[Pastor Al E Pistle]

Originally Posted by joe707

I appreciate your honesty Pastor. I also share many reservations of the misinterpretation of - and selective focus on - truth that you have touched upon, and can see the damage it causes.

We can't win every battle, Joe. Trying to would simply dilute our efforts. We pick our battles, and we use shock tactics. But we never know whether we have won. We are not a typical ministry. We don't try to save anyone. We simply try to ummmm...motivate.. people enough that they will go to the Bible and start reading it, and that is usually to disprove something we said. It's a trick, a ploy, a teaching technique and even reverse psychology if you wish. But we don't misquote Scripture and we get a LOT more people researching the Bible than any church ever did. People think they can go to church and that's it for another week or month. We don't let them off that easily. We realize that our job is not saving souls. It's leading them to GOD. He will save them or not.

I will debate with your members if need be, in the same way other people enjoy crossword puzzles. It is fun up to a point, but as you recognize, one has to move on eventually to more substantial matters. Your answers may not wholly convince me, but I am not interested in debating to score points, win liturgical battles, or to needlessly contest one Bible against another.

Sure. Neither are we. I have a life which I could be leading outside this forum. But I am a senior pastor and this is my calling at the moment.

But yet there are elements that I would like to hear your – and senior pastors’ - opinions of. You all have a duty and a responsibility that is quite influential. And those elements I wish to raise are not only of value to your dissenters, but to everyone. There are things of faith in the Word and faith in God that should be discussed; if only because it clears the obstacles to truth. Which I guess you guys are interested in, right?

We are. But I mentioned earlier that we are intentionally a bit controversial. We do not agree with Fred Phelps that 'God hates fags'. That idea is just wrong. God hates the abomination of sin they perform. In point of fact, Phelps is an idiot and more of a liberal than a Pastor. He seems to simply want attention.

We are not Vanilla Christians who have huge congregations, millions of dollars and huge skeletons in their closets. Ted Haggard. Kent Hovind. Jim and Tammy Bakker. ALL of them. They want your money and they convince a lot of people to send it to them. You CAN donate to us, but you don't have to. You can talk to a dozen of the most literate and educated Theologians anywhere just by visiting this forum, and a lot of people do. We have simply chosen a different path than the mainstream, which we believe has off-tracked from GOD'S real message. It seems to work. We are closing on half a million hits a month. Not many people join, but many, many, read what we say here. A lot of them disagree and start yelling, but a lot more actually go off to research the Scripture we quote to prove us wrong. Naturally, they can't. So they read a little more. That's our intent. We WANT people to read the Bible and we have found a novel way of getting them to do just that. I don't know why you are here yet, Joe. But the fact you are can't be a bad thing. We have somehow caught your interest.