Huh?

I’m not one to go around judging other people’s ministries, believe me I don’t. And I am not sure this will ever wind up on this blog (as it is being tapped out in Word). But I couldn’t help but notice an article in a local Christian newspaper by a writer identifying himself as an apostle.

If you can’t make any sense of the following paragraph, don’t worry—there doesn’t appear to be any sense involved:

In his article regarding two recent divorces of mega-ministry leaders, the apostle/writer “showed” how the deaths of Ruth Bell Graham and Tammy Faye Messner were separated by multiples of 12 days (12 being the Bible number of government)—and further, the recent mega-ministry divorces, and the death of D. James Kennedy, occurred in multiples of 2 and 5 (2 for division, 5 for grace). And the central event that linked these number “signs”? The bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Uh, yeah, sure.

Please excuse me if the preceding statement sounded more like something you would read in Chuck Shepherd’s “News of the Weird.” I’m not sure how these number games are supposed to appeal to the hearts of the unsaved or encourage the faith of believers. It strikes me more as something along the lines of those “prophecies” that came out after 9-11 (“Nostradamus predicted the fall of the Twin Towers…the Koran said the eagle will cleanse the lands of Allah”…blah blah blah, with no such “prophecies” being recorded anywhere). I’m glad the apostle addressed the low standards to which we now hold such mega-ministry leaders (and to be honest, I had never heard of either couple). But can we skip the goofy (and spiritually suspect) numerology in the process?