Incipit

This is the ongoing, introductory cover page. Know that this blog is pretty much inactive, but you can explore the archive to read the profound or crazy stuff I had written in the past. Once in a blue moon, I might add something new. And I promise that you will find no boring stories about my cats, mainly because I have no cats. If you have any questions, be sure to consult the FAQ. If you have any comments, this is the place to make them. I do read the comments. And, yes, the story about Alison Kaylee is fiction.

If you want to see my most recent post, just click on the "Older Posts" link below.

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Never Before So Much

1. Never before have so many unhinged people with too much to say had so much access to so much bandwidth.
2. So much depends on the speed at which one types.
3. So much depends on that red wagon in the front yard.
4. So much depends on the World Economic Forum.
5. Never before was sleep texting a somnambulist malady.
6. So much depends on the United States not defaulting on its debt.
7. So much depends on the water heater.
8. Never before have so many private obessions acquired such cosmic dimensions.
9. So much depends on the circus.
10. So much depends on American taxpayers.
11. Never before has so much bandwidth been given over to TikTok.
12. So much depends on commentary from David French.
13. So much depends on the wardrobe not malfunctioning.
14. Never before has so much depended on urinal cakes.
15. More than anything we need dependable fog machines.
16. Those who do not learn from history will simply rewrite it.
17. Profound silence is sometimes the only righteous response.
18. Never before has so much depended upon one’s platform.
19. Where would we be without manatees?
20. Everything depends on Starbucks.

The Man I Knew

A Book Review

Title: Billy Graham
Subtitle: The Man I knew
Author: Greg Laurie, with Marshall Terrill

There is no shortage of biographies about Billy Graham, the famous evangelist who passed away back in 2018 at the age of 99. I have read several of them so far, along with Billy's own autobiography. Even though Billy Graham had a remarkable life and is fascinating material for a biography, it was hard to imagine why another biography about him was necessary. I am not sure what the void was that needed filled, but Greg Laurie, who is a prolific author with dozens of books under his belt, has decided to fill the void anyhow.

As far as telling the story of Billy's life, the book doesn't trailblaze any new territory and is based on previous biographies. I noticed that the authorized biography by John Pollock was freguently cited. Other biographical sources were cited, along with various interviews and miscellaneous news items. For example, there was a link in the notes to an interesting British Pathé newsreel about Billy's arrival in the United Kingdom for the famous 1954 "breakthrough" crusade held at the Harringay Arena in London. I imagine that Greg's co-author probably did a good portion of the grunt work putting together a basic outline of the events in Graham's life. The book has a selected bibliography and footnotes.

As far as I can tell, the book does not reveal much more about Billy Graham than what has been covered by other biographers. But tightly interlaced into the narration is Greg's own didactic editorializing. What I mean is that Greg often uses the various events in Billy's life as a launching pad for his own commentary, observations, motivational pep talks, and mini-sermonizing. This is not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just how the book is structured. And I guess it constitutes Greg's unique contribution to the picture. Greg Laurie is a good communicator, and if you like hearing a lot from Greg, this is the book for you.

The first time Greg met with Billy Graham was a brief encounter in 1981. And it isn't until near the end of the book that Greg begins to discuss in any detail his own personal interactions with Billy Graham. Greg is a member of board of directors of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association. It would be nice to know more, for example, about how this situation came about and what it all entails. But one thing is certain: You will walk away from this book knowing that Greg Laurie admires Billy Graham to degree that is downright adulatory. Though there is much about Billy's life to admire, my only quibble with Greg's book is that in a few places he goes overboard in his veneration. For example, calling Billy Graham a "Moses" is excessive. However, I wished that Greg had told the readers more about his conversations with Billy Graham and his family.

Overall, the book is average and readable. I would give it three stars out of five.

There is one thing I would like to do. I wish I could write an unauthorized biography about Greg Laurie. The title would be Greg Laurie — The Man I Never Knew.

Prophet with Honor

A Book Review

Title: A Prophet with Honor
Subtitle: The Billy Graham Story (Updated Edition)
Author: William Martin

I don't feel like writing a full blown book review, so this will be just a very brief mini-review. I will give a few of my impressions.

On the plus side, I do recommend A Prophet with Honor, updated edition. William Martin has done a huge amount of work researching the life of the world famous evangelist Billy Graham, as the reader can see by looking at the voluminous amount of footnotes that William Martin has appended at the end of his book. Anyone doing serious research about Billy Graham would find this biography invaluable. The book covered a huge amount of territory: everything from Billy Graham's early life, his family, and ministry; the growth of his evangelical association; and his various exploits across the United States and the world, all the way up to shortly before Billy Graham passed away in February of 2018.

On the other hand, a perceptive reader will have no problem discerning those places in the text where William Martin engaged in editorializing about the events of Billy Graham's life. Any good biographer does a certain amount of "interpretation" when elucidating the life of his subject. And I think it would be pretty clear to the reader, among other things, that William Martin himself does not subscribe to most of the evangelical beliefs that Billy Graham held. However, I don't recollect anywhere in the book where William Martin engaged in heavy-handed derision or outright ridicule. Instead, I would describe the general tone of his editorializing as mildly ironic, as if he were speaking with a saucy little smile on his face, combined with a knowing wink of the eye. Overall, I would say that William Martin regarded Billy Graham as a very sincere man, but naive and intellectually unsophisticated. I could give dozens of examples of this, but for sake of brevity, I will just give one from page 481 in which William Martin compared Billy Graham with Ronald Reagan:

Both reached the pinnacle of their professions by dint of a gift for articulating, in terms easily grasped by masses of people, a large but essentially simple vision. Neither demonstrated any notable talent for critical analysis or practical detail. They understood intuitively how to inspire and how to lead, and how to assemble teams to implement their visions. They trusted fully in a small number of firmly held principles, and as long their friends and associates pledged allegiance to those principles, they assumed they had no reason to be wary of anything else those friends or associates might believe or do. And when that assumption proved faulty and expectations went awry, they possessed a remarkable ability to dismiss the troublesome evidence as a blip, a momentary aberration — certainly not a fundamental weakness in their vision or judgment.

In other words, to put it more bluntly, Ronald Reagan and Billy Graham were simpletons, who lacked the kind of worldly sophistication and Progressive outlook that William Martin would applaud.

Yet, somehow, Ronald Reagan and Billy Graham managed to accomplish a lot.

The only places that I recollect when William Martin was a little more steamy were those where he dealt with Billy Graham's friendship with Richard Nixon. And what other dead horses beside Richard Nixon are there that enlightened and Progressive-minded individuals, such as William Martin, never cease beating, and beating, even though this dead horse had long ago decayed into a pulpy, maggot-eaten carcass? In William Martin's view, Billy Graham's greatest peccadillo was his having been friendly with Richard Nixon. And as every self-respecting Progressive knows, we must never stop hating on the nefarious Richard Nixon.

Be that as it may, I still recommend William Martin's biography of Billy Graham. I did note various places in the book where typos occurred. I would award William Martin's book three stars out of five, an average book.

I, Lonnie

A Book Review

Title: Not by Might, Nor by Power
Subtitle: Set Free
Author: Lonnie Frisbee, with Roger Sachs

This book review concerns the third book of a three book series that is Lonnie Frisbee's posthumous autobiography, which is titled Not by Might Nor by Power. I have already reviewed the first and second books in the series. I strongly suggest that these two reviews should be read first.

Published back in March of this year, the book Set Free consists of twenty-six chapters. The book is a little longer the each of the previous two books.

Chapters one through twenty-one contains Lonnie's memoir, which covers the ten year period from when he left the Anaheim Vineyard in 1983 until about the end of 1991. Intermingled with Lonnie's own recollections are numerous testimonies from people who interacted with him at various stages during these years.

Chapter twenty-two, entitled Eternal Perspectives, could be considered Lonnie's apologia and farewell address, in which he gives his final testimony regarding his life. This chapter might be the most important thing that Lonnie ever wrote, and it contradicts much of the consensus regarding him that you will find by googling the Internet. Now some people will be very disappointed with this chapter if they come to it expecting to get from Lonnie an endorsement of the various nostrums, concepts, agendas, labels, categories, prescriptions, and ideological constructs of contemporary identity politics.

After this, the next three chapters of the book were entirely put together by Roger Sachs, from his and other people's recollections. These describe the final fifteen months of Lonnie's life when his health began to deteriorate, his death at age 43 on March 12, 1993, his funeral, and burial.

The last chapter of the book is more or less a collection of eulogies, in which various people reminisce about Lonnie and the impact he had on their lives. Possibly the most noteworthy item in this chapter, for those who will hear and understand, is a retraction issued on page 271 by Kenn Gulliksen, the original founder of Vineyard. Following this chapter, the book ends with a short postscript by Roger Sachs where he announces that a fourth book, a supplement to the autobiography, might be in the works and which will consist of several transcripts of Lonnie's sermons, along with some other miscellaneous material.

My Overall Assessment

For me, the third book, Set Free, was the most critically important of the three books, and the most heartbreaking to read. It elucidates for the readers a more complete picture of Lonnie's personality, including his character flaws and deep emotional injuries. The book also demonstrates the tremendous grace that God worked in Lonnie's short life, although we had to wait 26 years after his death for his story to be published. And it does a fairly good job of relating the struggle that Lonnie went though as he climbed out of the dark hole of bitterness and backsliding into which he had fallen for a time. I very much recommend Set Free, and I can only hope that it will appeal to a wide audience and have a major impact. It would be good if down the line Roger Sachs published a hardback edition that contains the entire autobiography in one volume.

Two Underlying Themes

On page 1, in the Introduction, Ken Fish made the following observation regarding prophets:

…one of the rarest and least well understood are prophets of power. Such prophets are enigmas who nearly defy description…. They are people who carry something of the overt, explicit, numinous power of God…. Moses, Samuel, and Elijah were such prophets, and so was Lonnie Frisbee. [emphasis mine]

He was being a little rhetorical by putting Lonnie on a par with Moses, Samuel, and Elijah, but Ken Fish does have a point. Lonnie Frisbee was in many ways an enigma. So how does someone go about writing a critical biography about an enigma? Well, it would be difficult and may require a certain amount of inspiration.

Now by the term "critical," I simply mean employing a careful process of methodically examining and weighing the sources, trying to discern motivations and reasons, and then constructing the story about a person's life in a more chronological form — where the purpose is not that of debunking or destroying, but instead to gain a better understanding. For a biographer, one difficulty about Lonnie's memoir is that he isn't overly concerned about giving dates and timelines when he tells us his recollections. He was a preacher and not a scholar or historian. Another problem is that Lonnie doesn't always explicitly tell the readers everything that he knew regarding a situation. We often have to fill in the blanks, connect the dots, and read between the lines.

If I were setting out to write a critical biography about Lonnie Frisbee, I could begin by pointing out several things. First of all, as the saying goes, Israel loved its prophets, after they were dead. And secondly, the Church (in particular the leadership thereof) didn't always treat its mystics all that well while they are still alive. And in many ways this was also true about Lonnie Frisbee — although it can be said that even after his death he still isn't well regarded by many people. In any case, I would state that there are, at a minimum, two major themes that underlie his life, which are very intertwined:

1. His personal tragedy
2. His difficult relationship with church leadership

There are other themes in Lonnie's autobiography, some of which were covered in earlier reviews, but I would like to cover these two in particular, as briefly as I can.

Personal Tragedy

The first of these themes began in Lonnie's early childhood and would affect him throughout his life. His father Ray Frisbee was alcoholic, very violent, and had severely traumatized Lonnie as a very young child. In my opinion, the physical abuse he gave his wife and children should have sent Ray Frisbee to a penitentiary for a very long time. Let me further illustrate the lasting effects of this in Lonnie's life by pointing out an incident, mentioned in Set Free, that occurred many years later. On one occasion, probably sometime after 1990, Roger Sachs suggested to his friend Lonnie that he needed to meet up and be reconciled with his father, Ray Frisbee. However, Lonnie's reaction was swift and very angry. He became "totally unglued" at Roger's suggestion, and the readers can easily imagine the cause behind Lonnie's intense feelings about the issue. Furthermore, Roger doesn't record anywhere that Ray Frisbee had ever changed or had expressed any remorse for how he had treated his children. And Lonnie also tells the readers that Ray Frisbee once had assaulted and nearly murdered Wesley, one of Lonnie's brothers. This must have made it doubly hard for Lonnie to cheerfully accept Roger's advice, however well-intentional it might have been. Given all this, we should ask instead why Roger was surprised at Lonnie's very heated reaction. The book never informs us if Lonnie ever met with Ray afterwards, and we can therefore assume that it must have been too painful for Lonnie to do so. The incident is enough to show us that for Lonnie the wounds down in his heart were still raw and bleeding.

Later, when he was growing up into adolescence, Lonnie experienced nothing but complete rejection from his stepfather Lyle. This was bad enough. The only light that came through was the godly influence of a grandmother, which led Lonnie to have faith in Christ at the age of eight. Throughout his autobiography, Lonnie always maintained that this was the starting point of his relationship with God. But what proves the existence of the Devil, who hates what is good and wants to destroy our souls? How much proof do you need? The reader is told that shortly thereafter a male teenage babysitter had started terrorizing Lonnie by sexually molesting him, which occurred repeatedly over a extended period of time. As Lonnie expressed it in chapter 22:

That was the beginning of a nightmare in my life that I cannot fully express. That babysitter was a dark evangelist sent by demonic forces to ruin my life two weeks after I became a christian as a child. [213]

Lonnie's mother and stepfather, for some reason, never had the wherewithal to watch, listen, and understand what this predator was doing. This was a case of parental negligence that bordered on criminal. Now the term "broken" is the one word that Lonnie's friends used most often throughout the book to describe him, and we can understand why it seems almost like a glib understatement. For what person could endure all this abuse and not end up becoming deeply confused, vulnerable, and psychologically scarred? Later in the 1960s, Lonnie drifted off into experimentation with drugs and the dissolute hippie lifestyle, and all these entail. That this would eventually happen is not surprising, and Lonnie's story could have ended there, as a drug overdose statistic in some back alley near the Haight-Ashbury. But God's grace and calling reached down and changed the direction of things that singular day when Lonnie was hiking alone up in Taquitz Canyon.

Church Leadership

A critical biographer would also have to deal with the second major theme of Lonnie's life; that is, his complicated and often difficult relationship with church leadership, specifically pastors Chuck Smith, Bob Mumford, and John Wimber. These men could be considered the most important substitute "father figures" in Lonnie's life. And in the book Set Free, it is John Wimber who played the most crucial role in the story.

The most surprising aspect of Lonnie's autobiography is the one question it never fully answers: Did these "father figures" in his life ever have the percipience to see beneath the surface of things and understand that Lonnie, though he was gifted in a most unusual and powerful way, was also a deeply wounded man who also needed help? This is what I wonder about the most. Apparently at the time they did not, as far as I an tell. And it is especially sad that John Wimber didn't, which is something even more difficult to understand given that John Wimber in his ministry had put some emphasis on "inner healing." Yet Lonnie never gave us in his autobiography any clear answers to this important question. From reading Set Free, we do know that there was an especially catastrophic breakdown in Lonnie's relationship with John Wimber, which would have a very drastic impact on Lonnie's life.

But what was the cause of the breakdown? Again, we are never told exactly what happened at this very crucial turning point in Lonnie's story, which occurs on pages 12 to 13 of Set Free. We do know that the breakdown must have been traumatic, in that all trust was destroyed, because thereafter Lonnie immediately plunged into a rapid downward spiral of anger, bitterness, isolation, backsliding, and drug addiction. His reaction would become very self-destructive, and it would take several years for him to begin recovering from the dark wilderness he went through. It is very much to the credit of Rich Buehler and Phil Aguilar, whom Lonnie encountered later, that they were perceptive enough to see a little of the deeper picture, and as a result they sought to help Lonnie find recovery, emotional stability, and wholeness.

It is easy to find on the Internet a huge amount of misinformation regarding the reasons for Lonnie's departure in 1983 from Vineyard and his breakup with John Wimber. But the reader can check pages 12 to 13 for himself to get Lonnie's own recollection about what had happened during this very important point in his life. I will briefly recount here what he said:

One of he final blows for me at the Vineyard happened soon after in 1983. Lots of rumors about my sexuality were circulating, but my role at the church stayed on the same schedule. I had my own office, and when there were no trips or speaking engagements, I had counseling appointments scheduled like the rest of the pastors on staff.…

…all kinds of temptations and demonic setups seemed to be increasing. I decided to confide with and seek some help from one of the other pastors I respected and considered a friend. I asked this experienced staff leader if I could confidentially share some struggles I was experiencing and then told him about the gal in my office. In addition to attractive women throwing themselves at me, there were gay men doing the same. I knew for an absolute certainty that the satanic strategy was to label me a homosexual to discredit everything about my ministry. I had rejected that lifestyle, knew the Scriptures concerning the subject, and was seeking prayer from this pastor for all the attacks coming at me from both men and women.

The next day John Wimber confronted me and wanted to know the name of the young women who had exposed herself. The pastor "friend" had broken my confidence and taken the information directly to our leader. I was furious!

I told John, "I'm not telling you!"

"You have to tell me! I'm the senior pastor!"

"Well, I won't! I already dealt with the person, and besides, your trusted senior staff pastor broke a confidential agreement with me!"

That was that — or so I thought. The next day I came to the church and asked the secretary for my schedule. I was told that there were no appointments scheduled. The next day was the same, and the next, and the next for two weeks straight. I got so bored that I shut the window blinds, laid on the carpet, and went to sleep every day! It only got worse from there. I had several more meetings with John Wimber over the next couple months, and more accusations came at me until my final blowup when I declared, "I quit!"

There are several things a biographer would notice in this account. First of all, Lonnie had already gracefully handled an awkward situation with the young woman, and he wanted to spare her any further embarrassment. Also, Lonnie had a mind of his own and was not overawed by John Wimber. Therefore, he wasn't going to comply with John's demand to divulge the lady's identity. John probably did not like getting this kind of pushback from a younger subordinate. Secondly, Lonnie does not tell the readers who the "senior staff pastor" was. Since we know this incident happened in 1983, a diligent biographer could probably track down who this person was without too much trouble. Whoever he was, he had in extreme betrayed Lonnie's trust. This was bad enough, but John Wimber next added ridiculousness to the situation by clearing Lonnie's appointment roster yet expecting Lonnie to turn up for work everyday. This kind of pettiness makes no sense and is a ludicrous way to send a signal to someone. For if John Wimber didn't want Lonnie to do any more counseling, then why didn't he just tell him to stay home? Finally, in the meetings with John over the "next couple months", the tension must have increased, for Lonnie tells us, "more accusations came at me." Something must have gone very wrong. However, this is a case where Lonnie, for some reason, had decided not to tell the readers all that he knew about the situation, and the readers are left having to make educated guesses. We can only assume that John Wimber must have been the person making the accusations. But where was John Wimber getting his information? And where were the two or more witnesses as required by the Scriptures:

Do not entertain a accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. [1st Timothy 5:19 NIV].

And what exactly were the accusations? When approaching this difficult question, the biographer will have to take into account several things. First of all, by the time Lonnie and Roger Sachs had begun working in earnest on putting together the autobiography, Lonnie was already going through an program of professional therapeutic counseling to deal with his emotional and psychological issues. These counseling sessions were undertaken in response to the suggestions made to Lonnie when he had earlier met up with Rich Buehler. And according to Buehler, Lonnie was greatly helped and had made progress. Secondly, Lonnie was also by this time actively involved with pastor Phil Aguilar's Set Free church in Anaheim, and Lonnie had started ministering again publicly under Phil's supervision. Thirdly, and very importantly, towards the end of his life, Lonnie had started receiving much needed financial support from Vineyard Ministry International (VMI), with John Wimber's permission. This support consisted of an small apartment on Balboa Island, a car, and a modest monthly stipend. Roger Sachs informs the readers in chapter 24 that Steve Zarit and Paul Cain were the ones who separately convinced John Wimber to provide help for Lonnie.

Whatever they were, Lonnie knew the accusations were false. He wanted to tell the readers the truth about what had happened, yet at the same time he also wanted as much as possible to avoid casting John Wimber in a bad light. In other words, he wanted to cover for John Wimber, because to do otherwise would have been very ungrateful, especially since Lonnie was receiving financial support from VMI. Furthermore, by the time he was putting together his autobiography, Lonnie had largely worked through his feelings of anger and bitterness, and he had genuinely forgiven John for the wrong that was done. "Love covers a multitude of sins," as the Scriptures tell us in 1st Peter 4:8. I believe this is the simplest and most plausible explanation for why Lonnie didn't give more detailed information regarding this crucial incident in his life.

Some Minor Criticisms

I do have a few very minor criticisms regarding Set Free. I have kept this until last because I don't want to detract from my recommendation of the book. So feel free to ignore this section.

Lonnie's autobiography incorporates the testimony of other people to convey and confirm what was happening at various stages in his life. The third book Set Free leaned a little more in this direction than the previous two books. However, there is always a danger from uncritically pasting in testimony from other people — they sometimes have their own agendas, or axes to grind, and they might assume that their being asked to submit a contribution to the autobiography also constituted a kind of open-ended invitation to toot their own horns. There are a couple of places in the book where I think that things got a little bit out of hand in this regard.

The first of these involves Paul Cain, who died in February of 2019 shortly before Set Free was published. My view is that Cain's actual contribution to Lonnie's autobiography seemed to be materially pretty negligible. And what he said in pages 73 through 78 looked more like attempt by Paul Cain to puff up his own ministry. Other than one time, through a third party, sending Lonnie a "message", Paul Cain apparently never had any substantive interaction with Lonnie, although they had coincidentally attended the Docklands conference in October of 1990 — there Paul Cain and John Wimber were up on the stage, and Lonnie was somewhere in the audience. However, Paul Cain does mention that Lonnie was up in the balcony during a side meeting held at Kensington Temple around that time, stood up, and loudly prophesied. Paul apparently knew who the person was, although John Wimber didn't acknowledge that it was Lonnie:

And Lonnie, I remember, sat in the balcony on the left side of this church, and at one point he got up and gave a prophecy that just rang out all through the meeting without a microphone or anything. It made the hair on my neck stand straight up. It had a resonance about it; it was a real prophecy, but he and John Wimber had already parted ways, and John didn't acknowledge or recognize him in the meeting or anything. [78]

Lonnie once said that he had a "microphone voice." In any case, Lonnie didn't give the readers any details about the "message" from Paul other than "that I needed to reach out to a particular list of people and attempt to reconcile with them" (see page 79). Lonnie later mentioned that John Ruttkay was on the list, but otherwise we are not told who else was on it.

The second instance is where, on pages 87 to 96, Phil Aguilar spends a good amount of time talking about his own ministry. However, Phil's bold self-promotion here is much more excusable because he did give Lonnie a helping hand at a time when Lonnie very much needed it.

Paul Cain died on February 12th, not long before final book of Lonnie's autobiography was published. It is interesting to note that Paul Cain and Phil Aguilar are also controversial people, each in his own way. However, that would be an altogether different topic, and covering it would make this book review much too lengthy.

Final Words

I would like to end this book review of Not by Might Nor By Power by citing a few words from Ken Fish, given on page 2:

Lonnie left us all too soon, and the drama of his life and death reverberates through the pages of this book. … this small, frail, conflicted individual who carried the power of the Spirit and who sought to say yes to Jesus and to follow in his footsteps.

I regret that I never met him.

Epistles to Lonnie Frisbee

Letter #10

Seraph Postal - Forever

Dear Lonnie,

First of all, after waiting for such a long time, I finally got a copy of the third book of your posthumous autobiography. It came in the mail back on March 30th. As anticipated, it is subtitled "Set Free". It is slightly longer than either of the preceding two books, and it covers the years from when you quit your ministry position at Anaheim Vineyard in 1983 until your final illness and departure from this sad world in 1993. Your book is very interesting, and I will probably need to read it through about four times so I can digest completely the various topics you covered.

Now I don't need to tell you the details of what is in your own book. And you probably already know the final text that your friend Roger Sachs laid out. My guess is that you are satisfied that your side of the story is out there finally. It took a little over 26 years for Roger to finish it and get it published. But I think that taking this long was unfortunate, and I wish that it had been done much sooner. On the other hand, the long delay is understandable given that Roger also had many other responsibilities, such as running his own construction business as well as a foreign mission ministry on the side. But still, 26 years is an awful long time! The book indicates that he and you had already done much of the work on your story back in the 1990s.

It is likely, after I finish thoroughly studying Set Free, that I will write out a brief book review. Your book will get a positive review from me. I can tell you that ahead of time. It was very worthwhile to read, and it also gave a more complete picture of what your personality was like. You had your ups and downs (way down), and you could be overly candid with people, outspoken to the point of being tactless and undiplomatic, even with your friends. It is easy to see how you could have gotten yourself on the bad side of church leadership by speaking your mind too openly. This further reinforces my view that, if somehow you were still here today, you would have a difficult time fitting into the system. But your book shows me that over time you learned to tone it down.

Lonnie, there were several places in the book where I wished you had retained more of your outspokenness and had given a more detailed explanation about what was happening behind the scenes. There are several things that are not clear to me, the reader. For example, on pages 12 to 13 regarding the circumstances surrounding your departure in 1983 from Vineyard, I don't entirely understand what the problem was between you and John Wimber. I am talking about the point in the narrative where, after explaining how John had de-scheduled you from doing any more pastoral counseling sessions, you finally said, "I had several more meetings with John Wimber over the next couple months, and more accusations came at me until my final blowup, when I declared ‘I quit!’"

I suppose that you were trying to cover for John Wimber here to avoid as much as possible casting him in a bad light. From what I know about John, he was a godly leader, but he also was fallible and could make some serious mistakes, which later he would come to regret, have to walk back, and apologize for. However, I also think you should have been more up front about what exactly happened, especially at this very crucial point in your story. The readers should have been given more insight about John's motivations, at least as they existed at that time. As it is now, the picture is blurry, and I am reduced to guessing about the reasons behind what transpired.

You mentioned that multiple rumors and accusations had been circulating about you. But who exactly were your accusers? Did they have names and faces? Were you ever allowed to confront them? Where was John Wimber getting his information from? Why did he give it any credence? Where were the (1 Tim 5:19) witnesses? You never really provided answers for these questions. But it sounds to me, going by what was written in your book, that you were being pushed by John into an unfair no-win situation, as if he had determined beforehand that he was going to shut you down and had found some convenient pretext for doing so. Consequently, there was no feasible way to defend yourself no matter what you say or do. And you became extremely frustrated with the situation, blew up at John, quit your position at Vineyard, and in anger walked out on him. There was a complete breakdown, which had huge repercussions on you afterwards. I am just wanting to understand fully the reasons for the breakdown.

John Wimber might have been under a lot of pressure at the time, or at least that's one possible theory. You know how accusations work in the real world — they don't have to be true in order to be truly destructive. When accusations get repeated often enough, they can take on a perverse, inextirpable life of their own. And labels, once applied, are worse than difficult to remove. Looking at the situation this way, I can only imagine the havoc that self-appointed vigilantes could have inflicted on John and Vineyard if they had latched onto the accusations against you, used them as high-explosive ammunition, and started broadcasting everywhere "hey people, look here, the heretic John Wimber is also allowing a such-and-such person to continue to minister at Vineyard churches!" And they were very influential (they still are) and had platforms from which they could do serious damage. One noteworthy inquisitor had his own well-known national radio program. Others published widely circulated books — there is a big market for books by makebates — and they were often invited to expound their imprecations from the pulpits of various churches. I remember that one of these vigilantes was also invited to speak at Harvest several times.

If I look at things from this perspective, John Wimber's motivations in the story might be more understandable to me. I mean, for example, where he repeatedly took steps to make sure that you would never be invited to minister at any other Vineyard churches (such as the "telephone calls" you mentioned). Now some readers easily could interpret this as a form of stalking, motivated by spite. However, it is very difficult for me to imagine that he was acting simply from a malicious desire to hurt you — although I must admit it showed a side of John Wimber that isn't pretty to behold. But I suspect that, given the pressures he was under, John might have calculated that the risks for the Vineyard brand name were just too great if he allowed you to continue having any ministry visibility. Do you remember what I said in a previous letter about reputation, how important it is? More than they like to admit, church leaders are concerned about reputation and therefore can bend under the pressure of controversy — and you were always controversial if nothing else.

Another puzzling incident is later in 1985 when John requested a meeting with you, which the book covered on pages 31 to 33 and which you attended. This looked to me like it might have been a lost opportunity to turn things around. However, you rejected John's offer, which seemingly had mild conditions attached, and you said that "I didn't really trust him or his motives at the time" and that "he is trying to shut me down and label me." Something in your relationship with him had gone terribly wrong. Although I think you were far more perceptive than your friends gave you credit for, you didn't clearly explain to the readers what the underlying issues were here. Why exactly didn't you trust John? What do you think his motives were? Why was he trying to shut you down? Is the "label" the same one that you mentioned on page 13? Lonnie, I am just trying to understand what actually happened. There are other examples where I wish a more complete picture had been provided for the reader.

I get the distinct impression from reading your book that over time you came to regard your fractured relationship with John Wimber as very much tied to all the heavy psychological baggage you carried. Yes, you had a problem with feelings of rejection, and you became very embittered and angry, and you needed to overcome these things. But was everything strictly a one-way street? Was the onus only on your side, like a one-man seesaw? It is sad to say this, Lonnie, but people have been abused or mistreated by clergy due to malfeasance, incompetence, misguided priorities, or good intentions. Church leadership doesn't always get it right — what happened on page 94 was a very sad example of this. And you yourself said on page 6, "Good men can be really wrong," and "the more power and authority they get, the more chances they have to be wrong." True, you had to learn forgiveness, and you made it clear this was the major aspect of the Set Free story. But there must have been something to forgive. So I am guessing that, in their dealings with you, John Wimber and Chuck Smith might have made a few mistakes which they should have owned up to. Tell me, Lonnie, did they ever once apologize or ask you for forgiveness? About anything? The book doesn't say, which is strange. It was good that at least Kenn Gulliksen, the original founder of Vineyard, issued a retraction, given on page 271. I was very surprised by this, though I think it might have been added to the book just recently. He apologized for something in a "so-called Christian documentary" that he said about you, which was "due to false information that I was given from some church leaders." I think I have a good guess about what "documentary" he was talking about here. Heaven knows who the "leaders" were.

All this might not matter too much as far as you're concerned now, for every tear has been wiped away where you are, over there in The Sweet By And By. But we have the record you left us, your autobiography, parts of which were very heartbreaking to read. And after reading it, I can tell its major underlying theme: the severe traumas and rejection you experienced in childhood continued to affect you throughout your entire life. You were a "broken" individual, which is the word your friends most often used throughout the book to describe you. And it wasn't until after you met up with Rich Buhler that you started to get the kind of counseling you needed to begin healing your deep seated, emotional wounds. On the other hand, the substitute "father figures" in your life whose approval you most desperately wanted, John Wimber and Chuck Smith, apparently never had the percipience to understand what was going on beneath the surface of things and to see the break down in your heart. Wouldn't they have sought healing for you if they had? Instead, they treated you as if you were little more than a difficult employee — very useful to have around for some purposes but otherwise hard to manage — and when push came to shove, you were expendable.

Lonnie, I can try reading between the lines and connecting the dots, but in the end I have no choice but to accept your decision regarding how much information you wanted to tell the readers. Later on in the book, John Wimber agreed, at the instigation of others, to allow VMI to provide you with financial support during your final illness and decline. You were given a car, a small stipend, and an apartment on Balboa Island, your last earthly residence. Therefore, I can see some reason for why it would be very awkward, and downright ungrateful, if your book were to depict John Wimber too unfavorably. Consequently, some things had to be toned down, and some details had to be left out. But I get the distinct feeling — although the book wasn't clear about this — that your relationship with John Wimber here on Earth was never fully repaired. I am glad to know that now in Heaven it has been restored.

Now I want to move on to other topics …

Chapter 22 of Set Free could be considered your final farewell address before crossing the Jordan. Everyone should read it. By the way, Lonnie, can I borrow your mantle? Or at least your easel? (LOL) 😄

At the end of the book, when your friends eulogized you, some of them likened you to "Samson". I think this was just another label that people were trying to paste on you, a convenient way to make it easier for them to understand your life by putting you into a category of some kind. Your friends probably meant well by it, but labels were something that you always very much disliked. And I particularly disagree with the Samson analogy for several reason, most of all because I don't believe that it fits you. I think you would agree with me about this: you were scrawny little guy — "too light to fight and too thin to win" — and not a comic book level hero doing superhuman feats of strength, such as carrying off the gates of Gaza or killing a thousand Philistines using the jawbone of an ass. (Oh, by the way, have you met Samson yet up there in Glory Land? Did he ever grow his hair back out?)

The book indicated that you went to the Docklands Arena in England in October of 1990, though you were just out in the audience somewhere. Besides your meeting up again with Roger Sachs, I wish that you had told the readers more about why you were there, what you did, and what you saw. That conference was a crucial turning point for John Wimber and a big disappointment. The influential "prophet," who was with the Vineyard at that time and up on the stage with John, had to eat crow burgers afterwards because the big bang revival that earlier he had predicted would follow the "Holiness" conference simply did not happen. "I think we missed that one," he said on page 78. Who is this "we," Kemosabe?

Also, in the sermon you preached at Tom Stipe's church in Denver, back on July 20, 1991, you told the congregation about the "seven lights" vision, which hit you while reading Jamie Buckingham's biography about Kathryn Kuhlman. You never made it clear exactly when this vision occurred. Now at the end of the vision, you were told to "call Chuck Smith." Lonnie, you probably remember the part I am talking about…

Then He lowered a golden scepter at my head, and He said, "Thou art received in the beloved. Now call Chuck Smith."

I was brought back into my body. I called Chuck Smith. I hadn't talked with him in years. And I said — it was one-thirty in the morning — "Aah!! I am one of the seven lights!"

Old Chuck was going, "You need prayer!"

Lonnie, I must say that Chuck's response was a funny ending to the strange vision you told everybody about in your sermon, but I wish you would have told the readers a little more about what else transpired in that telephone conversation between you and Chuck Smith. Did you explain to Chuck all that happened? Did you and he discuss anything else? Or did Chuck just dismiss it all as lunacy and hang up on you? After that sermon in Denver, did Tom Stipe and you continue to be friends? Later, Tom went on to have his own falling out with Vineyard, as you probably know by now.

I noticed on page 229 that you paid a big compliment to Greg Laurie, saying you that were proud of him and calling him "one of the most dynamic evangelists in the United States." Yes, Greg's been hugely successful at the stadium level. And he even has a hired PR firm, The Kairos Company located in Glendale, that helps his news and media optics. You also added, "Of course, he definitely has his opinions about me, but that doesn't matter." And when I read this, it seemed as if you had prophetically anticipated what I said in my previous letter to you where I talked about Greg's latest book. I guess it also reinforces what you said in the angelgram you sent me. Yes, it's true that Greg does have his opinions. Whether he ever changes them is anyone's guess.

Finally, Roger Sachs gave a postscript at the end of the third book. In it Roger mentions a "prophecy" that was given to him by someone named Tom Chapman …

"Immediately, I heard just two words: ‘Book four!’"

"You got to be kidding, Tom!"

Lonnie's story had been such a long endeavor, with so many challenges, delays, and spiritual warfare, that Tom's message was not really welcome news at the onset.

Lonnie, the idea of a fourth book might be a surprise for you. But what Roger Sachs is proposing to do is publishing an additional book that contains transcripts of your recorded sermons, along with some other miscellaneous material. I guess it would be an interesting supplement to your autobiography. There is one thing I wish Roger would include in a fourth book: he should add an essay explaining all the difficulties and "spiritual warfare" that he faced in the process of getting Lonnie Frisbee's autobiography published. That in itself would be a very interesting story to read, and I think that Roger has shown himself to be a fairly good and perceptive writer. In fact, I wish it were possible for me to meet Roger. I do hope that he publishes this "book four" in a timely manner. But I am very glad that at last I have lived long enough to read the final book of your autobiography.

In other news, my wife's restaurant business, Bimbo's Coffee Pot, is doing very well. In fact, it's really taken off and become famous, so much that Gordon Ramsay has scheduled us to be filmed in an episode of his new show highlighting outstanding, excellent restaurants that do the job right. We don't know the name of the show yet, which will be on the Food Network, but we are looking forward to working with Gordon. He is especially fascinated by our authentic Byzantine desserts, which are truly extravagant and were derived from ancient Greek manuscript recipes from pre-Ottoman Constantinople. It should be a whole lot of fun. I can't think of much more to say for now, so I will end this letter. Please write me back, Lonnie, if you think I am getting things wrong. Thanks.

Forever young, you're set free at last. Shout hallelujah!

Sincerely yours,
Old and Grey and Weeping by the Rivers of Babylon

Epistles to Lonnie Frisbee

Letter #9

Seraph Postal - Forever

Dear Lonnie,

Thanks for sending me the angelgram. Yes, I did get it. Since this was the first one I have ever received, getting an angelgram was a strange, new experience for me. I was sleeping the other night, and something like the twinkly sound of a small bell woke me up. I opened my eyes and was very startled to see a bright pinpoint of light floating in the air about two feet above my head. Then I heard a feminine sounding, almost musical, voice say, "Request delivery of an angelgram from Lonnie Frisbee. Do you accept delivery?" The voice seemed to be coming from the point of light. Though I felt very unnerved, I managed to blurt out, a "yes, I accept." Next, the point of light expanded into a bright square of light. Then words started appearing inside the square, written in English. The nearest I can describe it, it was like looking at a chyron on the bottom on the screen when watching the news on television. As the words were being spelt out on the square, I could hear the voice reading the words to me. The message was pretty simple:

Don't worry about it, Bro. Thank you for your effort, but there is no need to write me any more letters about Greg Laurie's new book. I already know what's in the book. It's been shown to me. Please save your stamps. Greg will come around eventually. Blessings to you. Bye.

At that point, the square shrunk back down to a single point of light, which then gradually rose up to my ceiling and disappeared into the wall, and I was left there in the darkness, wondering about the strange sight I had seen. It seemed too vivid to be a dream. I take it that angelgrams are sent from Heaven in case a short message needs very quick delivery.

Lonnie, since you already know what's in Greg's book, Jesus Revolution, I guess I don't need to fill you in regarding all the details. And indeed I had made a lot of notes. There were a even a few instances in the book where Greg and his co-author simply got their facts garbled, probably due to sloppy research. But your angelgram has saved me from a lot of work trying to explain everything. And you have saved yourself from having to read another burdensome load of my stodgy prose. It is very good to hear that the saints in Heaven are not totally in oblivion regarding what's going on down here. Thanks for sending me the quick angelgram.

Just as I guessed, there is already a movie in the works, though it is not clear if it will be a documentary or a biopic. (What actor would portray Greg? Or You?) So far his new book is getting about 97% four-and-five star reviews. Let me say that, though you had forewarned me ahead of time about what to expect, I was still taken aback by what Greg Laurie had written about you. And because his book is backed up by an advertising budget, a well-oiled book publishing company, and Greg's own celebrity branding, it probably will become for the majority of people their picture of what must have happened, no matter how unfair or inaccurate or distorted the book's depiction of you might be. I think this is sad and very unfortunate, especially when I consider that in your autobiography you had said complimentary things about Greg. But if someone were to ask me today to concisely describe Greg's stance toward you, going strictly on the basis of what's in his book, more than anything else I would say it's like a hostile witness at a court trial.

You said, "Greg will come around eventually." Lonnie, I am not sure what you meant, and you have me a little confused. I assume that what you said is a good thing. Were you saying that Greg will be coming up there soon? Or that he will have a stadium crusade somewhere in my vicinity? Or did you mean that he'll change his mind about something he wrote in his book? I hope the later is the case.

Lonnie, this reminds me of something else: On the day I sent my previous letter to you, I had a peculiar dream about Greg Laurie. In my dream, which was in color, my wife and I were back inside that "bombed out shell" of a church building, the very same one on Arlington Avenue that Greg moved into after leaving All Saints. I could hear music playing in the background, which I think might have been Love Song playing "Since I opened up the door." We were inside, standing underneath the balcony at the back end. There were many other people present, as if there was a church service going on. I believe that the building originally had a small balcony, which was later remodeled to become a second floor. Now Greg came into the back to start talking to my wife, who was at my side. I was looking at him, and although I knew it was Greg, I noticed that he seemed different somehow. I then realized that he appeared to be regrowing hair on his head. The hair color was surfer blonde.

If I were to interpret this dream, I would say it meant that Greg, who is very bald, will reclaim something that he had lost or neglected. And this would lead to some kind of renewal in how he ministers to people. Or maybe he is going to receive his heavenly crown soon? That's about as much an interpretation I can put on this, but does it relate to what you told me about Greg coming around eventually?

In other news…

Lonnie, you remember Phil Aguilar? He is the "biker" pastor down in Orange county who has tattoos and a flamboyant personality and a tad of notoriety. I am sure he is pretty unforgettable. I recollect seeing an interesting video recording of you preaching at his church, years ago, where you spoke for about fifteen minutes to the people. Well, Phil has reported to everyone that the third book of your autobiography, Set Free, will finally be published in February of 2019. He might be in a position to know, so I hope this is true, but I don't know whether to believe it, given how many times that Roger Sachs has delayed publication with no explanations why. Lonnie, will I live long enough to ever read the third book? Are you allowed to say? More than ever your side of the story needs to be completely told.

There is nothing new to report about the Fireman. I am still waiting for his "prophecies" to come true. People take the few interviews the Fireman has done so far, and they cut them up, re-assign the slices new titles and dates, and then re-post them on YouTube. This makes it difficult to tell if he is saying anything new. I also noticed that now there is a discussion group on Facebook about his prophecies. Is it being run by dastardly Russians? Who knows? However, I am still keeping the Fireman in category #4 (indeterminate fruitcake) because when it comes to the "501(c)3" issue, he is definitely kooky and paranoid. So I am not going to hold my breath waiting for his "predictions" to come to pass. At most, he might get lucky on some of them.

As for other "prophets", I am currently starting to investigate a young guy named Charlie Shamp, if anything because he is an interesting case and has an outstanding hairdo, his thick black hair being pomaded and richly stacked up high on the top of his head. His "prophecies" are vatic in nature, specific, and often dealing with countries overseas and not just the United States.

I will mail you again as soon as I can. Lonnie, can you believe how short an epistle I have written to you?

Rejoice and be glad.

Sincerely yours,
Enduring the Long, Dreary Winter

Larry Norman

A Book Review

Title: Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music?
Subtitle: Larry Norman and The Perils of Christian Rock
Author: Gregory Alan Thornbury

This is a mini book review, and so I will try to keep this as short as possible. I only write lengthy reviews if I have had the chance to read a book at least three times. At this point in time, I have other projects I want to complete first.

Thornbury wrote an interesting rock'n'roll biography of the late musician Larry Norman (1947–2008). There was really no better person to write about Larry than Gregory Alan Thornbury, who has a doctorate from Southern Seminary, as well as many other academic honors, and who is currently Vice President at the New York Academy of Art. Additionally, if Wikipedia is to be believed, Thornbury was ordained as a Baptist minister, and he has authored several other acclaimed books. Besides all these, he once managed a small radio station:

When I was in college, I found myself thrown into management at a small radio station on our campus, which unfortunately, in my view, played adult contemporary Christian music. I hated virtually everything I heard. [250]

I imagine that it would be difficult for any competent writer not to write a modestly interesting biography about Larry Norman, mainly because Larry was, to say the least, a very, very peculiar amalgamation of seeming contradictions combined into one person — a man who actually took Xnty seriously but was also a highly talented and creative songwriter who took rock'n'roll music seriously — a highly volatile but fascinating combination. And because Larry Norman had kept a very extensive archive of documentary material about nearly everything he had done, a biographer would find an embarrassment of riches to draw from. I think it would be a worthwhile project if the Norman family were to publish in book form some of Larry's unpublished manuscripts and letters, maybe calling it the Larry Norman Compendium. Larry's own writing, as sampled in Thornbury's book, was intriguing, sometimes piercing and perceptive in its observations, and often displayed a wry humor. Since I have plenty of free time, maybe I could volunteer for this project?

I wonder. If he were still around, what would Larry Norman have thought of today's CCM, now that Hillsong United and Bethel Music and their imitators have taken over?

I highly recommend this biography to everybody. It is a well written book. There were only a few minor blemishes, which I will briefly mention without belaboring the point too much:

1. When providing a photograph of yourself for the jacket cover blurb, do not use a picture where your head is tilted back in such a manner as to accentuate your nostrils, while wearing a bow tie. It gives you a hoity-toity appearance that is not appealing.
2. Nietzsche sucks. Do not quote him as some kind of proof of something.
3. Sometimes good Homer nods. But be careful about depending too much on Wikipedia; it is notoriously unreliable. It might be useful as a starting point of investigation if there are references provided which can be tracked down and verified. For example, in the book, footnote 22 for chapter 6 is a flub because the information provided in Wikipedia concerning Wendell Burton and Vineyard has no reference at all. Some anonymous wiki editor just stuck it in there with no proof or citation.
4. Occasionally, the author lets seep a tad of, well, snottiness. For example, on page 182, speaking about the Daniel Amos band, the book says, "A mid-'70s clip shows the group … playing under the Maranatha! Holy Spirit “dove” logo before a packed room of docile white kids." [emphasis mine] Now most people would have perceived merely an audience of younger people who were politely appreciating the music they were hearing. But for some reason the author curls his lip and sneers at the "white kids." Really? What does being white have to do with anything here? It doesn't make much sense and just makes the author appear to be supercilious.

Other than these very minor quibbles, Gregory Alan Thornbury's book about Larry Norman is excellent. Of course, I don't agree with every opinion the author might have expressed. But everybody with half a brain and a serious interest in Larry Norman should read the book.

Epistles to Lonnie Frisbee

Letter #8

Seraph Postal - Forever

Dear Lonnie,

I apologize for taking so long to answer you. There are several reasons for the delay, which I shall explain, but I do want to acknowledge that I did receive your letter, and I thank you very much for your very helpful recommendations.

Besides the fact that your letters naturally glow in the dark, there were this time additional peculiarities about the letter you sent me that I should mention. First of all, after I checked its postmark, it appeared to me that there had been a 21 day delay before it arrived in my mail box. This is unusual because the Seraphic Mail Service normally transports mail on a "next day delivery" basis. Secondly, the angelic letter carrier had attached a sticky note to its envelope. The note was written using Hebrew characters, and so I assume this is the language that angels use for official business. It took me a while to get the note deciphered because I don't know how to read Hebrew, but once translated, the note simply stated that "special circumstances" had held up delivery of the letter, "those which required the intervention of archangel Michael to overcome unexpected opposition," and "please accept our sincere apologies for the unfortunate delay." Lonnie, I am guessing that, despite your being up there enjoying the Beatific Vision for all these years, you are still getting hassled, albeit indirectly, by those nefarious "principalities and powers" who were attempting to sabotage your mail enroute. But your letter did finally reach me.

Now concerning the subject of the prophetic, I hope I understand correctly what you wrote to me. You said that my five categories were a rough but workable sketch of a complicated picture, but they needed more refinement. You also indicated that I needed an additional category called "Balaam." As you said, this is because in their endeavor to "turn prophecy into a money-making professional career," some people had acquired very unwholesome motives and therefore had fallen into "the error of Balaam, who concocted bogus stuff that sounded like prophecy or who would tell people what they wanted to hear, all for the sake of money or gaining influence." Of course, Balaam was the prophet-for-hire who had to be rebuked by the talking donkey he rode on. I should have thought of this category before. Thank you for your suggestions. Finally, you mentioned that Heaven is very much aware that the prophet situation here on Earth has gotten "very overgrown" and was due for some "radical pruning soon," and that "too many people were attempting to get in on the act who really had no business being there." I have to agree, Lonnie, that things are a mess, a smoking dumpster fire.

Let me say that, while researching this subject, I also discovered, much to my surprise, that within charismatic circles there has been an on-going recrudescence of Postmillennialism in various forms. After taking this into account, it became easier for me to understand why some "prophets" were saying what they were saying (especially those in category #1 and #3). And I suspect that this may also explain many of the things the Fireman has been "prophesying." Nowadays Postmillenialism has many variations, and this letter would become too lengthy if I tried to cover them all in any detail. But roughly speaking, I would say that it's the notion that the Church is somehow entirely responsible for implementing the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth. Consequently, the Second Coming will happen only after the Church has been completely perfected and has somehow "christianized" all levels of society in all nations. But I need to put off talking any more about this topic, Lonnie, because I need to move on to the main reasons for this letter to you. There is only so much lambskin vellum to write on.

The last time I checked, someone told me that the third book of your autobiography, "Set Free," would come out before the end of this year. Should I believe this or not? I don't know anymore, given the miserable track record so far for unexplained delays. Lonnie, if you have any leverage at all, up there in glorious Heaven, please try to apply a little pressure on your ghostwriter Roger Sachs to get "Set Free" published. It's way past due. Maybe you can put in a request: If Roger were to get a friendly visit from an archangel…oh, wait, that might be too terrifying — I don't want to give poor Roger a heart attack, given how elderly he is, but you understand what I mean.

In your last letter, you told me that Greg Laurie's new book would be out very soon, but you added a word of caution. You said to me, "You should not be too surprised if Greg gets several things wrong." Well, sure enough, his hardback finally came out this September, and the book is entitled Jesus Revolution. Ellen Vaughn is the co-author, and the subtitle is How God Transformed an Unlikely Generation and How We Can Do It Again Today. Greg has been actively promoting this book with plenty of advertising and fanfare. I immediately bought me a copy. And I have been carefully reading through it and taking notes. So far I have gone through the book three times. Taking time on this is an additional reason for the long delay in writing an answer back to you.

If I were to make a guess, it would be that the coauthor Ellen Vaughn did most of the actual keyboard grunt work producing drafts of the book. And she probably was responsible for most of the research while putting together the background material regarding what was happening in America in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. However, I think it would be nearly indisputable that Greg Laurie was the person who had the final say about the content and objectives of the book, especially the biographical parts regarding himself and his wife, and the events surrounding pastor Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel. This is why, hereinafter, I shall often refer to it as "Greg's book," not that I want to deny Ellen Vaughn her proper credit.

You see, Lonnie, I don't think that your place in history can be erased, at least not entirely. However, people can engage in various degrees of historical revisionism in an effort to spin things in certain directions. Now that I have read Greg Laurie's Jesus Revolution, I was disappointed to discover that his book is yet another example of this being done. I don't have any Seraphic parcel postage stamps; for if I had, I would just mail you a copy of Greg's book so you could read it for yourself and see what I mean. But you are entirely correct. What I shall give you here, in this and future letters, is derived from my notes, where I wrote down my observations and criticisms as I was reading Greg's book. Some relevant quotations from his book will be included along with my comments.

Before I begin, however, let me first state that overall Greg's book is an interesting and curious hodgepodge. I would not be surprised if someone tries to turn it into a movie. True, the book does contain a thumbnail history of the 1960s and 1970s, and hippies and Calvary Chapel and Chuck Smith — mainly for the benefit of the Millennials, who were born too late to know about this stuff — but it was obviously not intended to be a detailed, chronological history of the Jesus People Movement in Riverside and Orange counties, down in SoCal. If people were expecting that, they would be disappointed. The lives of Greg Laurie and his wife Cathe, told in the third person, are the book's primary focus, though not much more is revealed about them than what has already been made known publicly. Greg is really a very private person, and he doesn't disclose personal details other than what fits into some evangelical objective of his. A better subtitle for the book could have been The Adventures of Greg and Cathe During The Jesus Movement and Beyond, or How You Too Can Have Explosive Success in Your Church Just Like Pastor Chuck Smith Did. The book finishes with the funeral of Chuck Smith, followed by three more chapters of sermonizing about America and revivals, which mostly repeats the conventional, evangelical wisdom on the subject. And I must say that it was a strange feeling for me to read about people and events which in some cases I have witnessed for myself, if only as a bystander in the crowd. As books go, it was passable, notwithstanding that Greg pretty much depreciates the charismatic aspect of Calvary Chapel and spins the narrative when it comes to your own involvement.

There is a long-haired teenage boy. He looks like he's about seventeen. He's more quiet and reserved than the girls, as if he still carries the burdens of the past dead ends of drinking, drug use, and skeptical despair. A bearded pastor in a flowing tunic, sopping wet, dunks the young man down in the cold water for a long moment. It's as if he's been buried.

Then the hippie pastor raises the kid up, and the teenager bursts out of the sea, water streaming down his face and hair and shoulders. His heart is on his face, and he is weeping. … [12]

Lonnie, here on page 12 in the prologue is probably where you are first mentioned in Greg's book. However, you have been shifted into being a nameless "hippie pastor" that baptizes Greg, who is likely the "kid" being mentioned here. There were not many "hippie pastors" at Calvary Chapel who had a beard and a trademark "flowing tunic." It was obviously you. Of course, it really doesn't matter who baptized Greg. But did Greg intentionally leave your name out, being careful from the very start to maintain a certain amount of distance between himself and you? I suspect this might be the case, especially when I consider the overall effect of what gets written about you further along in Greg's book. As I share more and more of my notes, you will see what I mean when I say that there is a pattern that develops — the cuts get a little deeper as the pages turn.

Some were like Samson — mightily blessed by God, but then they fell off his wagon. [17]

You remember, Lonnie, that your funeral at the Crystal Cathedral was packed out. But didn't it seem odd to you that so many people turned out for it? Where did all these "friends" come from? Where were they before in those few years before you died? More than one person came up and eulogized you, and one of them drew a comparison between you and Samson. A little later, pastor Chuck Smith came up to speak, and he carried this simile farther down the road. So from that time forward, people have only remembered Chuck as the one saying this about you. Anyone who knows the Bible knows exactly what they were implying: that just like Samson, though you were "gifted," you were a moral failure, who ultimately did yourself in by your own reckless behavior. Consequently, Lonnie, this is how you have been viewed ever since, notwithstanding what actually happened in the last few years of your life. I think it is unmistakable that you are the one that Greg had in mind here when he wrote this. Do you see what I mean?

One of the younger people who floated into San Francisco that summer was a seventeen-year-old art student named Lonnie Frisbee. Lonnie was from Southern California and had dropped out of high school there to enroll in an art school in San Francisco.

Lonnie told his friends he'd had an awful childhood. His biological father was a serial adulterer, a drunk who beat Lonnie and his mom and eventually left her for another woman. Lonnie's mother tracked down the other woman's husband and eventually married him. The new stepdad hated and rejected Lonnie and his brothers. Then, beginning at age eight, Lonnie was sexually molested by a seventeen-year-old guy from the neighborhood who babysat for the family. The adults in Lonnie's life did not believe his story.

There was one bright spot: a godly grandmother who took Lonnie to church and encouraged him to dream. So, though he'd been born with clubfoot, he dreamed of being a Mouseketeer and dancing on television. … As a teenager Lonnie worked on his dance moves, and his dreams almost came true when he was recruited to be a regular dancer on a local afternoon TV show that featured live bands. It was called Shebang, and it was as groovy as afternoon TV could get.

Lonnie got into drugs in his early teens, first acid and other hallucinogens, then dope. (He as initially scared to try marijuana because of a drug deterrent film called Reefer Madness that was routinely shown in the public schools. Anyone who took the movie's message to heart knew that dope was the certain doorway to death, destruction, and insanity.)

But eventually Lonnie succumbed to reefer madness as well as the madness of every other drug on the streets, which was saying a lot. He went out to the desert, tripping, looking for UFOs. He protested the Vietnam War, hitchhiked up and down the coast of California, and spent a lot of time seeking God in a canyon near Palm Springs. One time he and a hundred of his closest friends were arrested for doing so, only because they were all naked and smoking dope at the time.

So in 1967, Lonnie Frisbee was just another vegetarian nudist druggie on the scene. But that was about to change, and he would become a key figure in California's Jesus Movement. [62-63]

Here on pages 62 to 63, you can see a sample of the book's breezy, journalistic style, in which Greg basically repeated, in a summary way, much of what you have already told us in your autobiography about your early life. There were no big surprises here. However, Greg completely left out details regarding your experiences at church and Camp Seely, which you considered the actual starting point of your relationship with God, though as a teenager you would later drift away for a time. Maybe these details were left out merely for the sake of brevity. However, I think I can show that in several other places Greg left out critically important information in such a way that causes the reader to get the wrong impression about you.

Like Lonnie Frisbee and everybody else in that era, Greg had seen the films in his public high school warning about the madness of marijuana. [64]

This is possibly one thing that Greg, you, and I have in common on an earthly level, besides being artistic types who had various degrees of difficulty in our family life when growing up. Yes, Lonnie, I too saw the educational film Reefer Madness. The only difference is that I never tried the stuff, but the film had nothing to do with deterring me. I do confess that once in the middle of a vast crowd at a Deep Purple concert, long ago, at the Orange Show Event Center in San Bernardino, someone offered me a "hit." I speak the truth, Lonnie, when I say that I politely refused. That was that.

I have many more notes to share with you about Greg's book, but I see that I am now running out of lambskin vellum on which to write this letter to you. Though my rams are as busy as possible, my ewes can only produce so many lambs per month, and the process of slaughtering a lamb and preparing the vellum, according to the Seraphic Postal specifications, takes time and painstaking effort. Please stand by, Lonnie. I am sure you are patient since you have plenty of time now. When I have another batch of vellum, I shall write back to you, and you will understand a little better my reasons for agreeing with your initial assessment.

Shout Glory.

Sincerely yours,
Exiled in My Own Personal Idaho

Bethel Music

A Few Observations

According to taxemptworld.com, Bethel Music is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation (FEIN 47-4005681), whose mailing address is 5090 Caterpillar Rd., Redding, CA 96003-1412. Its stated purpose is:

Production, publication, and sale of assets exclusively for the benefit of Bethel Church of Redding (FEIN 94-1514037).

The most recent information is that Bethel Music holds approximately 1 million dollars in assets, and its annual income is 10 million dollars.

Yes, you have read that correctly. Its annual income is 10 million dollars. The purpose of Bethel Music is to benefit Bethel Church. That's probably a whole lot of benefit, even when you subtract out the operating expenses. I was surprised.

So if there are any church leaders out there who dislike pastor Bill Johnson and Bethel Church but don't mind paying Bethel Music licensing fees to use its copyrighted worship music — because it is trendy and "top of the charts" — well, be aware that those fees ultimately are used to benefit Bethel Church. This may or may not have been your intention.

My personal feelings are pretty much limited to the modest opinion that Bethel Music music is starting to be played to death (the same goes for Hillsong music). For example, "Reckless Love" gets kind of old after you have heard it in church about two or three dozen times. I think we're overdue to move on.

Santa Cruz Sentinel Obituary

Lonnie Frisbee

Published 1993 March 30 in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

A memorial service is set for Friday for Lonnie Frisbee, a Pentecostal minister who lived in the Santa Cruz area in the 1970s and founded ministries here. Widely known as the "hippie preacher" for two decades, Mr. Frisbee died March 12 at his Newport Beach home of a brain tumor. He was 43. Mr. Frisbee was a leader in the Jesus movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and gained international attention from his ministries to young people. He was a native of Santa Ana who moved to Santa Cruz in 1972 from Costa Mesa. Mr. Frisbee first gained attention at age 16 when he began preaching in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. His unorthodox ways, long hair, beard and bare feet gained him the title "the hippie preacher." In Santa Cruz, he helped establish a church, several discipleship homes, and a Christian commune on Soquel Avenue known as The Land that existed from 1975 to 1985. He preached often at the New Life Center. He moved from the area in 1977 but returned frequently, most recently in January. In the 1980s, Mr. Frisbee traveled to South Africa to aid in the founding of churches. He also started an orphanage in Brazil. Mr. Frisbee was recently was on staff of the Set Free Christian Fellowship, in Anaheim, a radical outreach ministry to the dispossessed. Mr. Frisbee is survived by his mother, Jeanette Graham of Banning; and brother Stanley Frisbee of Costa Mesa. A funeral was held March 17 in Garden Grove. The memorial service will be 7 p.m. Friday at Lighthouse Christian Fellowship, 4525 Soquel Drive, Soquel.

This newspaper obituary is interesting because it brings to light a few facts that were previously unknown to me. Santa Cruz is located on the northern side of the Monterey Bay area in California. Also, it also reports that Lonnie had done some ministry work in Santa Cruz, and that he was for a time on the staff at Phil Aguilar's church in Anaheim. I am still in the process of trying to track down more details, but at this point I believe that the "New Life Center" may possibly be connected with someone named Steve Stiles.

Epistles to Lonnie Frisbee

Letter #7

Seraph Postal - Forever

Dear Lonnie,

I was doing weed abatement for the county. When I checked over the property, I missed a patch of wild Lupine. Well, my sheep ate some of it, which is poisonous. So I ended up with some sick sheep. It took time for things to recover, but I now have enough vellum to write to you again and still have Seraphic Mail stamps. Please continue to cheer for me as I go through these various trials and tribulations down here on Earth.

The retired fireman from Florida, whom I told you about in my previous letter, is still making the circuit and has gathered a sizeable following, or so it seems judging by what's on YouTube and the Internet. I would say that at the minimum he is a "prophet wannabee," who has gotten attention because of the "Jean Dixon Effect." He had predicted, way back in 2011, that DJT would become president, although when I read the actual prophecy, the fireman appeared to have missed when this would happen. He was off by one election cycle. Nonetheless, he did get this one prediction correct back when the very idea of DJT ever becoming president was inconceivable.

I have listened to him being interviewed, and the fireman is very sincere, and he can sound almost convincing. He describes himself as very "mission oriented," which I suppose firemen are trained to be. However, I haven't found out what church community he is a part of, and so I can't reference any testimony about his overall track record or his character. His launching pad to fame was a single book (The Trump Prophecies) somebody co-authored with him, which got the attention of some big-name people who run websites and streaming TV. They're even trying to turn it into a movie. Furthermore, the fireman has made other specific predictions, which I'll mention further down in this letter. Of course, just being "sincere" and getting one prediction right doesn't necessarily establish that somebody is an authentic prophet. So can you ask around, Lonnie, up there in Glory Land to see if anybody has heard about this fireman? I was hoping you could write me back and tell me what the real story is. The guy's name is Mark Taylor, in case you need to know.

As you remember, when you lived down here back in the 1960s, you saw for yourself what freaked-out crazy times we had here in America. Nowadays, many years later, I daresay that things have gotten much worse, even in my memory, compared to that bygone era. We're now living in an Age of Misinformation and Paranoia. That's how I would describe the times. There is hardly anybody you can trust and believe anymore. The news is all fake. Everything is bogus. Everybody is suspect. People increasingly talk about "cold civil war" — indeed, there is a cultural civil war that's raging. And today's church is in omnishambles too, in my opinion. The Devil really doesn't need to do anything much to destroy Evangelicaldom in America, other than just tweaking things to maintain the current trajectory; because, all things being equal, it will simply devour itself. "There's a bad moon on the rise" — that's how it is going in America, Lonnie. And I think this general, all-pervasive malaise we feel might be one of the reasons why some people are giving this fireman "prophet" so much attention.

In fact, the last presidential election provided us only two dismal choices: Do we vote for HRC, the harridan who will give us an even more Stalinesque version of the previous administration? Or do we vote for DJT, the brash but successful real estate mogul who has a rather disorderly past as far as sexual morality goes? This was not a great selection to choose from. However, there was one big difference between them: HRC openly despises us Bible clingers and calls us "deplorables"; therefore, it was not likely that under her regime we would have been left alone and allowed some measure of "peaceful coexistence." On the other hand, for all his faults, at least DJT doesn't hate our guts. So what else could we do? Our situation seemed precarious. I can tell you, Lonnie, that all the pundits were cocksure certain that the harridan had the election in the bag — they never thought she would lose. Yet, miraculously, it was the mogul who won and became president, to everybody's complete, slack-jawed astonishment. But you can understand why the evangelicans had to "hold their noses" and vote for DJT.

Well, along comes the fireman, and what was his core message? His message was that God has "chosen this man" and "anointed him as President for such a time as this." Then he goes on to say:

This man I have chosen, will be a faithful world leader, and together with my army, will defeat all of America's enemies in the spiritual and in the natural. You will see it manifest before your eyes. I will use this man to shut gates, doors, and portals that this past president has opened. He will open gates, doors, and portals this past president has shut.

As you can tell, Lonnie, this hearkens back and is somewhat similar to what Isaiah said about Cyrus (Isa 45:1). If you think about it, you can understand why the fireman has gotten attention from a lot of people. Because if what he says was true, it would seem to validate for many people the choice we had to make, and that DJT is serving a larger divine purpose, which we don't see in its entirety yet. One thing is certain: there's never been a dull moment since DJT was elected president.

Also, when you read his prophecies, you will find that one of the fireman's peculiarities is his habitual use of rhyming words — it starts to sound a little like "Dr. Seuss." Another peculiarity is his vehement insistence that all churches everywhere immediately give up their 501(c)3 tax classification, which he calls a "demonic contract" or a "covenant with Baal". He is pretty extreme when it comes to this subject. After all these years, I guess the 501(c)3 is suddenly a big issue now. But I don't know of anyone else out there who is also calling for this. Finally, the fireman denounces anyone preaching "doom & gloom," which I suppose means anything that predicts the soon destruction of America, our only escape being martyrdom or the Rapture. As I said in my previous letter, I had the fireman classified under category #3.

There is, however, one very big problem — the fireman has made a slew of other predictions that have not come to pass, at least not yet or not completely. I will briefly list for you a few of his more salient predictions:

• DJT would serve two terms and not be impeached. [I recollect the fireman emphatically saying this in interviews.]
• "Even mainstream news media will be captivated by this man … and they will even begin to agree with him".
• "America will prosper like never before in her history as a nation."
• America and Israel will be energy independent, and "a gallon of gas will be one dollar and below". OPEC will no longer be needed, "for your wells will go dry and your finances too".
• "The national debt will be dealt a death blow from what I am releasing in the natural and the spiritual." [It would be nice if this actually happens, considering that the debt is currently 20 trillion dollars.]
• "The Supreme Court will lose three, and my president shall pick new ones directly from MY TREE."
• "America will be loved once again, even by some that used to be her enemies".
• "The Clintons, the Clintons, your time has come to an end … you will not escape prosecution". [The fireman also reaffirmed in an interview that "they are going to prison".]
• "For this man who holds the title called the President of the United States will begin to lose his grip from it and be stripped of it, for I the Lord God will rip it from him." [In interviews, the fireman explains that BHO will be later prosecuted for treason and therefore will be stripped of his title, although he has now already finished his second term.]
• Corruption in all levels of government will be exposed. The problem will be so deep and widespread that it will require "military style tribunals" to handle it all.
• "5 Supreme Court Justices will be appointed by my new president, my anointed."
• "My court will overturn Roe vs. Wade".
• "The ties that were severed between America and Russia will begin to mend".
• "A lightning strike and a great wind shall topple the so called great monument, and they will not be able to mend". [The fireman has said that he is referring to the Washington Monument, which he calls a "phallic symbol to Baal."]
• News outlets will go bankrupt and be rebuilt using "my righteous people".
• "Two will be taken and three will be shaken! For I will remove two from the evil crew of 32 and the other three will be shaken to the core. The 32 years they have altogether served and empowered that entity called Baal, and the covenant they had holding up his house with the Illuminati and the New World Order, shall come crumbling down. For when the first one is taken, it will be a sign that the New World Order shall die. When the second one is taken, it will be a sign that anyone calling himself Mine but comes against my Israel, sympathizing with her enemies, will not be tolerated. The three that will be shaken will be a sign that no one is above the Most High God, not even those that hold the highest office in the land. These among many others that have tried to exalt themselves above Me and My Law will be exposed and imprisoned by me for the entire world to see." [The fireman has made it very clear in interviews that he is referring to the five living former presidents: two will die and the other three will face prison terms.]
• "Russian and China will be put in their place … You will no longer be considered a threat or a superpower."
• "Many are saying that this is the last Pope, but it's not for the reasons they think. This will be the last Pope, for what I the Lord God am about to do. I will expose this Pope and all those under under his command for all the corruption he and the Vatican have been involved in for centuries."
• "There is a dig, an archeological find that is coming in an underground vault, which will be so cataclysmic that it will ROCK the Christian World. The answer lies between Jerusalem and Vatican City." [The fireman suggested in an interview that what might be discovered are "lost books of the Bible," whereupon the interviewer quickly steered away from this topic since it was skirting uncomfortably close to heterodoxy.]

Please tell me what you think, Lonnie. You probably have Seraphic postage stamps enough to write me back with your opinion. I think that the fireman might get one or two things right, if only by chance. However, newbie prophets can also mix in plenty of junk because they haven't yet learned to properly distinguish the difference between a genuine revelation from Above and their own wishful thinking. In other words, they get too eager and run ahead of themselves. Scio fuisse prophetas deficere, as the old saying goes. Lonnie, I was wondering, and this is my big question: How long must we wait before concluding that the fireman's predictions are bogus and never going to happen? At this point in time, none of what I listed above has occurred, at least not in any spectacular or obvious way as far as I can tell. For example, the price of gasoline has never dropped below a dollar per gallon, the Washington Monument hasn't toppled over lately, there hasn't been any "military style tribunals," BHO is still running free, and the mainstream news media hates DJT more than ever.

On second thought, because he has made so many unfulfilled predictions, perhaps the fireman should be classified as an "indeterminate fruitcake" (category #4), at least temporarily until the situation changes. My gut feeling for now is that there is something loopy going on here, and his "prophecies" possibly reflect whatever flaky teachings happen to be endemic to the church he is attending. What makes me suspect this is his odd fixation about the 501(c)3 tax status and the Washington Monument, along with some of his "conspiracy theory" terminology and his kooky ideas about DNA and weather manipulation. Furthermore, the fireman sounds as if he were speaking from the position of an Old Testament prophet (e.g., Samuel) who is sent to direct the entire people of Israel. Lonnie, if you remember, you did some prophesying to people on various occasions when you were still here on Earth, but you never went around trying to dictate how churches throughout the entire country should operate — such as changing their incorporation status. I think the fireman might be mixed-up partly due to misunderstanding how prophecy is supposed to function nowadays, under the New Testament. However, if you have any helpful suggestions, I would much appreciate hearing them.

In other news, there has been no new news regarding the final, third book of your autobiography. Apparently, your ghostwriter friend, Roger Sacks, has delayed things yet again. Oh, I had hoped the final book would have been published by now. I must say that I am deeply disappointed and very frustrated. It's been over 25 years, and your autobiography still hasn't been completely published. What is holding things up? The problem is I don't know whom I can complain to. Can you complain to anybody up there in Heaven, Lonnie? Please put in a word about this because I very much want to read the final book.

By the way, congratulate me on my retirement. The only thing I got going now is my small sheep business and writing these funny epistles to you. I am still getting adjusted to being retired. It's not easy, and I am trying to keep my mind busy and to exercise. I will let you know if anything new comes up.

Keep rejoicing.

Sincerely yours,
Troubles So Hard.