I don’t know if this would be better in Politics & Elections, but it’s just so outrageous I just thought it was better suited here. Mods, move this if you wish.
Here’s a link about Rachel Hamm who is running for Secretary of State in California, and claims Jesus is her personal hitman.
To sum up Ms. Hamm, claiming to be a prophetic dreamer, says she dreamed someone broke into her house to kill her and set her house on fire. So after waking up, she prayed “with her authority in Jesus’ name” that “she would not only not receive that but send it right back to them”. A later phone call to Ms Hamm’s mother confirmed that someone had murdered and torched the house of a self-proclaimed witch living nearby.
Ummm, doesn’t that make Ms Hamm someone who “predicts the future” and “casts a spell” which is a big no-no among fundamentalist types? And claiming that Jesus does your bidding by “your authority”? Really?
It seems to me that as described, Ms Hamm is at least complicit in a fairly horrific murder here. Not something you’d normally want to publicize in a political speech, but who knows these days?
Unless she wants to admit she made that whole story up, because when asked for evidence of this murder, she claimed she didn’t have time for that.
I’m more than happy to let forensic Science damn the correct person to a righteously deserving Hell.
That said… as an agnostic/atheist (depending on the day) should some ‘Christian God-Botherer Bible Thumper’ cross my property in the middle of the night with deadly intent, I’d have no problem spraying them down with a metal weed-killer can filled with gasoline and frying them straight to Hell.
I was wondering if Rachel Hamm had some relation to Ken Ham, he of the evolution-denying Creation Museum and Noah’s Ark fame. I noticed that the names are spelled differently, but still, name spellings sometimes diverge over time, so perhaps there is some ancestral porcine relationship between the Hams.
This is the sort of “christian” my old pastor used to rail against saying he wished they would just shut up and not say anything at all because of the damage they do to the religion.
This is not actually that uncommon a claim. The first is just claiming to be a prophet, and the Bible is full of those. As long as it comes from God, and is not something you were trying to make happen, it’s considered okay. (Though, of course, it is a problem to make false claims. Plus someone can be mistaken.)
The other part is not so widely accepted. But, many charismatics, the key part is that she said “her authority in Jesus’ name.” There are a lot of people who think that this is how you should pray, rather than asking God to do something. These sorts of self-aggrandizing claims that God listens to them is not uncommon for charismatic televangelists.
However, even those people usually have a problem with praying for violence. And, that, even within her worldview, her story doesn’t fit what she prayed for. Sending it “back to them”—the people going to burn down her house. So you’d expect them to maybe burn down their own houses, or for there to be a natural fire caused by God to punish them. But, instead, it was people who hate a witch who burned down their house.
The only way it makes sense is if she thinks that the witch had mind-controlled these people into burning down her house, but they broke free because of her prayer and they burned down the witch’s house instead. But there we get into believing in witchcraft.
Anyways, my point is, the part you mentioned wouldn’t be the tell for those predisposed to those types of claims. It would be the prayer for violence and the way the alleged results don’t line up.
For me and many other Christians. She’s just claiming to be a witch herself, with extra steps.
Hmmmm. Kind of suspicious that Hamm claimed she dreamed of arson and murder the very night her neighbor’s home was torched and the neighbor, who allegedly professed to be the type of person Hamm abhors, was murdered. Any mention of Hamm smelling like lighter fluid?
There are all kinds of Christians these days who think that God is some kind of Harry Potter-like power to be invoked and with certain formulaic words can be harnessed as a power on command to achieve certain things. Ironically, these same Christians also often condemn Harry Potter and other magic-fiction of that sort in the strongest terms.
In the more recent versions of the video game Grand Theft Auto there is a mod you can download and install called Chaos Mod. As the name implies, it introduces several chaotic elements into the game, one of which is to spawn a Jesus-lookalike next to your character. Named Griefer Jesus, he attempts to kill you immediately.
I remember back in the day, a hurricane was approaching Virginia Beach, and Pat Robertson went on TV and said something like “With the power of Christ, we compel the hurricane to turn around”. It just seemed so bizarre to me at the time. If you want God to move a hurricane, you beg Him. Humbly. You don’t presume that He just handed you the power to do it yourself.
Somewhere in the New Testament the apostles are getting all pissed that other folks are casting out demons (and maybe healing the sick?) in Jesus name, and want the big guy to put a stop to it. He declines - and I assume this is where the justification for invoking Jesus’ name to do things comes from.
In part maybe. As I was taught it, the power of Jesus incantation come from the bestowing of the fiery spirit upon the apostles in Acts and them being able to pass it along in turn, plus some other verses here and there in the NT. I can’t recall them all now, maybe I’ll search them out later.
Nah, least it’s not mentioned in the bible, but I’m sure the owner if the upper rooms was a bit antsy.
Honestly, these people that are all Old Testament and stuff aren’t actually christians if they purport to live and expect to everyone else to live by the old testament covenant. She’s one of those who will plead that she threw out demons and spirits in Jesus’ name before the seat of judgment and be cast aside with the tares and the chaff. She (ab)uses the power of The Christ, she doesn’t follow him
I’m saying I bet she has a bug up her ass about gays and lesbians too it what I’m saying
