The best thing about the internet is that anyone can publish stuff. The worst thing, sadly, about the internet is that anyone can publish stuff even the crackpot known as Roger Oakland

This article The Emerging Church & Bible Prophecy is nothing but allegations without evidence, listing unproven claims about the authors pet hate - in this case the "emerging church".

In the "article" Roger Oakland lists all the things that he claims are wrong with this movement without citing a single source or in any way giving evidence for how he concluded that these negative attributes even exist within any church, let alone the emerging one.

Then this writer goes on to trot out the same tired "...the devil", "...heresy", "in the last days...", "false teachings of men...", yackity smackity, dobidy day.

When any person makes claims they can not substantiate against another group they open the door to court actions against them. Sometimes for very large amounts of money. This is one such case where any advantage taking person wanting to align themselves with the emerging church could easily scoop the prize.

When it is one Christian doing the dirty words with no evidence to another this shows the membership of the doer in the list of ails in "the last days".

Once, long ago, when well respected founders of the modern church like Saint Paul, Peter and the biggest and most important of all Jesus the Christ spoke, preached or wrote they quoted sources, they made reference and they substantiated their claims.

This Rogar Oakland fails to make any quotes, references or even supporting arguments at all. We are expected that because his words appear under a slick logo we should take every utterance as gospel. That is why I call him a crackpot.

I practice decernment because in the last days there will come those that might deceive even the very elect. This man is clearly a useless and pathetic foreshadow of this deception. The truly sad thing is that people will live by his proclamations made without the slightest authority (meaning knowledge, evidence, strength of reputation (not a known expert), proof, good standing and so forth).

His claims of "the Word of God is being undermined" and other such extremist war cries do little to engage the debate or answer any questions other than perhaps identifying that understandthetimes.org is not worth reading.

However having unloaded on something that this guy does not understand he pulls a standard logic cruncher called the double switch. In this false logic the speaker will lay into a target and get the crowd going - then switch topic and start dealing with an issue they can win at. The result of a successful use of this con is that readers and listeners will feel that subject a is part of subject b and all the claims of part a are proven by part b.

But a and b have nothing to do with each other.

It's a classic con trick.

For example: "...this 'Mary' factor will be very instrumental in bringing about unity with Roman Catholics and Muslims and other religions for the cause of peace." This sounds just as silly as it gets but by the point I pulled this from the writer is playing on the fact that you are fully warmed to his rant and have not noticed the extremist and conspiracy theorist crap now being piled out. The guy backs up his wild claim by slapping "Matthew 24: 23-26" next to it as if bible references alone can prove everything.

The con is almost pulled, Mr Oakland, you see, now seems to be proving his points - even though he switched topics.

The quoted nonsense comes from amide a long and rather disturbing "slippery slope argument" (for slippery slope you argue that an increasingly unpleasant set of results will occur like dominoes if the argued against cause is followed).

One has to wonder just what the hidden agenda is at the bible twisting theologically doubtfully website. After all, what can you expect from a group where "contact us" consist of "Join the mailing list" or "donate to us" only.

Questions, it seems, are only for the weak.

Join the program, they seem to say, or we shall call you names.

Well, sticks and stones... I have no more time for this crackpot and his website.