Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Crazy Crap / Hargrove Pastor Maury Davis' Helloween Funhouse!
Posted by Brantley Hargrove on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 12:15 PM
There's another Cornerstone Church spectacle taking place this weekend. And it's Halloween-themed!
You know what's scarier than ghosts, goblins, gays and government-run health care? Eternal damnation! That's what. So Pastor Maury Davis figures he's got the scariest show in town.
The ringmaster of Churchus Maximus says on the church's website that this will be the largest illustrated sermon Cornerstone has ever produced. Bigger than soldiers rappelling from the rafters. Bigger than an indoor fireworks display. Because what looms larger in the sermons of fire-and-brimstone preachers than Hell? And the many, many things you do every day to get you there?
"What would I find if I came to your home -- Drugs? Pornography? Alcohol? Abuse?," Davis asks on his website.
All of the above, if he happened to drop by Pith's house. But does self-abuse count?
"People are living in Hell-on-Earth situations, not realizing their lives will guide them to the place of Eternal Torment. On Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, we will fully illustrate the consequences of hosting secret sins in your home."
Think of the kiddies. No exhilarated, exuberant giggling as they shuffle out of some spooky Halloween funhouse freshly scared. Instead, Little Johnny will mope out of church fearing an immolated eternity for that Playboy stashed beneath the bed. Take heart, Johnny. There are scarier things in the world.
Comments (35)
Showing 1-35 of 35
Wow, two whole posts in one day from Brantley Fucking Hargrove. I'm overfuckingwhelmed.
Seriously, when is SouthComm gonna sack this braindead New Times hack? I'm tired of this shit.
Isn't Garrigan supposed to be back for fucksake? Can't she throw something up instead of this fucking bullshit?
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Is someone linguistically challenged or just can't climb out of the toilet to get a better view?
Crapply Fartgrove is just one of those MBA kids still upset over their portrayal in The Scene some months ago. Either that or it's Pastor Davis.
From the website:
"'House of Hell' will take you literally into the bowels of Hell."
Really? Literally? Attending this event will be the actual third-dimension equivalent of Dante and Virgil's allegorial trip though the various spheres, circles, and dimensions invented by a 14th centuray Italian? Seriously? Going to an event, at a church, will honestly and truly bring parishoners face-to-face with Satan, the Devil, Lucifer himself?
SOUNDS AWESOME!
From the website:
"'House of Hell' will take you literally into the bowels of Hell."
Really? Literally? Attending this event will be the actual third-dimension equivalent of Dante and Virgil's allegorial trip though the various spheres, circles, and dimensions invented by a 14th centuray Italian? Seriously? Going to an event, at a church, will honestly and truly bring parishoners face-to-face with Satan, the Devil, Lucifer himself?
SOUNDS AWESOME!
Has anyone seen the documentary about the first "Hell House". It's scary, and not because of the actual hell house, but because of the people running it.
"What would I find if I came to your home -- Drugs? Pornography? Alcohol? Abuse?,"
You wouldn't find anything Buster 'cause you won't get any further than the sidewalk. Nobody appointed you in charge of me. Whatever possessions sitting in my private home are none of your' frigging business. My God didn't include you in my marching orders.
Step one time off the sidewalk and I will shoot you right in the kneecaps. The Seraphim and Cherubim can help you home.
I can't help but wonder if one would find a scene in which a Sunday School Teacher is brutally murdered by a man later able to con his way out of prison who then goes on to appoint himself sanctimonious judge of the citizens of Nashville, most of whom have not killed a Sunday School teacher.
While no fan of, ahem, Rev. Davis, it just never changes with the Scene. A pack of godless, dumbass liberals making fun of religion. Hey, it gets old. Go to Hollywood where you'll fit right in with the rest of the intellidipsias.
You're right on one level, Bryce. I can't tell that anyone on the Scene has much understanding or respect for Christianity.
Then again, some of that may be because so much of the Christianity people get exposed to comes from churches like Maury Davis's. There are lots of fundamentalist and borderline-fundamentalist churches that put on "Hell Houses" like this one. It might have been nice if Mr. Hargrove had at least acknowledged this. Davis isn't doing anything that someone else hasn't already modeled for him.
A larger point -- beyond the scope of what you'd expect the Scene or any other newspaper to discuss, I admit, but still a major point -- is how poorly the Hell House concept and the preachments of fundamentalist churches reflects what the Bible actually says about hell.
Biggs,
Just by accident about a dozen years ago, a co-worker had a cassette tape from a sermon done by Davis that told what Hell really was from the Bible. I didn't know who Davis was at the time. It was the most graphic, vivid and Biblically-accurate portrayal you could imagine.
Bryce:
"A pack of godless, dumbass liberals making fun of religion. Hey, it gets old. Go to Hollywood where you'll fit right in with the rest of the intellidipsias"
Conflating murdering scumbag Maury Davis with "religion" is where you got it wrong, pal.
Bryce...amazing how you speak in absolutes when saying anything "was the most graphic, vivid and Biblically-accurate portrayal you could imagine".
That's the problem with this religion thing, people thinking they have the one and only answer to all the questions regarding God, the devil, heaven and hell...And everything else, come to think of it.
The size of the ego required to hold this position is staggering. Congratulations!
OG DG:
I had one significant problem with the piece the Scene ran on Maury Davis. It left the strong impression that, because Davis was a murderer, he was unfit to be a pastor now. Maybe he is unfit, and maybe he isn't, but you won't find anything in the Bible or in Christian teaching that a murderer can't turn around (the literal meaning of repent). The Bible is full of murderer/heroes, starting with King David and running through the Apostle Paul. I've never listened to Davis preach and never been to his church, but the Scene piece didn't give me much sense of who he is -- only what he did some years ago.
Bryce:
I'm curious as to what the "Biblically accurate portrayal" of hell involved. In some places, it is described as a lake of fire. In others, Jesus uses the term "outer darkness." Since these two are inherently contradictory, it is natural to ask whether Jesus is speaking metaphorically, as he so often did (e.g., referring to himself as "this temple").
The passage where Jesus speaks most directly of hell is the story of the rich man and Lazarus. (By the way, Martin Luther King preached his final Sunday sermon, in the National Cathedral in DC, using this very passage. It was titled "Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution," and it's amazing. You can do a Google search and see the text --hear the audio, too, I think.)
Anyhow... in the story, the rich man finds himself "on the other side," although Jesus doesn't use any word for hell. He does mention there are flames, because the rich man is hot and asks Father Abraham to make Lazarus go fetch him some water. Abraham explains that he can't do this, because they are separated by a huge, unbreachable chasm.
The canyon is an interesting description, when you consider that the word that Jesus most often used for hell, gehenna, was an actual place, and that Jesus' audience would have known what that place was like. Gehenna is derived from the name Hinnom. The Valley of the Son of Hinnom was a place to the southwest of Jerusalem, beyond the walls of the first century AD. (Now, of course, the city has grown to encompass this geography and far beyond.) During the time of the Kings, many people from Jerusalem -- including some of the rulers themselves -- went out to Hinnom Valley to participate in the worship of the pagan god Molech. As part of this worship, they built altars (high places) on the far side of the valley. They would burn their own children alive on these altars as a sacrifice to Molech (described in Jeremiah 7 among other places). Priests would beat drums during the ritual to muffle the cries of the children. To Yahweh, the giver of life, this was the supreme abomination. Hinnom represented the place where people went to separate themselves as completely from Yahweh as possible, by their own choice and action.
After the Jews returned from the exile in Babylon, the worship of idols stopped completely. The Valley of Hinnom, because it already been so defiled, was turned into a garbage dump for the city. In Jesus' time, several hundred years later, it was still used that way -- a place where there would have been piles of garbage, dead animal carcasses and smoldering fires that never completely went out. Pretty vivid vision of hell, huh?
My own view is that the important part of this image is not the detail about the fire; it is the self-separation from God -- literally across a canyon -- by choosing to worship what is garbage and leads to death (idols and human sacrifice) instead of what leads to life (God's Law and the vision of a society that pursues shalom).
This is very much in keeping with the way Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus. As MLK's sermon explains it, the rich man is not condemned simply because he is rich. After all, Father Abraham was one of the richest men of his time, according to Genesis. Rather, the rich man's' sin is that he worshipped his wealth to such an extent that he allowed the beggar Lazarus, the early equivalent of a dumpster diver who sat every day outside the rich man's gate hoping to eat the food scraps that were thrown in the garbage, to become invisible. He turned a blind eye to Lazarus' suffering and need and, in the process, committed idolatry just as surely as the people who burned their children alive for Molech. When they died, poor Lazarus went to be in the bosom of Abraham, while the rich men went to the other side. That is to say, he cast his lot with the earthly treasures that ultimately were of no value and wound up with them on the Ultimate Garbage Heap of gehenna.
Well, that's my little sermonette about hell. Not sure how it might compare with Maury Davis' sermon, but I'm pretty certain hell is about more than porno magazines and pot under the bed.
This event is not a "spooky Halloween funhouse". It is an illustrated sermon. The children ("little Johnny", as you put it)will be in age appropriate classes during the sermon.
The whole point is to deal with real issues that people face in their own homes. How addictions really do lead to torment and the destruction of a life, how Christ can set you free and give you new life.
Are you actually going to go, or will you just do you like you have done in the past and make something up, passing it off as journalism, so you and Rob Williams can benefit. When you have to lie or spread half truths to succeed, you haven't succeeded at all. It just shows you don't care about the truth.
Why not go to Cornerstone after the event and see how many people made a change in their lives, in a positive way? Heck, maybe you would even bury the hatchet you've been carrying around for so long and get healing from every hurt in your past.
Why don't you "report" on the millions of dollars Pastor Davis raises every year to help people? Instead, you are venting your own hurt feelings from your childhood church in Texas against a man you don't even know.
Passing judgment without having all the facts is nothing more than surrendering reason and logic to emotive deduction.
Be a journalist without an agenda to get even with every Christian who has been unfair to you in the past.
I think the congregants of Corner Stone make it easy to condescend to Christianity when they take their cues on life from a convicted murderer. Perhaps Davis has repented. Regardless, his crime should follow him everywhere he goes while still on this mortal coil.
Why has that pastor not been executed? Doesn't the bible mandate that for a murderer? Hypocrites. All this is beyond sick This is a great example of how the south keeps perpetuating itself as the most backward, ignorant, hate filled part of the United States. This is just a concentrated example of what children are taught on daily basis by their parents, churches and often times schools there. To force children to see something like this is child abuse. But then isn't that par for the course when it comes to an area of the U.S. that is completely infected with the cancer of religious fundamentalism?
What else would one expect from a church that is run by a murderer who now murders souls for a living? One thing all you fundies need to remember. The bible teaches forgiveness, well at least part of it, but nowhere does it teach that forgiveness means the release from consequences. The minister of the church still has his karma to pay and he is just building more negative consequences by the hate he perpetuates. But he does not even believe his own bullshit. He is just a con-man that lives in a city where there are plenty of simpletons to buy his snake oil.
I, evidently, am one of the simpletons who worship at Cornerstone church. I choose to go there because of MY relationship with the Lord. I read the scriptures and hold everything that comes out of any preachers mouth in comparison to what the Word says. If at any time I felt a heresy was being perpetuated, I would be gone! I know that Pastor Davis is regarded as unsavable because of his past deeds thru the world's eyes. If left up to the world, we would all stay in a state of condemnation, always paying for our past crimes. I take nothing away from the family who continues to suffer over the loss of someone they loved. God shows over and over in His word that forgiveness is ours thru His son, Jesus. I know this is such a basic faith to the world, and truly, because we are considered southern simpletons, we swallow this whole-heartedly. You bet! Truly, the Rock has become the stumbling stone. God truly has taken the simple things and concepts of man, and confounded the wise. True wisdom begins in fearing the Lord. I sense a lack of Holy fear here. If God seen fit to extend mercy to a man the world would throw away, due to his own actions, I for one find hope in this. I don't follow a man at Cornerstone, but I sit under his authority as my pastor, who answers, as I do, to God. We are forgiven when we come to know Christ as our savior, however simple you find this faith. I for one don't go along to get along. I have a brain, form my own thoughts and draw my own conclusions. I disagree with most of what I see in where our country is heading morally. Regardless of how you spin it, how intolerant you find me, how narrow minded you think my faith is, one day on the other side of your last breath here, and you first breath in eternity, one of us is going to be right. I don't have to wonder which one, I already know.
Wow, Luanne, that was quite the diatribe just to get to the single point you seem to be making: We're all going to hell and you're going to heaven.
And Not Maury Davis: Nothing in the cover story published in the Scene this summer is "made up." Anyone who'd like to see the truth for themselves need only request the file from the criminal court in Dallas. As difficult as it may be for you to swallow, it's all there.
And sorry NMD, but I think you guys lost me when the commercial advertising the evening listed being gay as one of the many pathways to hell. Before long, I believe this country will move beyond the wholesale bigotry Davis preaches against gays and Muslims.
I make no claims of who is going to heaven and who is not. I am no judge. I just line my life up with what the Bible has to say about my own life and Christian living. I have read your article about the past crime. I didn't even say anything about what is true and what isn't. Don't put words into my mouth. I tried to say that we are all redeemable, even those who have committed heinous crimes. Who we have been yesterday, doesn't mean that is who we are today. I know I'm not. You seem to have an approach that attacks and builds, quite erringly, as if you have an agenda that quite frankly is singularly biased. Not every lifestlye is accepted in God's word, yet everyone is worthy of love and respect. Yes, the term sin seems to be divisive but it wasn't my plan, it's Gods. In this society, it seems everyone can have an opinion, except for a Christian. Some rights seem to be more protected than others lately in the good ole USA. So, as a Christian, who seen souls come to repentence Sunday morning at Cornerstone church due to a timely message, and the working of the Holy Spirit in some broken lives, I thank God for second chances. I had a few myself!!
Luanne, if you read my comments about truth in the story, you'll see they're directed at commenter NotMauryDavis. I wasn't talking to you.
And in reference to your claim that you do not judge the afterlife destinations of others, your comment:
"Regardless of how you spin it, how intolerant you find me, how narrow minded you think my faith is, one day on the other side of your last breath here, and you first breath in eternity, one of us is going to be right. I don't have to wonder which one, I already know."
That statement is in regard to not whether you go to one place or the other but If any person believes in one or the other at the end of their life. I emphasize the question of ones faith in the destination not whether they go to one or the other. My hope is that you believe that it is so, and that you make a decision of faith in Christ as your Savior, which becomes the most pertinent question in the end after all. Thanks for the feedback, and your opinions. Some things about the journey is debatable, while some things are set in stone.
What on earth has caused such viscous comments towards Pastor Davis. Yes, he was a convicted murderer.
Apostle Paul was a murderer as well. He used to go into synagogues when The Jesus Movement was still a sect of Judaism and would take take the men, women, and children who believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah and would kill them. He fought hard to try to kill the Christian movement in any way possible, and killed countless lives. But God had different plans. After an intervention by Christ himself, Paul became the second most influential person in the Christian faith (behind only Jesus himself), and most of the New Testament books were written either by him or a secretary who recorded for him.
Moses killed an Egyptian, but God still used Him to set His People free. David killed a man over an adulterous affair that he'd had with the man's wife, but he was still called "A man after God's own heart."
It's time for everyone here to stop with the degrading, childish comments and re-examine themselves before they throw any more stones.
I am thankful for Pastor Davis's ministry. In the times that we live, with the failures in marriages, broken homes, addictions,decline in morality, pain and suffering, and our own personal failures, whatever they may be, it helps to know that we can walk thru them and come out on the other side. Damaged people, with damaged lives, understand the concept of picking up the pieces and trying again. God took a man, destined to pay for his actions in this life, and showed that He had another destiny for him. In that destiny, he could identify with the very people the world would reject. To see grace working at its best, is looking at the life of our pastor. Now, years later, we have a warrior , who has walked the walk, not perfect, but loved by God. I'd rather sit under the guidance of someone who has matured in their walk with the Lord, who has had to deal with the shame of his past, as we all do, and can look us in the eye and say, it hasn't been perfect, but there is a God who is, get a hold of Him and don't let go. When the knocks of life come, it is good to have someone championing you to get up! Get up! Get up! Don't look back, look ahead. Wouldn't hurt to have a few more warriors in the pulpits again in America.
Fact is Mr. Hargrove, statistics prove that 1 out of every 1 person who lives more than 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day, has a past. That sir, is a fact. I myself personally have one (a past) that perhaps would shake the ground of those who know me only as a person in exhistance for the past 10 to 20 years of my life. Exposition of and individual's past as seen through the eyes of one who squanders the knowledge of that individual's past by way of periphial rather than personal, tends to rely more on outsource information rather than personal insource information. I understand, in most cases, when trying to describe a history, other than one's self, would be impossible unless the one doing the describing actually was an eye witness, or lived with that one during times being described. We therefore, may tend to rely on other sources, who describe, a view as seen from their own personal perspective. History indeed does have a way of passing itself on to future generations this way. History, including personal histories, become reality to us, and are presented by us, according to our perspective of details. We have the power to highlight our own self-indulgences when describing history of another's past, especially when we wish to share what we do not understand when it comes to differences between mans mortal justice and God's immortal justification.
In all honesty Mr. Hargrove, it would not be difficult to seek out, find, hunt down, or obtain anybody's past demise, and publicly describe, through the eyes of perspective, it's debauchery; that would include me...that would even include you. I am quite certain should anyone seek the knowledge of your's or mine's own past history there would be a few historical moments of pain, sorrow, short-comings, demise, crime, abuse or other such notorieties.
So what is fair in this righteous cause Mr. Hargrove? Would it be fair to place the same subtantial substance of your own historic being and past, under the micro-scope and print it for public access? I wonder if then you would be as indulgent and forthcoming, and perhaps maybe boldy repetative on the more hanious facts. I wonder how you would choose to endure the perhaps conflicting errors and perspectives from those who would tend to see you as your past demise rather than your present day initiatives.
I think perhaps what may bother you the most Mr. Hargrove is not the many satisfactory and agreeable responses people may write back to you when indulging your perspective of an individual based on your judgmental anger, but rather that an individual, whom you have relentlessly targeted, refuses to be controlled by you by way of not responding back to you.
People may not agree with your brass tactics sir, but quite frankly, not all people will rise to the occassion of your criticism of them by way of mirroring your reflection of them back to you.
When all is said and done sir, bottom line is as long as you continue your journey, by way of relentless fury trapped within your own soul, you will continue on the path of combative, defensive, reasoning, that justifies your own truth above God's...And the only place left for you to travel, will be alone....
there were over 5000 people that came to the house of hell service's and over 400 got saved by the best preacher in nashville your insane b hargrove!that man has been saved and repented his sins and been forgiven!can YOU forgive people?the bible say's forgive them father,for they know not what they do! i pray for you every day that you let go of your anger and resentment towards such a wonderful,godly man that has changed my life for ever! he has ask god to forgive him mabey you should also ask god to forgive you!you pitiful man
Pastor Maury Davis is an amazing guy, and I'm sorry that you can't accept that. I've been to his church several times, and I absolutely love him. Evidentally if he was that much of a freaking brainwasher, over 2,000 people wouldn't come to his church and worship God. People make mistakes, and God forgives. Anyone who has a negative persepective on not only Pastor Maury Davis, but life itself opinion is irrelevant. God knows his heart and no one has the authority to judge him in the present or the past. I bet some of you people who continuosly degrade him make mistakes and don't even repent. Who are you to judge him for something that happened many years ago? You need to realize that just because someone is a preacher, they are by no means perfect. Get off of his back, and realize that your opinion means nothing, you don't have the authority to say whether or not he deserves to die or deserves to live. People who are against him are truly in my prayers and hopefully one day you'll understand forgiveness.
