The TBN Communist Manifesto
Paul Crouch televised excerpts of a recent meeting he had in Washington, DC with the ambassador from the People’s Republic of China on Thursday’s (Feb. 3, 2000) Praise the Lord program on TBN. Aides of the ambassador arranged the “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” meeting to seek Crouch’s help in spreading China’s propaganda against a recently outlawed religious group, the Falun Gong.
In exchange, the ambassador agreed to mediate a possible “cultural exchange program” with TBN and China’s controlled television ministry. “One of the main reasons for mine being invited here today was to ask your … advice on how to effect a program that we thought about for a long, long time,” Crouch said to Ambassador Li Zhaoxing. “What if the Trinity Broadcasting Network could work with your television ministry and what if we could exchange cultural programs. In other words, you would give us a program that would show us much of the culture of China today; the progress of China today, the way people live, the way that people worship, their different faiths and so on and we would do the same for you and we could exchange weekly television programs.”
Crouch wasted no time in fulfilling his side of
the devil’s bargain. He looked right into the camera during the Thursday’s
Praise the Lord program and said, “Your excellency, I promise you I will
do exactly what I said and we will warn our legislators and our people
in government here in America of the dangers of a very frightening false
cult in China called the Chow Gong cult. It would be similar to maybe
our Branch Davidians or some of the other false cults that have sprung
up even in America . . . This false cult actually advocates the overthrow
of the government and has been responsible for the deaths of many people.”
The new age meditation cult, Falun Gong, held
a peaceful demonstration in Tiananmen Square recently during the Chinese
New Year’s celebrations of the year of the dragon, when many of them were
beaten and hauled off by Chinese authorities. Their leader, Li Hongzhi,
according to a CNN report, is residing in New York and “has been branded
a criminal and put on a ‘wanted’ list. China has asked for help in apprehending
him, but in Washington, Gail Rachlin, an aide to Li, has said the State
Department had told the group Li was safe as long as he stayed in the U.S.”
The way in which the Falun Gong cult has been held “responsible for the deaths of many people” as Crouch has asserted, is that they teach healing through meditation. Because of their misguided faith in this healing practice, many devotees have stopped using their medicine and have died as a result. Of course, Crouch turns a blind eye to his own irresponsible teachings in the area of faith healing that has also resulted in the deaths of many TBN devotees.
The Chinese ambassador must have seen how successful Crouch was in rallying the TBN forces to overturn recent FCC rulings that affected TBN’s “educational stations,” forcing them to limit preaching and increase instructional programming. “The government should never try to tell us what qualifies as an educational or as a religious [program],” Crouch said in a rage on the same TBN program.
No doubt China could use that sort of influence to extradite the much hated cult leader and put a stop to any freedom of religion for cults operating in their country. For Crouch, the ends justify the means. “Mr. Zhaoxing was very, very concerned about this,” Crouch rationalized, “and sought our assistance in letting the word be known because some of our legislators in Washington DC have kind of put pressure on China under the human rights issue.”
Far be it from Crouch to be concerned with human rights. It’s obvious that his only interest is in the expansion of his own TBN empire. After all, says Crouch, “we will have an entry and an open door into the most populous nation in the world, a billion, three hundred million. Three times the population of the entire United States are watching television in China on a typical week night.” As a tribute to the ambassador, Crouch presented him with a TBN clock and a set of books written by C. S. Lewis. “They have been investigating the teaching of Christianity,” Crouch told his audience. “And to their amazement they have found that our faith teaches that we should obey the government, that we should pay our taxes.”
And if that wasn’t enough assurance that “Christian
television, ie: TBN” should be allowed into China, Crouch pulled his ace
in the hole. “I looked at him and I shocked him. I said,
‘Mr. Li Zhaoxing, Jesus Christ actually was a Communist’ and that really
got his attention In the early days of the disciples they sold everything
and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet and it was distributed
to every man as he had need.”
It does look like a whole new area of influence
for Crouch and TBN: the diplomatic arena. If he would negotiate with
the world’s largest and most evil empire, what would stop him from striking
a deal with the antichrist himself?