Author Topic: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal  (Read 2244 times)

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HAPPY2BME

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Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« on: March 11, 2016, 05:02:10 pm »
Why is Ted Cruz hiding his pentecostal past...

By East Orlando Post on March 10, 2016
By Jacob Engels

While Ted Cruz proudly proclaims he is an Evangelical Christian, his campaign takes pains to hide the truth that Cruz and his pastor father, Rafael Cruz are Pentecostal Christians, a fact further hidden by having Ted and Heidi Cruz’s belong to the congregation of First Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church in Houston, as their home church.

Both Cruz’s parents, his father Rafael a Cuban-born immigrant, and his mother Eleanor, born in Wilmington, Delaware, grew up in Catholic families. Both were among the millions of that left the Catholic Church since the 1960s to embrace Pentecostalism, a Christian movement estimated to make up 4.4 percent of the U.S. population, accounting for some 13 percent of evangelical churches in the United States.

Holy Spirit’s “Purifying Fire”

The name “Pentecostal” derives from the feast of the Pentecost, typically celebrated fifty days after Easter, and identified in the Acts of the Apostles 2:1-31 as the day when the Holy Spirit descended in “purifying fire” upon the Apostles of Jesus Christ, inspiring them to go forth from hiding in fear to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Pentecostals believe the Apostles of Jesus were aided by the Holy Spirit’s “gift of tongues,” in what Pentecostals consider as “baptism by the Holy Spirit,” deriving from 1 Corinthians 12:14, that gave the Apostles the ability to speak in a “God-enabled prayer language” that Pentecostals believe even today allows the unintelligible human utterances of an Pentecostal evangelist to be understood by foreigners who do not speak the Pentecostal evangelist’s language.

Heidi Nelson Cruz, Ted’s wife, is the daughter of Seventh-day Adventist missionaries, explaining why she spent part of her childhood traveling with her parents to places like Kenya. “Speaking in Tongues” Religion reporter Sarah Pulliam Bailey, writing in the Washington Post on March 25, 2015, was of the first to recognize Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign logo and the purifying tongue-of-fire logo used commonly to identify Pentecostal churches.

Here is Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign logo:



The symbol derives from Acts 2:3, writing about the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.”

Sarah Palin’s nomination as vice president put Pentecostalism into the spotlight, when the press revealed that from the time she was a teenager until 2002, Palin attended a church affiliated with the Assemblies of God that the Pew Research Center in an analysis published on Sept. 12, 2008, described as “the largest Pentecostal Christian denomination in the U.S.”

The Pew Research Center went on to note that Pentecostalism “emphasizes such practices as speaking in tongues, prophesying, divine healing and other miraculous signs of the Holy Spirit, which it believes are as valid today as they were in the early Christian church.”

“Ted is the anointed one”

Rafael Cruz is a pastor with Purifying Fire International Ministry, although in January 2014, as Ted Cruz was preparing his presidential swing, Rafael Cruz scrapped the group’s website after various blogs began identifying the ministry as rooted in “a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism.”

Dominionism calls on anointed Christian leaders to take over government to make the laws of the nation in accordance with Biblical laws. Rafael Cruz, at the Pastor Larry Huch’s New Beginnings mega-church in Bedford Texas, outside Dallas, on Aug. 26, 2012, in a Dominionist sermon proclaimed his son, Ted Cruz, to be the “anointed one,” a Dominionist Messiah who would bring God’s law to reign.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNa5w9js48s

At a Dominionist pastor’s meeting held at the Marriott Hotel in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 19 and 20, 2013, the following “anointing prayer” was read over.

So to pull all this logic together, God anoints priests to work in the church directly and kings to go out into the marketplace to conquer, plunder, and bring back the spoils to the church. The reason governmental regulation has to disappear from the marketplace is to make it completely available to the plunder of Christian “kings” who will accomplish the “end time transfer of wealth.”

Then “God’s bankers” will usher in the “coming of the messiah.”

The government is being shut down so that God’s bankers can bring Jesus back. In an editorial published in the Washington Post on Feb. 4, on the heels of Cruz’s victory in the Iowa GOP primary, John Fea of the Religion News Service published an op-ed piece noting the frequent references Ted Cruz makes in stump speeches to his father “the traveling evangelist” Rafael Cruz.

“During a 2012 sermon at the New Beginnings Church in Bedford, Texas, Rafael Cruz described his son’s political campaign as a direct fulfillment of biblical prophecy,” Fea wrote. “The elder Cruz told the congregation God would anoint Christian ‘kings’ to preside over an ‘end-time transfer of wealth’ from the wicked to the righteous. After this sermon, Larry Huch, the pastor of New Beginnings, claimed Cruz’s recent election to the U.S. Senate was a sign he was one of these kings.”

Fea noted that Rafael Cruz and Larry Huch preach a brand of evangelical theology known as Seven Mountains Dominionism. The name comes from Isaiah 2:2, “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the Lord’s house shall be established on top of the mountains.”

Fea commented that Rafael Cruz believes Christians must take dominion over seven aspects of culture: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government.

By identifying Ted Cruz as the “anointed one,” Rafael Cruz has designated his son as what he believes is God’s choice to lead an evangelical coup d’etat, such that, as Fea notes, “Cruz’s campaign may be less about the White House and more about the white horses that will usher in the God’s Kingdom in the New Testament book of Revelation, Chapter 19.”

http://eastorlandopost.com/ted-cruz-closet-pentecostal

Offline Sanguine

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2016, 05:05:27 pm »
Just curious, assuming any of this is true, and I don't know the answer to that, how does any of this affect either you personally, the race or a possibly presidency?

HAPPY2BME

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2016, 05:06:09 pm »
I am not judging Ted Cruz, his father, or any other Christian's beliefs.

Christians are a minority in the United States - often looked down upon, ridiculed, and portrayed as irrelevant in today's culture.

They are often lied into believing that corrupt politicians will overturn Roe v Wade and reverse all the recent laws enacted that attack the traditional family in favor of homosexuality in return for their votes.  This comes up every four years - especially in presidential elections.

Offline Sanguine

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2016, 06:11:08 pm »
I am not judging Ted Cruz, his father, or any other Christian's beliefs.

Christians are a minority in the United States - often looked down upon, ridiculed, and portrayed as irrelevant in today's culture.

They are often lied into believing that corrupt politicians will overturn Roe v Wade and reverse all the recent laws enacted that attack the traditional family in favor of homosexuality in return for their votes.  This comes up every four years - especially in presidential elections.

OK, but what does that have to do with Cruz?

HAPPY2BME

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2016, 06:26:59 pm »
Cruz believes in the First Amendment freedom of religion and as such he does not go around quizzing his supporters as to their theological beliefs and accept or reject them on that basis.   Apparently Trump supporters think some religious beliefs do no deserve First Amendment protections.

===================================

Assumptions get you your rear end handed to you with a salt and pepper shaker, and a napkin if you want that too.

You have to think outside your own little box and consider how the majority of voters in this country (agnostics, secular 'Christians,' progressives, liberals, etc.) are looking at this.

Many voted for Mitt Romney, even though they considered him to belong to a religious cult (Mormonism).

But it wasn't nearly enough from the 'Conservative Christian' voting block to elect him.

It is much worse now.

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #5 on: March 11, 2016, 06:38:08 pm »
I think the overt Christianity of Cruz helps with some voters, but it does the opposite with others.

If I had my choice the religion would largely be left out of American politics. Should Cruz get the nomination, his father and Crying Glenn Beck will be widely featured in democrat advertisements, mocking the crazy Republicans and their dreams of theocracy.

And those ads and the mockery will work, too. There are plenty of us that roll our eyes, and see Beck, Rafael Sr. as being more similar to Benny Hinn, for example.

The prosperity gospel is a fundraising scheme for gullible folks. Tammy Faye, etc.
"God must love the common man, he made so many of them.�  Abe Lincoln

Offline ABX

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #6 on: March 11, 2016, 06:41:26 pm »
Not a Pentecostal (I generally attend St. Mattress by the Springs) but I'm trying to figure out why the author thinks this is an insult. A large percentage of Americans fall into some sort of fundamentalist sect like Pentecostals. They are generally viewed as a standard Americana religion.

Along those lines, would it be bad to ask if Trump is a closet $cientologist?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2703287/posts
« Last Edit: March 11, 2016, 06:43:54 pm by AbaraXas »

HAPPY2BME

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #7 on: March 11, 2016, 06:44:25 pm »
I think the overt Christianity of Cruz helps with some voters, but it does the opposite with others.

If I had my choice the religion would largely be left out of American politics. Should Cruz get the nomination, his father and Crying Glenn Beck will be widely featured in democrat advertisements, mocking the crazy Republicans and their dreams of theocracy.

And those ads and the mockery will work, too. There are plenty of us that roll our eyes, and see Beck, Rafael Sr. as being more similar to Benny Hinn, for example.

The prosperity gospel is a fundraising scheme for gullible folks. Tammy Faye, etc.

==================================

I am not their judge.

Mixing religion, and having it as the foundation of your platform in this society has never worked.

It absolutely won't work now, and you are right, the Democrats will have a field day with this if Cruz wins over Trump.  It will be their Golden Calf, and they would worship it all the way to the White House.

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #8 on: March 11, 2016, 06:56:37 pm »
I can just picture a question in a debate with Hillary.

"Sen. Cruz, please explain how it is you don't want a theocracy?"

The good Senator launches into his now familiar longwinded sermons, talking over and down upon most heads, leaving people just lost.

And they decide, "No, not that guy." (Of course some fall for sermons of course)

Study Marjoe Gortner, study Beck's fake crying, and know all those videos and plenty more will inform folks about they guy.
"God must love the common man, he made so many of them.�  Abe Lincoln

Offline ABX

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #9 on: March 11, 2016, 06:58:36 pm »
I think the overt Christianity of Cruz helps with some voters, but it does the opposite with others.

If I had my choice the religion would largely be left out of American politics. Should Cruz get the nomination, his father and Crying Glenn Beck will be widely featured in democrat advertisements, mocking the crazy Republicans and their dreams of theocracy.

And those ads and the mockery will work, too. There are plenty of us that roll our eyes, and see Beck, Rafael Sr. as being more similar to Benny Hinn, for example.

The prosperity gospel is a fundraising scheme for gullible folks. Tammy Faye, etc.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. The real wackadoodle televangelist name it and claim it types are behind a different candidate.
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/mike-murdock-endorse-trump/2016/02/14/id/714343/

Offline Sanguine

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #10 on: March 11, 2016, 07:06:40 pm »
I can just picture a question in a debate with Hillary.

"Sen. Cruz, please explain how it is you don't want a theocracy?"

The good Senator launches into his now familiar longwinded sermons, talking over and down upon most heads, leaving people just lost.

And they decide, "No, not that guy." (Of course some fall for sermons of course)

Study Marjoe Gortner, study Beck's fake crying, and know all those videos and plenty more will inform folks about they guy.

You neglect the fact that Cruz is a strict Constitutionalist and as such, understands that we do not have a state religion.  The fact that he is a practicing Christian is a good thing. 

Offline musiclady

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #11 on: March 11, 2016, 07:14:27 pm »
You neglect the fact that Cruz is a strict Constitutionalist and as such, understands that we do not have a state religion.  The fact that he is a practicing Christian is a good thing.

The excuse that many of those who are angry at the Church use when bashing a Christian politician is that they want a theocracy.

It's never, ever true, nor will it be for Cruz, of course, but that doesn't stop the accusation from being made.

It's just a talking point.
Character still matters.  It always matters.

I wear a mask as an exercise in liberty and love for others.  To see it as an infringement of liberty is to entirely miss the point.  Be kind.

"Sometimes I think the Church would be better off if we would call a moratorium on activity for about six weeks and just wait on God to see what He is waiting to do for us. That's what they did before Pentecost."   - A. W. Tozer

Use the time God is giving us to seek His will and feel His presence.

Offline NavyCanDo

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Re: Ted Cruz: Closet Pentecostal
« Reply #12 on: March 11, 2016, 07:21:24 pm »
Christians are a minority in the United States

You're kidding right?   A  minority?   

As far as once being Pentecostal why would that matter with anything? So was I once. 
A nation that turns away from prayer will ultimately find itself in desperate need of it. :Jonathan Cahn