Posted by GOlson on September 04, 1999 at 14:11:13:

The Lord has been working on me for several months in trying to help me understanding the New Covenant, and how I relate to it, and my purpose for finding it. I believe it is clear to me now where it fits, and the truth and errors that drive it, and the processes the half-true prophet, Chris Warren, has gotten sucked into, and I think I need to clarify my position. First, I believe God has called Chris Warren just as he called Joseph Smith. He has a mission to fulfil of some sort. He has many valid visions from the Lord. However, I believe that he is the logical extension of Mormonism, trying to get as close to Biblical truth as possible through prophetic "revelations".

As God gave me keys of truth to disconnect me from the falsehoods in Mormonism, he has also given me the keys to see the errors of the New Covenant. Knowledge does not save us, but love does. Paul taught: "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth."(1 Cor 8:1) Jesus came and took the law and summarized it into two basic laws: 1) Love God, and 2) Love others as we love ourselves. He SIMPLIFIED the Word and taught us to become Born of God's Spirit, and then, the Comforter would come and teach us what we need to know in the circumstance. If we truly do this, and come to know the voice of God in us, then we become living scripture; our names are written in the Book of Life [Jesus Christ's Spirit], and we have found the water that if we drink, we never thirst again. The error of Mormonism is that it teaches "a man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge". This concept of receiving revelation into the mysteries of God creates a hypnotic bait for the mind to search into things that can not be understood except by "revelation", neither which are needed for salvation. It's a distraction from the two great commandments quoted above. It is true, the Bible contains many deep-level concepts and visions, which may appear to contradict what I'm writing. But the purpose and situation that drove the revelations of God into the much deeper Biblical truths of God came because foolish believers had been duped by the devil, so God came to give MORE LIGHT in mercy to assist them out of darkness. In other words, Satan's strategy is to come as angels of light and present deeper "half-truths" that are hard to spot outside the realm of human sight, then God must come with someone to explain the errors.

If the people were to follow the command of Jesus and be born of God, receive the Comforter, and rejected false spirits, then we would not need any more that the two great commandments Jesus spoke of: "Love God and love others as ourselves." Thus, we need more faith and LESS "revelations". Matt chapters 5-7 contains enough truth to save anyone. Jesus himself said, after reciting his sermon on the Mount to the people, said that those who heard and obeyed Matt 5-7 would stand on rock, and could not fall. We need no more. That Sermon has all the keys we need.

Of course, if believers refuse to do as Jesus Commands, then false spirits and angels will come with counterfeit light to mix up the Body of Christ, and thus, God needs to give more light and truth to unravel the mess. And thus, God for a year has helped me to see the things in my mind that I've had to discard in Mormonism with the help of the truths found in the New Covenant, and now, I've taken a full circle back to a year ago, and now I see that the New Covenant is even a higher level of deception than Mormonism-for the truths are closer to the Bible than the LDS Church, and yet, are built on the false premise that we need "more revelation and visions" and not less.

But what we need is more love and faith, not more revelation. Matt 5-7 is plenty-all we need. Jesus didn't write one word down his whole ministry for a reason. It is a subtle message that we are to be born again and let the Comforter teach us in the moment, based on the Word and Life of Jesus Christ we study from the Bible. (John 14:26): "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, who the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

If I recall properly, Jesus did not have many "visions" in his ministry, other than the Mount of transfiguration, which demonstrated his power and glory was superior to past prophets and angels. There is also his temptations with the devil, and his baptism. But in general, most of his ministry was not visionary to the people. It was more of teaching principles of truth, healing with dramatic power, and demonstrating the principle of love in his death on the cross. Thus, he taught us by example and precept to love God and our fellowman as ourselves. The paradigm of Mormonism of "continuous revelation" by prophets from God is flawed, and Chris Warren is an extension of the principle continued to its logical extreme. Mormons should pay attention, but He built the next level of Mormonism, but also is missing the mark by straying outside the Bible and truly teaching that God is within us. Hebrews teaches:

"God, who at sundry times and in diverse manner spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…."(Hebrews 1:1)

When God spoke in the New Testament on the Mount of Transfiguration, he said: "This is my beloved Son, hear him".(Matt 17:1-10) The previous paradigm of God speaking through prophets was shattered with Jesus, who is to speak personally to believers in their hearts. The Comforter comes into our temple, and we are to be taught directly from God. This IS THE NEW COVENANT OF GOD-found in Jesus Christ. Thus, the need for prophets like Moses was replaced with Jesus and the Holy Spirit for ALL BELIEVERS. We now have a direct link to God. And thus, Jesus did not write anything in his ministry, to symbolize the changed paradigm.

When God calls true prophets and apostles today, they will send the correct message to believers that the Kingdom of God is within. A true man of God will send a person to look for Jesus Christ in themselves, which Spirit is drawn out of us by reading and believing the Biblical truths. A false prophet or apostle will have a different message, claiming Jesus or God is "here or there", outside of our hearts, trying to build kingdoms that are external in the world. (See Luke 17:20-23) When I spoke to Cary Goodwin on the phone, who is a true apostle of the Lord, I tested him and asked him how God spoke to him. He answered: "Mostly by the still small voice". He said God has given him visions and spoken to him on a few occasions, but mostly it's just a whisper in his heart he follows. And this, I believe, is the mark of a true follower of Christ!

On the other hand, Chris Warren, has received many revelations and visions from the Lord, but much of it has to do with his own personal spiritual development, to help him become born of God. But because of the teachings of Mormonism and other false principles he has believed in, his mind has created an entire religion of truth build on a few key falsehoods, which he has not seen yet. Thus, he has misunderstood much of his personal visions, and remains in darkness. The level of light he operates in is great, and indeed he has had experiences with demons and true angels, but he hasn't sorted out the mess because he has not truly found love of Christ in him. Although he will disagree with me, his critical posts and lack of confessing his errors and being willing to stand up and take a blow to his ego when he is wrong, is not much different than Flashman's lack of confessing clear mistakes. And thus, both are wrong, and yet, both believe firmly they are right in ignoring admission of fault to others. And until either one of these men see their own minds are driving their behavior, they will continue behaving as they do. Also, it's not that they are writing words that are false, but the "spirit" and approach is not from God. For God is love. And if we deviate from this principle of love, then we are not walking in the Light, and our words will be written in darkness. The entire Book of 1 John discusses this principle of love and light found in Jesus Christ.

Thus, I'm changing my spiritual clothes again to replace those concepts in the New Covenant that I believed in, with the truths God has shown me. I will embrace the truths I've learned, and discard the errors. No one need assume I'm "against" my friends in the New Covenant any more than I'm against the people in Mormonism. God has a purpose for everyone. But my basic message is the same: God is not in any church, but God dwells in our hearts. The Kingdom of God is within us.

My experience with the NCCG taught me the Olive Branch, Book of Mormon, D&C, and any other supposed "revelation" from God is not to be combined with the Bible as being the "Word of God". There is enough truth in the Bible to save any soul-indeed, after being born again, and receiving the Comforter, that Spirit will teach us all things. Matt 5-7 has enough truth to establish any soul on the rock of Jesus Christ, never to be deceived by the devil-if the Spirit of those chapters are completely understood and obeyed.

God bless,

Greg

In accordance with our tradition and practice, which we feel is fully justified by the Word of God, the Bible, the New Covenant Church of God (NCCG) has afforded great freedom to its members to express their own views about the Gospel especially where there is no clear statement in the Bible or our auxilliary scriptures, the Olive Branch. We encourage free enquiry and tolerate diverging points-of-view provided it is done in a spirit of charity, patience and long-suffering. We also take the view that those matters that concern the House of God be dealt with within the House of God, as Jesus taught.

Inasmuch as this is a public forum we do not feel it appropriate to discuss our internal matters in any great depth here and especially not the character of our members. We do feel, however, it to be our duty to set the record straight if we have in any way been misrepresented for our beliefs.

For the information of those participating on this board, Greg Olson (aka 'Nephilim' and Clare Gregory) became a baptised member of NCCG in the summer of 1998. To become a baptised member of NCCG requires only that the catechumen (investigating member) have been born again by accepting Jesuis Christ as Lord and Saviour, accept the Apostles' Creed and have a conviction that they have in some way been called into NCCG by God. This is stated now so that our readers do not get the impression that we expect our members to have a testimony that NCCG is the "one and only true church" as Mormons sometimes claim or infer that we do. We have never done so. Indeed, from our very earliest days when we were first organised in 1986 and were still coming out of Mormonism, we stated in the first issue of our official church publication, that we believed that salvation was through Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, and not through membership in any institution. This has always been our position.

Baptised members are not admitted as full members and communicants (able to partake of the Lord's Supper) until that have built further on the Apostles' Creed and know more of the Church's doctrines and teachings generally. New members are put through a course of Bible study called "Foundational Studies of the Bible" which they are expected to complete and understand before becoming full (chrismed/confirmed) members. This series, which is very basic, may be seen at:

School of Israel

Greg Olson, as most of you know, was a former Mormon before embracing NCCG and was deeply committed to the Restoration though was experiencing a crisis of faith as he has already shared on this BB. His thinking has shifted considerably over the year he has been a member, shifting practically every month. Knowing what it is like for someone coming out of a cult, we give our members considerable freedom to explore as they come to know the biblical Jesus, even if they come to conclusions we may radically disagree with. We therefore encouraged him in his writing of his book entitled "Nephilim" in which he explores the origins of Mormonism from a new angle so that he might work his way through the Mormon maze. On the homepage we created for him we stated that "Not all the views expressed on this homepage are necessarily those of the New Covenant Church of God" and this has been our position to this date. He was given considerable freedom to criticise us, which he liberally did, over the year or so we have known him, but not until now has he publically attacked and misrepresented us. We wish, for the record, to clearly state what we believe in, and have always believed in, so that the public is not left to come to false conclusions.

1. We do not believe, as Greg does, that God created the Mormon Church or that it is a "half-true" Church. We do believe that God had a call for Joseph Smith as a "reformer of the Reformation" (bringing the Reformation to its completeness), as born out by his early revelations (before they were changed to harmonise with his own personally redefined mission) but that he failed to separate himself from his occultic influences and was seduced by Satan into creating a neo-Catholic, "one and only true Church" which progressively distanced itself from the Christian Gospel to eventually become an occultic mystery religion, though it has become somewhat "toned down" in more recent times as it bids to be accepted as "Christian". We believe that the Mormon Church is false inspite of its containing many half-truths and that it was created by Satan through the influence of fallen angels. We do not believe that anyone is called into the Mormon Church or that it is His will that anyone be a member of it. We DO believe, however, that God, through His great mercy, providentially uses ALL churches, Christian and non-Christian, including the Mormon Church, where they can cause their members to flourish in the best possible way given their circumstances BASED ON THE CHOICES THEY HAVE MADE. Thus God will lead and guide a human being trying to be righteous wherever he or she may be. It is His will, however, that His children leave false religion and embrace the true, which is salvation in Jesus Christ and in no-one else. He does NOT want anyone in the Mormon Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, or any other false organisation and can only prosper a soul within them to a very limited extent. Though there are souls in the Mormon Church who may be said to be "born-again" in Christ and who are saved through trusting Him (for this we have had confirmed in a vision to us which may be read on our homepage at:

An Amazing Vision

as must indeed happen where some truth is presented, it is our belief, based on the Biblical witness and the vision above, that God is calling the Mormons OUT of that Church which, through other visions received, we believe will completely collapse in a day. By contrast, Greg Olson believes that the Mormon Church was created by God with a purpose in mind, that there will be a rebellion amongst some of the General Authorities of that organisation that will cause a crisis of faith and lead, ultimately, to a discarding of the LDS scriptures and Priesthood doctrine, and result in a Bible-based Church coupled with all the true insights that the LDS have obtained which are needed in Christendom. Though we believe that there may be SOME truth in this position, we believe that as an institution it will totally collapse. There will not be a "new" Bible-Only-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or that there will be a major shake-up as occurred when Herbert W. Armstrong of the Worldwide Church of God died and his successor took his followers down a path remarkably similar in some respects to the liberal one followed by the modern presidents of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

2. Greg Olson has stated that "Knowledge does not save us, but love does". This is not a biblical teaching for neither knowledge nor love saves us, but FAITH in the Lord Jesus Christ. Love and knowledge are fruits of true salvation, with love being by far the most important, for it is the only fruit that ultimately matters. All Greg is doing is transfering salvation from the mind (knowledge) to the heart (feelings) when it is neither. In this he has merely mutated an old Gnostic heresy (embraced by Joseph Smith) to another one which is essentially New Age. NCCG rejects this position as unscriptural. He also states, in support of his view, that "Paul taught: "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth."(1 Cor 8:1)"". Knowledge without love puffs up, otherwise knowledge would be something to be shunned, thus contradicting the opening chapters of the Book of Proverbs which admonishes believers in Yahweh to seek wisdom. Knowledge is a fruit of being in Christ, but knowledge alone leads to arrogance. It is ironic that he goes on to claim that "As God gave me keys of truth to disconnect me from the falsehoods in Mormonism, he has also given me the keys to see the errors of the New Covenant", implying keys of knowledge - the same kinds of keys that he despises in the LDS Church and NCCG!

3. When Christ summarised the Law into the Two Great Commandments He did not abbrogate the original law, merely brought it into sharper perspective. He did not teach that if you loved God with all your heart and loved your neighbour as yourself that you would be saved. Salvation is through trusting in Christ, and loving God and neighbour is a fruit of true salvation. Greg is, by culling the Bible down to the Sermon on the Mount and the Ten Commandments, effectively preaching a doctrine of salvation by works even though he repudiates such a thought in others of his writings. This suggests to us that he is somewhat confused in his mind as to what the Gospel actually is.

We agree with him in his statement that "Mormonism ...teaches (that) "a man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge"" that he has identified a major error in the teaching of Joseph Smith yet fails to apparently grasp that by proclaiming his special endowment of keys of knowledge that he is teaching salvation through the knowledge that he has. Though he has his own theories, nowhere in the New Testament or in the apostolic tradition is there a teaching that a man needs no more than the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount in order to be saved and build his spiritual life. His recipe for the spiritul life is not at all unlike that of a certain wing of the charismatic movement which, believing it has a full endowment of the Holy Spirit, claims that all it does and teaches is the full truth of God because they have this witness in their heart. The parallels with the Mormon "testimony" are strikingly similar for they believe by the "small inner voice" that they are members of God's one and only true church in the same way that many extreme charismatic movements believe that every bit of dissociated glossolalia is a pure manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and that those who do not likewise babble have not received the Baptism of Fire and are not fully born again. One wing of this movement teaches that Christians need no more than the Book of Acts (for similar reasons Greg offers for his own canon).

4. The Bible does indeed "contain many deep-level concepts and visions, which may appear to contradict what I'm writing" and does indeed contradict him. He assumes that "we need more faith and LESS "revelations"" inspite of the Holy Spirit strongly disagreeing with him. He writes what he accuses others of, namely, of promulgating a half-truth. Of course we need more faith - that is self-evident, but it does not logically follow that we concommittantly need less revelation. By his logic we would conclude that in order to love God more we need to love our fellow man less, when the opposite is true: We need to love God more AND love our fellow man more. He is setting up truths against one another as though they were somehow mutually exclusive. Paul clearly refuted this heresy when he said that we should not sin more in order to obtain more grace from God. "God forbid!" he practically yelled. Rather, we should cease sinning and continue to importune grace. We see therefore that the scripture Greg wishes to exclude or minimise in fact exposes his own heresy. The issue really is one of balance and in our view Greg is presenting an unbalanced and unworkable "gospel" and one that the Christian Church has long worked its way through. By his own admission to us on many occasions he has problems of dealing with more than one concept at a time, or of working with more than one task simultaneously, and we see this in this rather lop-sided theology which, far from being false, is half-true. And half-truths, as he well knows, are more dangerous than outright lies (OB 91).

5. The writings of Paul (which are excluded from Greg's mini-canon) are not the result of God being "forced" to give deeper light and truth to assist those duped by the devil get out of darkness. Of course there is a certain amount of truth in this since he was preaching about heresy most of the time but it is not the whole truth. Greg's thesis rests on his own personal assumptions on how God works. How much more error would there be in the Christian Church if we had been denied the Pauline works? Would the Body of Christ come to a "unity of doctrine" had we possessed less Bible than we already have? Would the Christians have followed Greg's formula, found the Comforter, and stayed on the path of personal revelation and communion with Christ through the still small voice, precluding apostacy? We can't, of course, answer that definitely. What we can say, however, is that millions of souls have been brought to salvation and the freedom of Christ outside the mini-canon of Greg, demonstrating by their fruits that they were fully saved and in Christ. God will not be packaged away into Greg's sandwich container but evidently believes more Word is necessary. But perhaps Greg is coming with a New Gospel à la Joseph Smith and will explain himself more clearly to us so that we can all understand. A little practical experience in the mission field would soon determine whether his theorem is correct or not for he argues mostly amongst those who have scholarly brains. We believe that his ideal is correct. He, as we do, wants a fully Spirit-endowed people who can be walking in the Light without the need of preachers in accordance to the prophetic visions of Moses and Jeremiah. But this hearkens to a future time of millennial rest. In the meantime, we are saved "by the foolishness of preaching" and "by the Word". The Gospel, Greg will find, is considerably broader than his narrow paradigm. He is right to want to start with a milk diet (since he has been choking on indigestible, rotten meat for so long in the Mormon Church) and he is not the first we have experienced who have come out of Mormonism who want to get back to the very basics. This is as it should be. It is how it MUST be. But coupled to this realisation of truth he believes that we are to remain as tiny children all our lives (unless he has modified his view of this since) and would, having served the milk, burn the meat menu and keep the infant bound to the cradle. We cannot survive forever on his milk diet, something he will eventually learn as he starts starving again.

Though outwardly attractive, his doctrine is actually quite a pernicious heresy: "If the people were to follow the command of Jesus and be born of God, receive the Comforter, and rejected false spirits, then we would not need any more that the two great commandments Jesus spoke of: "Love God and love others as ourselves."" This childish sentiment, though valid for children, is actually quite dangerous because whether you like it or not sooner of later you are going to have to define the word "love". To do that you will have to search outside Greg's mini-canon to discover that Jesus said. "If ye love me, ye will obey My commandments". Are these the two which Jesus summarised? No, because if you scour the New Testament you will see that He left several hundred commandments which Greg would need to restore by revelation were he to only use his truncated Bible. Fortunately for us, God did not give us another canon, but sufficient Scripture explaining just what these commandments were so that we could "exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees". Were we to come to Greg's mini-Gospel, we would soon be forced to approach him as a new "Joseph Smith" for more revelation to clarify what his truncated canon lacked.

6. That "Satan's strategy is to come as angels of light and present deeper "half-truths" that are hard to spot outside the realm of human sight, then God must come with someone to explain the errors" is not, of course, denied. In my life I have ministered to many different hundreds of people who had one block or another in their spiritual life that required someone to explain the errors Satan has concocted. The Body of Christ has divers ministries just for this purpose because ours is a complicated and thoroughly ruined world. But experience will hopefully teach Greg how limited his mini-canon is going to be in helping this broad mass of desperate people. As a children's gospel it is wonderful - for those who are free of Satan's entrapments - but for adults ensnared in one or the so many webs it will be ineffective ... unless he has been specially anointed with the Holy Spirit and possesses the gifts to supernaturally release those in bondage as the first apostles did. And I suspect he thinks he is going to get this in California in a few days' time [ed. he didn't].

7. Greg stated: "I see that the New Covenant is even a higher level of deception than Mormonism - for the truths are closer to the Bible than the LDS Church, and yet, are built on the false premise that we need "more revelation and visions" and not less". This is a blatant misrepresentation of the New Covenant Church of God's teachings because it gives the impression, based on what he said earlier, that we, like the LDS, are "saved no faster than we gain knowledge". Do we need more revelation to expose error? Yes, of course. Do we need more revelation in order to be saved? Absolutely not. We have stated that a person may be saved and come to heaven without the Olive Branch or NCCG. That has always been our position but Greg is here suggesting otherwise.

8. Greg wrote: "But what we need is more love and faith, not more revelation. Matt 5-7 is plenty-all we need. Jesus didn't write one word down his whole ministry for a reason. It is a subtle message that we are to be born again and let the Comforter teach us in the moment, based on the Word and Life of Jesus Christ we study from the Bible". Is Greg admitting to two canons now? Firstly, we are told to stick to his mini-canon and then be taught from the whole Bible.

9. "If I recall properly, Jesus did not have many "visions" in his ministry, other than the Mount of transfiguration, which demonstrated his power and glory was superior to past prophets and angels". Greg's recollection is poor here. Firstly, the transfiguration was not a vision Jesus had - it was an event which he participated in, and which the three apostles witnessed. He is sounding like the Jehovah's Witnesses who say that the apostles "dreamed" the whole thing and that it was not a real life occurrence. Secondly, the fact that Jesus did not say He had any visions did not mean that He did not. The apostle John writes that were all the things Jesus taught, did and related written down, there wouldn't be enough books to contain them (John 21:25). Is perhaps Greg annoyed that he is not getting visions? Thirdly, the fact that the Law and the Prophets found their fulfilment in Him did not mean that they were abolished, merely brought to completion. Thus those in Christ have all these ministries combined and dispersed amongst the Body according to giftness. Again, Greg is setting up Law & Prophets vs. Christ when they are now combined.

10. "The paradigm of Mormonism of "continuous revelation" by prophets from God is flawed, and Chris Warren is an extension of the principle continued to its logical extreme. Mormons should pay attention, but He built the next level of Mormonism, but also is missing the mark by straying outside the Bible and truly teaching that God is within us". This is quite a serious accusation. How can the next level of Mormonism be to denounce Mormonism as a satanic conspiracy and at the same time take it one step further?

Greg's doctrine of "God within us" (or the "Kingdom within us") is to be found in ONE passage in the New Testament which can be translated in two different ways, as indeed different Bible versions do. "The Kingdom of God is within you" may also be translated as "The Kingdom of God is amongst you.". Had Greg wanted to know what we actually taught about the Kingdom he could have read the treatise on our homepage and saved himself the embarassment of misrepresenting us, at:

The Kingdom of God in the Gospel of Mark

But by Greg's own admission to us on a number of occasions he has read little of the Church's materials and confined himself to the Olive Branch which we have stated is not a compendium of the whole Gospel, but an amplification of parts of the Bible only.

NCCG has always taught that God is within us but that we are hampered in our discerment of Him by a defiled conscience which tends to give us muddy revelation until we have become purified. For this reason the Word of God is so vital, for it is pure. But Greg is trusting in his own purity which is probably why he takes such a haughty attitude towards others, declaring all his keys just as the Mormons do. For us in NCCG we are content to let the Bible do the talking and to interpret itself on all the fundamentals of the Gospel.

He also applies "God, who at sundry times and in diverse manner spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…."(Hebrews 1:1) which, given the context in which he quotes it, sounds as though he is claiming that God has stopped speaking through prophets and only now directly through Christ. If this is his meaning, he should get a red letter edition of the New Testament and cut out all the black text, and anything said by him through revelation through the apostles (who were themselves prophets). Yes, God has spoken through Christ, and praise the Lord that he has done so, but Greg is playing his "either, or" game again - "Christ or the prophets" when it should be "first Christ, then the prophets moved upon by the Holy Spirit". He must learn to accept all the Bible, and not just those parts which agree with his latest theological theorem. Prophetic ministry is an integral part of the NT Church.

Actually, he plays the Mormon game, by trying to make the NCCG leaders LDS-type "prophets". They aren't. We believe in FIRST apostles, SECOND prophets, as Paul taught. Yes, we have revelations, just as Peter, James, Paul, and the others did. We lay down rules for the government of the Church, just as the NT Church did. But Greg seems to want a 'churchless church', an invisible body of phantoms who are mysteriously going to blend together by a fantastic outpouring of the Spirit obviating the need for any kind of organisation. We have seen this before and it has led to chaos.

11. "When God calls true prophets and apostles today, they will send the correct message to believers that the Kingdom of God is within. A true man of God will send a person to look for Jesus Christ in themselves, which Spirit is drawn out of us by reading and believing the Biblical truths". This is absolutely true. And this NCCG has been teaching and doing for the last decade. But there is more - much more. For the gospel is more than individual salvation but group salvation too. Christ is coming to betrothe a Church - a community of believers - not just a host of individuals. The Kingdom also has an outer manifestation which is a "fruit" of the inner. How that outer Kingdom is to be built is described across the pages of the NT. Jesus said, "I will establish my Church" - His Assembly - not tell everyone to go off on their separate paths following their own light. He taught them to be under discipline - to be disciples - to be obedient to the fathers appointed over them in the local congregations. Thus his concluding statement, "God is not in any church, but God dwells in our hearts" is shere nonsense, and is yet another example of him playing one truth off against another. Of course He is in the Church because the Church (by evangelical/NCCG definition) is the Body of Believers. Yet he wishes us, we suppose, to believe we are a "one and only" institution like the LDS Church. He is sadly resorting to the tactics that many of the Mormons on this BB have been doing - setting up a straw man and then shooting it down in flames.

There is so much more to the Gospel than Greg preaches. I can understand his reaction, for he is like the Protestant reacting against Catholic abuses and rejecting as much organisation as possible, for this is typical of former Mormons who come to Christ. Sooner or later they realise the necessity of the Church unless they fall away from Christ altogether.

12. "On the other hand, Chris Warren, has received many revelations and visions from the Lord, but much of it has to do with his own personal spiritual development, to help him become born of God". He perhaps does not see the arrogance of his statement here for he is now going around saying who is born again and who is not. It is not for any of us to judge an individual's salvation unless he is showing clear fruits to the contrary. I will not quote the remainder of what he has written on me as it is highly judgmental and conceited as should be apparent to all our readers. In view of the fact that Greg seems to radically change his views on a monthly basis one can but only wonder if he has actually found the stability that the New Birth actually brings? And I am sure he will remember how quite recently he made a hugely false prophecy before a whole Church assembly by the same Spirit which guides him now. Frankly I am not surprised that the Mormons here have been highly irritated by him, for though he has been right on many, many occasions, and has given some marvelous discourses, he has the tendency to make hyperbolic assumptions about his own inspiration and to believe, without warranty, that God is doing mighty things through him like sending tornados to Salt Lake City to prove that what he has been writing on this BB is the Word of God. No wonder Kevin wrote, "God Kills a Man for Greg". I was frankly embarassed by the whole episode.

13. "My experience with the NCCG taught me the Olive Branch, Book of Mormon, D&C, and any other supposed "revelation" from God is not to be combined with the Bible as being the "Word of God"" Though the Mormons combine their other scriptures with the Bible as being of equal canonicity (or with the BoM, "more correct"), we have never done the same in NCCG. This is another misrepresentation. We have consistently stated that the OB is secondary canon, subject to the Bible and, if necessary, discardable. That remains our position.

We deeply regret having to come out with this statement against one of our brethren but we have been left with no choice now. The statement made by some of our Mormon friends that he has got his "head in his ass" is, regrettably, applicable. More applicable, I think, is the suggestion I would like to make that he changes the title of his book to:

"Humility: And How I Achieved It" by Gregory Olson.

For this lies at the heart of the half-truths that have been spouted in his posting...sad to say.

We wish Greg well in his continuing search for light and truth but we cannot be realistically expected to swallow the mumbo-jumbo on this posting without saying something in return and stating our rejection of this new gospel that, after 2,000 years of darkness, he has discovered all by himself and all for himself.

In the intervening period between the time this post was made and today, Greg Olson experienced some high-level counterfeit deceptions, including some quite dramatic supernatural experiences, which led him to make even more false prophecies including one about a nuclear explosion in China which did not take place at the time specified by him. Yet throughout this period of time he continued to describe himself publically as "an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ" and, specifically, an "apostle to the Mormons". It is to be regretted that he continued to claim this title for himself and so discredit the Name of Christ.

Though our heart goes out to the man for the suffering he has had because of the delusional Mormon spirits that have been guilding him that resulted, amongst other things, in the tragic loss of his family, it is not as though he was not forewarned many times both by us at NCCG and by others in the Body (including some Mormons who saw the inconsistency of his witness). Instead of building up a sure foundation on God's Word at NCCG or another Christian Church, he chose to become his own private Biblical expositor and repeatedly got himself in deep waters and up spiritual cul de sacs. Though maturing, he is still tripping up on many of his former theological stumbling blocks and still claiming to be an "apostle".

Having said all of this, Greg Olson does have some extraordinarily good insights into the origins of Mormonism and the edition of his book called Nefilim which he wrote during his NCCG days and which we have published is still largely to be recommended. Mormons and Christians alike will gain much insight from it.