I miss."
But Pat, it's not YOU speaking, supposedly. It's on behalf of the Lord that you presume to speak. Does God say "Oops. Well, I'm still around 80%"?

Given that, as a friend noted, this petition is the most loving thing we could do for Pat, to turn him back from God's impending judgment for misusing God's name and Pat's own public recognisability.

3) Another concern seems to be that the petition is asking Pat R to go away into hiding forever and never to speak again. It is not. Read it again - it's asking him to stop making "prophetic" statements.

"...we respectfully and earnestly exhort him to stand down from his self-appointed position as "prophet" -- that is, one who receives God's own words and speaks them to the world apart from established Scripture -- and apologize to the church, and on behalf of the church to those who have witnessed his abuses, for his on-going representation of himself as a mouthpiece for God Almighty."
It's not calling for CBN to pack it in.

4) The guy won't stop. Look at that link again...
"Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in 'mass killing' late in 2007.
'I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear,' he said during his news-and-talk television show 'The 700 Club' on the Christian Broadcasting Network. ' The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.'"

What will he say when he's wrong this time? Is it not possible some might scoff at the "God" who would make false predictions?

If you care to, sign the petition.

If not, thanks for reading.

My photo galleries and a comment on Pat R

I'm putting a link to my picture galleries on the sidebar.

Also, I emailed a bunch of my friends a link to that petition to Pat Robertson, and it seems I got one of them all riled up. He apparently emailed a replacement petition to those same friends, most of which he does not know at all (though some he does know). His petition requests that all who bear the name "Christian," and who fail to live up to the name 100% of the time, for that reason renounce the name of Christian b/c we are hypocrites.

For a few reasons, his reasoning is faulty.

1) Christians are by necessity the least hypocritical of any people on earth, b/c Christians do not willfully reject the truth of the universe around us, which speaks powerfully to the truth of the existence, and to an extent even the identity, of the God as described in the Bible. Non-Christians take on, by necessity, the Christian worldview implicitly in order to live in the world created by the Christian God, but they refuse to confess that worldview is the truth. They live by one rule and confess another.
2) The issue at hand is not whether Pat Robertson is hypocritical or not. The issue is that he is a false prophet, as documented many times over. The Old Testament prescribed that the people of God refuse to listen to a false prophet, even if he were to prophesy ONE time. Why should I listen to one now? If God uses a man as His mouthpiece, how is it possible that he should speak error when claiming to speak for Him?
3) This petition has no binding authority, but it is a request from other believers in Jesus. By making all sorts of stupid statements, particularly in regards to false prophecies (which is the only issue this petition speaks to), and by doing so as a highly recognisable and public "evangelical spokesman", he is accountable to a more stringent standard. There are other men in a similar limelight; why don't they make such ridiculous statements as he?

Dear Pat. Be silent.

A petition to Pat Robertson.

Very nice. I've been saying it for years myself, but the guy is such a publicity hound I really doubt he'll listen to anything, even if it were signed by 10 million people. Perhaps if his 100 biggest financial supporters said it, he would...