This is a test post…

…to see if I can edit and post photos from the android application. But, I’ll double dip a bit.  A few weeks ago I was in a thrift store and saw this:

And then, out of curiosity I cracked it open and saw this:

Quick Links – Michael Brown’s appearance on the Benny Hinn Show

In case anyone out there wants to see the five Benny Hinn programs with Michael Brown that ran this week but didn’t record them or watch them live, here are the links:

Does Michael Brown know more about Benny Hinn than he lets on?

Now, unless you’ve been living in a cave, you already know about Michael Brown and Benny Hinn.  Michael Brown has basically gone out of his way to associate himself with a false teacher, treating him as a brother.   Benny Hinn is one of the wolves that Jesus warned the church about, and Michael Brown’s bringing him to the bosom with the excuse of ignorance of him is hard to take seriously, especially considering the following:

Michael Brown and my break-dancing dog

Okay.  It’s really late and I’ve gotta go to bed, but I was recently made aware (you know who you are…jerk…) of some of the most insane news I’ve heard in a while.  I’ll reserve comment to the end and let the horses’ mouth speak:

I just recorded five wonderful TV shows with Benny Hinn on Jesus in the OT, repentance, holiness, the fear of the… http://t.co/XyNz1qxO8g

— Dr. Michael L. Brown (@DrMichaelLBrown) January 3, 2014

(Full text on Facebook = “I just recorded five wonderful TV shows with Benny Hinn on Jesus in the OT, repentance, holiness, the fear of the Lord, and hyper-grace. They’re scheduled to air the week of January 13th, so watch them and then share your thoughts.”)

A Tiny Indicator Of Charismatic Influence…

This post has been updated, expanded and re-posted here.  Just fyi.

(source)

So in the StrangeFire aftermath, one of the complaints that has been lodged at the conference and the whole cessationist case is that we always grab the “low hanging fruit” on the fringe of the movement as some sort of normative representation of the movement as a whole.  We’re told that we grab absurd examples and try to pass them off as some sort of example of the mainstream.  The level-headed folks are the obvious mainstream representatives, and the entranced glossolalaholics and Fletch-clone healers are the fringe, right?

(source)

This argument has always made me puzzled since it’s so horribly obvious to me that the theologically absurd charismatic church of 20,000 obviously has far more influence in the movement and “on the street” than the theologically restrained charismatic church of 2,000 (and that’s being generous since the theologically absurd churches aren’t just bigger, but far more numerous).

So, I thought to myself, how can I give some sort of objective measure of influence? How can we say who is mainstream and who is fringe? Then I had an idea. Its not a great idea, but an idea none the less. I’m going to look at online presence in  the form of Twitter reach (as measured by followers) as a general indicator of just how many people are paying attention to whom.