My Journal

Someone I came across on FB. His goal is to find as much market as possible in what he does. So he finds as many Christians (or basically just anyone) to friend on FB. Friends of friends, etc. Building his market.

When he friended me, I thought it was odd, since I don't know him and our mutual friends are not quite familiar to me as well.

But then he started to post his own thoughts from the Bible. Very creative. But essentially, stealing ideas from reformed circle to build his own, without quite giving credit where it's due.

I find errors and critiques them in his posts. He unfriended me calling it "ungrateful". I thought he was just being too proud at first. But after reading the posts I pasted below, it is obvious, he's no other than those prosperity preachers who are very good at stealing materials and very creative to twist these ideas to their own. And their interest is not a Christian fellowship, but to find market for $$$. Mr. Arnold's donation page is rather obvious.

Here's a couple of his posts:

Joshua Arnold

Yesterday at 1:02 PM · 

I can’t count how many Christians fall into sin and sit and wallow in it miserably, and end up sinfully discouraging themselves in their walk, simply because they limit the grace of God.

They entangle their souls by limiting the love and grace of God. It is as though they refuse to believe that God is as forgiving as He says He is. They act as though God reluctantly forgives people with an unwilling willingness, as if He loses glory by forgiving people.

Do you know how many Christians, especially in the Reformed camp, make so little of the love and forgiveness of God? They eagerly make much of His sovereignty and wisdom and wrath, but then shortchange Him on His forgiveness and love. They are so afraid to be like the prosperity preachers that speak so much of the love of God without mentioning the wrath of God and His demanding of repentance, that they end up forsaking even entertaining and enjoying His love at all.

They rather sit and whine and focus on all their failings instead of the victory and love of the Lord Jesus Christ. They don’t understand that they steal glory from God when they do this. All true Christian’s hate sin, but wallowing in filth is what a pig does. We are not swine. We are the Lord vessels of mercy.

When a child of His sins, He is not looking on them with disgust, He is looking on them with great, great pity, like the way a loving mother pities her lame or blind child. And when you return to Him, He is not seeking to shame you. He is like the prodigal Son’s dad who ran out, gave the best robe, and prepared an excellent feast. He is like a shepherd who pulls his strayed sheep out of a hole, and puts it on his neck with a huge smile on his face.

He is not like men who are reluctant to forgive and have a difficult time loving those who did them wrong. His thoughts are infinitely above and more glorious than our thoughts. He has made so many promises to encourage us to come to Him even after the most disgusting and longest backsliding. He has even made it a command in order to prove that He takes great pleasure in forgiving.

If we have sinned, we can hate it all we want, and we should, but we should hate it as we are walking to the God we love. If you want to show how much you hate sin, turn from it and love God. He has promised to forgive and cleanse you in His time. Turn to Him right now, and if you fall again, nothing has changed, He still remembers that you are dust. His love for you has not changed.

Joshua Arnold

May 30 at 7:08 PM · 

The first time I was ever arrested, I was 16, and it was because my friends and I went into Walmart, and stole some things. I was actually the only person that didn’t steal anything, but I knew what was going on.

Two years later, at 18 years old, I was arrested on a felony assault charge. It was an automatic felony charge, because the person I hit suffered a broken bone, and apparently when a bone is broken, it is an automatic felony. It was dropped to attempted assault, because I had several witnesses that saw the other person assault me first. Plus I only hit the person one time, and so it wasn’t seen as a malicious act from me.

Somewhere between 2006-2007, at 18 or 19 years old, I made the closest thing to a suicide attempt I could by intentionally taking too much liquid Xanax. I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. All of it was more of a cry for help. I was so depressed over a relationship, and I wanted to feel like people cared about me. I began taking steroids a little before this, and so I’m sure the massive change in hormones screwed with my mental health, too. I’ve suffered from depression on and off ever since I was this age.

As for the steroids: Whatever I’ve done in life, I’ve always sought to do it to the maximum. It’s always been my personality, and it was no different with steroids. I ended up finding some contacts in other countries to ship steroids to me. I understood that I could just sell them and pay for my own supply, and so I did.

After a couple of years of establishing a reputation on underground websites, I had finally found a contact in another country for the actual raw materials to make steroids myself. And so I did. At 20 years old, I had learned to make steroids and I became one of the biggest sellers in the country.

I did this for a couple of years, and at 22 years old I was arrested, and caught with $225,000 worth of steroids. Here is the link to prove it 👉🏼https://poststar.com/…/article_6b67da4c-5984-11e0-bebe-001c…

I was asked to go undercover with the DEA, and panicking in the moment, I agreed. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, though. I ended up telling my friends what I was doing, and someone ended up telling on me. Apparently someone I had spoken to was also working with the DEA. Go figure.

And so they went ahead and pressed charges. Several months later I was convicted of attempted possession of a controlled substance, and was started my 6 month sentence in jail.

At the time, I was a drug addict. I took whatever pill didn’t make me feel normal, and as often as I could. And trust me, I could afford a lot of drugs. I was taking over 300mg of OxyContin each day at one point in my addiction. That would kill someone who had never taken OxyContin before. In fact, half of that could kill someone who never had any before .

And so I went into jail, and sobered up for the time. I ended up getting out, and it wasn’t weeks later when I was abusing adderall. I was very foolish.

Jail didn’t really do anything for me. I was just afraid to do the same stuff again.

In 2012, at 24 years old, I had a really strange experience that convinced me there was such thing as God. Of course I had always known, but I suppressed it. I was basically a professing atheist before that. 
I didn’t have saving faith in Christ, but the strange experience I had had to do with the Bible (the book, not the doctrines of it), and so I carried it around like it was some protection relic for a couple months probably.

At this time, I was abusing adderall, and staying up for over 48 or a little under straight sometimes, and only sleeping a couple hours in between. I became very delusional at the time. I actually held the Bible in my hand, and went into a family member’s room, put my hand on their head while they were sleeping as though I were about to pray, and before I could start, they woke up, and I told them that I was John the Baptist. The adderall had messed with my mind, and I was experiencing psychosis.

I ended up quitting not too long after that, and vowed to stay sober from everything. 
I was sober for a couple of months, and one night I decided to go out and have a few beers. In the middle of drinking my third beer, I told the friend I was with that I’m done with it and I’m never doing again. I threw the beer in the trash, and went home. It was around then that I started praying for sobriety.

I haven’t taken a drink, steroid, or narcotic since then, nor have I smoked any weed. I was told I should pray in the name of Jesus Christ, and so I did.

I didn’t have saving faith, though. I denied His deity. I didn’t really know anything about the Christian Faith. It wasn’t too long until I started getting into New Age doctrines. I was obsessed with it, and would constantly talk about it to everyone. I ended up becoming a bit popular among the New Age crowd. 
This went on from late 2012 until 2015.

In 2015, at 27 years old, the Lord called me out of the world, and gave me the gift of saving faith. 
He has been so gracious to me, and put a zeal in my heart for Him. It was because of posts on social media that I came to the Lord. Faithful Christians sharing Jesus Christ on social media sowed a seed, and today He is my entire life. My life is Christ, and I can think of nothing greater. I can think of no higher honor.

I remember the first time I asked for the Lord to have His will done in my life no matter what happened to me, and I was so scared! I was nervous praying that. There were many things I didn’t want to lose. I was a song writer. So many carnal songs. I had over 80 songs written, and I thought I was going to make music and tour the world.

The Lord did answer that prayer. He was so gracious to hear me. I remember the day I threw away every song in the trash. These were songs that, to this day, I believe would have been huge hits. The Lord had given me Himself and I counted it greater, praise the Lord.

Now days I can’t imagine praying for anything, but for His will to be done. How foolish I think my old self was to be so nervous and fearful to ask that. Had I known of the incredible joy and satisfaction I would have in Christ alone, I would have never trembled at that prayer. I thank the Lord, I am what I am because of His grace!

I’m so thankful for everyone who is faithful to share Jesus Christ and His works on social media. Your labor isn’t in vain. Those apologetics posts and videos aren’t in vain. You don’t know who the Lord is causing to watch them, and you don’t know the great godly men that will come from that seed in 10 years from now. We think of our posts as routine and common, but people are truly being impacted.

Ameristianity: Focus on the family will lead to devotion to God.
Christianity: Focus on God will lead to devotion to the family.

Years ago, my dad introduced me to her work: Unholy Alliance: The Dangers of Mixing Pop Psychology with Christian Truth. I found it an important work because it came at a time when many Christian leaders (i.e. Serena Lin) opened their arms to modern psychology, which basically rejects the notion of sin, resulting in a very confused understanding of biblical counseling. Lois Chan critically hammered such community of scholars.

Then I friended her on Facebook. And find that she vehemently called out against all Christian cults - Eastern Lightning (东方闪电/全能神), Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.

Lately I'm friended by many who appear to be from the 全能神 cults, probably indirectly through certain Facebook friends I have (i.e. Lois Chan, etc.) who probably found me on Facebook via connections with STEMI, other Christian friends. They are all Chinese and seem to be all dwelling in Italy. They have these media that display a specific style: backgrounds are full of bright blue, green, yellow trees, landscapes or skies. And the people in the videos/pictures are always smiling and dancing. One look, I thought - Eastern Lightning Cult. Just like the books by Watchtower, one look at the artworks and I say: Jovah's Witnesses.

However, I looked at the content of what they're preaching. Something's definitely lacking - the need to repent and the emphasis of Trinity. However, the prominent signs of the difference of this cult is also missing. i.e. the female Jesus. It would seem that they are aware of their cult status and are trying to change or hide their differences. Mormons did that, 7-day Adventists did that.

But I'm still not well acquainted with this cult. So I finally decided to seek some info. Lois Chan was the first to pop up in my mind. I typed a couple of paragraphs and sent it to her timeline, but it bounced back saying that she's disabled her timeline posts by others, wasted my time, bad Facebook design. I gave up. But then these people keep coming, so I decided to private message her about it, as shown below:

Instead of saying she's busy, which I think was understandably expected, she probably just skipped to the last part and responded as shown above before she right away unfriended and blocked me. I've tried to get some of her Facebook friends to talk to her about it, to no avail.

Here's some take away I get from this misunderstanding from Lois Chan:

1. She's only good at research. But that's about it. I wouldn't go as far as Alex calling her diploma fake. However, I would trust her on Christian Counselling. I would only use her for information pertaining to that. Like the what and the who or maybe the why. But definitely not the how. That is, if she still writes any books, since asking her directly proves to be somewhat of an obstacle.
2. There is a kind of shallowness in her I must take into account. Such as, jumping too quickly to conclusion. This is also apparent in her view against infant baptism, apologetics, etc.
3. Last but not least, for someone who does a lot of work in counselling, she sure has problem doing it. If she had cared a little, she wouldn't have made such mistake in her conversation with me. So, this concludes that her counselling work is mainly on the business side of things. Zero skill in accountability of responsibility, fellowship, etc.
4. Of course, there's one more possibility, that she doesn't know English. But given the fact that her book "Unholy Alliance" was in English, I just assumed otherwise. And it would really have had been on her to tell me if she does not understand English.

A girl asked Turek, perhaps after being disappointed by her legalistic upbringing, "Do you think I would go to hell?"

There could be so many better answers Turek could have given, though he did at least define hell as separation from God:

If you want to go to heaven, then why do you keep challenging me to send you to hell?

Nobody really likes to be with God, viz. nobody really likes to go to heaven...(drum roll)...

I can't believe I know one of them personally: Eric Sigward. The bearded one folding his arms by the corner of the room in the center of the photo.