Alamo’s message a mix of gospel, flying saucers
Posted on Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tony Alamo describes himself as “a pastor, an evangelist and a scribe in the full-time gospel field.”
But his “powerful soul-winning Gospel messages” and the items he posts online are part New Testament, part National Enquirer. The titles — in bold, capitalized letters — sometimes resemble tabloid headlines:
“ANTI-CHRIST UNMASKED”
“WE ARE BEING WATCHED !”
“FLYING SAUCERS ARE END-TIME PROPHECY”
“UNSOLVED MYSTERIES LIED !! Tony Alamo Did Not Abuse My Little Girl”
Alamo spreads his message on his Web site, www. alamoministries. com, in his “World Newsletter” and on 15 U. S. radio stations, his Web site states. The broadcasts are also aired in Africa and the Philippines. It’s unclear how many followers the preacher has. His Web site claims that he has churches in Fouke, Fort Smith, New York City and two in the Los Angeles area.
On his Web site, Alamo makes apocalyptic prophecies. “Any time now, a worldquake and a series of prophesied catastrophes will shockingly awaken the entire global population to a horrible, God-sent, unparalleled nightmare,” he writes in a post titled “Mass Suicide.”
Online, Alamo is also an apologist for Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh, promoting a film titled: Day 51: The True Story of Waco.
Alamo’s life, at times, has been worthy of a story in the Weekly World News. When his wife, Susan, died in 1982, he initially refused to bury her body, because he wanted to give Jesus time to raise her from the dead.
In 1991, as federal agents prepared to raid ministry headquarters (which included Susan Alamo’s burial site ), Alamo had his followers hide his wife’s corpse. It was finally reinterred, after a lengthy court battle, in 1998.
In a message on his Web site, Alamo teaches that “flying saucers from the Lord do exist.” They are “supernatural beings, angels from Heaven, surveying the earth just before Christ’s return to earth.”
Alamo knows UFOs exist, he writes, because he saw spaceships one night on a quiet desert road, moments after his wife, Susan prayed: “Oh Lord, God Almighty, if there are such things as flying saucers, show them to us, Father, in the name of Jesus.”
“They just kept coming, six, twelve, two, and one over and over again. I could look out the back window and see their lights behind us, disappearing miles away in the night. They were all the same size, lit evenly and thoroughly both within and without. ... They were all perfectly round. They made a whooshing sound as they neared the car.... There were at least 100 of them.”
Alamo calls himself a “spiritfilled” Pentecostal, and he quotes the Scriptures extensively. But his messages, which are available online, would raise eyebrows at many churches.
One, titled, “The Many Wives of the Holy Men of God (The Polygamists ),” is a 17-page defense of plural marriages, and includes links to a Web site called Pro-Polygamy. com.
“The world has no right to condemn any of God’s Word, including polygamy,” he wrote. “The Holy Scriptures proclaim polygamy to be righteous. Polyandry (a woman being married to more than one husband ) is adultery and severely forbidden by God. Women committing the sin of adultery are condemned to hell forever. Men who fornicate with another man’s wife are adulterers. This too is severely forbidden by God. The adulterer is condemned to hell forever.”
Those who preach monogamy are “evil, devilish, unscriptural, unholy and ungodly,” he added.
A number of Alamo messages address marital relations. “The Word of God says the woman is her husband’s land, his private property. She is a garden where life grows; her husband is the sower of the seed of life (his seed only ). He sows his own private garden. The husband expects his garden, his wife, to be fertile, so he may harvest a good crop from her.”
Women have been cursed since the days of Adam and Eve, he says. “A woman’s monthly period is her bloody reminder that Christ died in pain because of a woman.”
Other sermons denounce journalists and law enforcement officers. “The government and the news media will do anything they can to make us look as though we are heretics or some kind of cult,” he said.
They do this, Alamo says, because they’re in league with the Roman Catholic Church.
“The serpent-like Vatican has infested the world and the U. S. government with so many of her zealous, highly-trained and dedicated Jesuit devotees, that she now controls the United Nations (which she created ), the White House, Congress, every state federal, civic, and social government agency, including the U. S. Department of Labor, the IRS, the FBI, the Supreme Court, judicial systems, the armed forces, state, federal, and other police, also the international banking and federal reserve systems (called the Illuminati and Agentur ), labor unions, the Mafia, and most of the heavyweight news media,” he wrote.
The Vatican is also responsible for the deaths of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and People’s Temple founder Jim Jones, Alamo added.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal nonprofit advocacy group based in Montgomery, Ala., has classified Tony Alamo Ministries as one of 32 hate groups operating in the United States. It is the only Arkansasbased organization on the list.
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