This is what happened on Tuesday, November 14. I went to Dickinson, North Dakota for an event at a rented space at a mall-type facility. The event was the “One Night Holy Ghost Revival” and hosted infamous heretic, “Holy Ghost Bartender,” Rodney Howard Browne. Its “pastors” are a man and woman who had spent time in Browne’s congregation in Tampa, Florida. Browne was a central figure in the hotbed of heresy known as the Toronto Blessing (for a run-down of that nonsense, click here).
Here’s a clip of the Holy Spirit Bartender…
Clearly, and without any apology, I went to preach, whether or not I was asked. I had preached about godly disturbances of the peace while working my way through the Book of Acts in recent weeks, in sermons entitled, “Disturbing the Peace” and “Come Get Us Themselves.”
I told my companion and fellow church brother, Kyle Small, that the rule was, as soon as we were asked to leave, we would (as I had on two previous occasions, explained in a video below). As the law goes, any meeting that the public is welcome to attend presumes for its attendees the First Amendment right of free speech. However, the limitation placed upon that is when the owner or operator of the private property asks the speaker to leave the premises, at which point they must go exercise their right to free speech on public property or on private property where they are allowed to do so.
For nearly an hour and a half, Rodney Howard Browne spoke about Donald Trump being God’s anointed to bring revival to America. He never spoke from the Bible, referenced the Scriptures, sin, righteousness, judgment, salvation, Gospel and never mentioned the name of Jesus or the Holy Spirit. When he handed the microphone to a man and then to the female impastor of the church, I got up to speak. I responded to her claim that they were desiring to see a revival in the Dickinson region. You can see what happened here.
I then explained on Facebook what happened here…
Photographs of my injuries are provided below.
The Dickinson press, who had interviewed us, didn’t do a stellar job at quoting us, when we explained very clearly that we were there not primarily because of a woman preacher (I could protest those in my own town), but because of the nefarious false teacher, Rodney Howard Browne (to clarify, the reporter did quote us accurately on the answers he cited, but did not provide the answers and statements in regards to other questions that were not included in our interview, which had he included, would have given the public a fuller view of the incident). I did cite 1 Timothy 2:12, but that was a very small part of my protest. The greatest part was the Christless, Scriptureless, prosperity-gospel Donald Trump worship taking place. You can read that article here (although this is a re-post from a different newspaper). The same reporter and paper did a follow-up article which did a better, albeit imperfect job, at reporting the account. You can see that article here.
The Sidney Herald, for whom I have been writing the religion column for 8 or so years and in charge of the column (collecting articles from other clergy members) for more than 5, said that they would not publish my material any further. They did not call me, email me, interview me, or ask for any footage, rather making the statement in a social media thread. For several years, they have contemplated canceling my column because of its content (letters to the editor have gone back and forth about my Protestant and anti-Catholic beliefs). Former church members have worked in their office, where they heard those conversations among its publisher/editor/employees and reported them to me. Although their rather meager circulation of only 2,500 or so papers each edition pales in comparison to other platforms where I write, it is nonetheless unfortunate.
This is what I had to say to the Fellowship Baptist Church on Sunday about the incident (if you want a fuller version of the entire sermon, which doesn’t much pertain to this incident, you can see the entire sermon here). For the clip pertaining to the incident, it is below.
My written complaint against the Dickinson River Church is here. Because it is hand-written and perhaps hard to read, I’ve made a typed version available here.
I would, and I will, do it again when a false teacher of this magnitude comes anywhere within a few hours drive of my hometown. When that happens, just as with this incident and two others, our protest will be peaceful. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen very often because of our geographical isolation. But if you watch the video above, you will see that it has consequences. Some consequences are negative for me. For others who respond to the message and are brought out of the darkness, the consequences are glorious.
We do not do it for 99. We do it for the 1.
[Contributed by JD Hall]
