The campus ministry I was part of was actually one of the few even remotely integrated Christian groups at Carolina back then.  I think the breakdown was something like 80 percent white, 10 percent black (including yours truly) and 10 percent other ethnic groups.  It operates out of one of Every Nation's flagship churches, King's Park International Church in Durham.  The ethnic mix was similar back then, and I recently found out it's now majority-minority (40 percent black, 20 percent Latino and Asian).

But under that facade lurks something more sinister.  How sinister, you ask?  To find out, take a look at a speech given by one of Every Nation's so-called prophets, Jim Laffoon (or Jim LaLoon, as I call him), called "To Reach and To Rule."  It was given at Every Nation's 2004 conference, at which it was announced that it was formally changing its name from Morning Star International.  One of the members of an (apparently dormant) discussion group of EN walkaways transcribed it from a DVD of that conference.  Here are some of the more revealing quotes:

• "I’m here to tell you today that God looks down from heaven, as much as He hates sin, He has a plan for the earth. He looks down at every movie mogul. He looks down at every empty educator. He looks down at EVERYONE stealing the values of our children, and says, 'You’ve got to be kidding if you think you’ll thwart my plan on the earth. I have a plan you don’t understand! I have a plan for every campus! Every school! Every specter of society! Every region of the world! I have a plan! And though it’s so dark you cannot see it, my plan is going to win.'"
• "I’m utterly convinced, as I stand here tonight, that God has raised up this family in the earth to reach 'every nation in our generation.' But the ultimate purpose of God is not for us to reach every nation, it is to raise up a generation long after my generation is gone who because they have reached nations can begin to rule nations! Have you ever wondered why the church has spent two thousand years reaching the same nations OVER and OVER and OVER again? It’s because we’ve only set a goal of reaching them and not understanding what it is to rule them, and one generation reaches them, and never transfers the burden of rule to the next generation, and we reached them over and over and over in a cycle! I’m here to tell you, the generation of Phil [Bonasso] and Rice and Steve [Murrell], our generation, will plant a church capable of reaching that nation, in every nation, but your generation, twenty-five and under, thirty and under, God wants to install something, God wants to do something, where we not only begin to reach nations, we literally begin to possess them."
• "Let me tell you, for all your might, and all your power, the thing the enemy fears is not you, it’s what you’re capable of birthing! The thing the enemy really fears in [?] for tonight, in Camp Morning Star tonight, in the students tonight, the thing the enemy fears is not Phil and Steve and Rice, it’s what the synergism of their lives can BIRTH and PRODUCE! What the enemy really fears, in the end, is not just another church plant. It was the fact that that woman was pregnant with something as you read on, that was not just going to reach nations, it was going to rule nations. That scared the enemy. You see, when the enemy finds an apostolic family under authority, when he finds a people who walk as family, with power over the enemy, filled with righteousness [builds] yet realizing their great destiny on the earth is not just to shine and not just to look good, that they are there to somehow birth a generation that once they’ve paid the cost to reach every nation they could hand those nations to their children and their grandchildren and say, 'NOW RULE THEM!'"
• "...before it’s done, God will give us hundreds of apostles and prophets, evangelists, teachers, pastors, thousands of campus workers, but it’s only the beginning, for they are going to equip the greatest army of professionals, and lawyers, and doctors, and entertainers, and fashion designers, and politicians, and mayors, and congressmen, and congresswomen, and athletes, and entertainers that the world has ever seen. And that’s why I say tonight, movie moguls beware, ungodly dictators be afraid, anti-Christ political systems be worried, ungodly educators your day is coming. For we believe that the kingdom of God can come to the earth as it is in heaven. We believe that we are called to not only reach but to rule. We believe that we are called to change history. We believe that we are called to produce a generation that will rule. I believe that one day we will leave to our children NATIONS and REGIONS and CONTINENTS!"

Absolutely frightening. I thought what I saw in there was bad when I was a member from August 1996 to January 1997.  However, reading this speech made me understand a lot of what I saw during that time, as well as when I pretended I'd "seen the light" and now thought just like them for a brief time in my sophomore year.  For instance, they thought it's perfectly acceptable to hector people about being saved.  But in light of this speech, it makes sense--if you're not saved, you're an "evildoer."  And in the world the Latter Rain crowd wants to create, being an "evildoer" is a capital offense.  

Many of you know that this is the very same ground from which Sarah Palin sprung.  I'd wondered for some time why she didn't do more to curb the ugliness and outright hatred against Obama that came out when she was on the stump.  I still remember reading about the chants of "terrorist," "he's a traitor" and "bomb Obama" and was absolutely sick to my stomach that a woman who professes to be a charismatic Christian would allow this filth.  But rereading this speech made me wonder--does Palin think deep down that Obama is an "evildoer"?  That might explain her deafening silence about all the nastiness we heard in 2008.

What really makes it saddening is that these guys are taking very admirable ideas and twisting them into something rotten and evil.  That, to my mind, makes it all the more important to expose and marginalize this crowd and end the wash, rinse, repeat cycle that has characterized the religious right over the past 30 years.