The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
A conspiracy theorist at the center of controversy over a creationist theme park has been arrested for alleged sexual assault of a nine-year-old.
Christopher Link Jones, 55, was arrested late last month in Aiken, South Carolina, the Aiken Standard first reported. An arrest warrant shows Jones charged with criminal sexual conduct with a minor under 14. Jones was previously convicted of battery and lewd acts on children in California.
Jones’ California criminal record created rifts at Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationist theme park where Jones is friends with head preacher Kent Hovind, and where Jones has been accused of sexually abusing a boy. Hovind and Jones have blamed the previous conviction on a plot to silence Jones for what he claims was his work with Infowars founder Alex Jones.
Hovind told The Daily Beast that Jones is still welcome at Dinosaur Adventure Land (DAL) despite the new charges.
“I’ve known Chris for many years,” Hovind told The Daily Beast. “He gets accused of things all the time, but everybody gets their day in court. I don’t know the details on that [the charges].”
….
Former DAL residents previously told The Daily Beast they distanced themselves from Hovind after he allegedly arranged for Jones to share a bed with an 11-year-old boy whom Jones had brought to DAL in 2019. The boy, whom The Daily Beast is not naming, later told his mother that Jones had touched his genitals through a paper towel. Recordings from a 2021 meeting of DAL staff and residents, previously reported by The Daily Beast, show Hovind dismissing concerns about the incident.
“That’s Chris’s decision and the kid’s decision,” Hovind said during the 2021 meeting, when DAL residents raised concerns about Jones wrestling with the child, or sharing a bed with him. “How people here react to that is their decision. He’s got a right to wrestle with a kid if he wants and you’ve got a right to say ‘I’m not getting around Chris.’”
Reached for comment, the boy’s mother told The Daily Beast that Jones’ arrest in South Carolina last month was related to her son. The arrest warrant does not appear to relate directly to DAL (which is located in Alabama), but to an incident approximately two years before the DAL visit, when the boy was nine. The boy’s mother previously stated that Jones was her boss, and that he had sometimes looked after her son prior to the DAL trip.
Neither Jones nor his lawyer returned requests for comment on Jones’ arrest. Jones left jail last month on a $15,000 bond, court records show.
Jones was previously convicted on three charges of lewd acts on children, after he made three boys (ages nine, 11, and 12) play strip poker with him. He was also convicted of battery for spanking a naked seven-year-old boy.
He and Hovind have blamed the past cases on political persecution. Jones claims to have recorded undercover footage from Bohemian Grove, a campsite for the rich and powerful that has long been the subject of conspiracy theories. Jones claims he gave the footage to Infowars founder Alex Jones (no relation), prompting government forces to pursue sex crime charges against him.
….
“He got a job there and video taped a bunch of stuff and they wanted him in prison,” Hovind said in a voicemail to a DAL resident who called to ask about Jones’ criminal past.
Neither Infowars nor an Alex Jones spokesperson returned requests for comment.
Reached by phone about Jones’ latest arrest, Hovind said it was not feasible to perform background checks on all DAL visitors. Even so, he said. “I would doubt he’s guilty.”
But Hovind doesn’t need to perform a background check; he’s already aware of Jones’ past conviction.
“Well even that doesn’t mean you’re guilty,” Hovind said. “How many people, later, convictions get overturned? Thousands of them. Sometimes 20 years, 50 years later.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Imagine going to a Starbucks that asks you for your name so they can put it on your take-out order. When your order is ready, the barista calls out your name, alerting you that your latte is ready. Imagine you told the barista your name was “Satan is Lord” or “I’m a Porn Star” or “Starbucks Sucks.” Ha! Ha! Ha! The barista will have to call out your “name” and everyone in the shop will have to hear it.
When asked for his name by the cashier, Hovind says his name is “Jesus Christ is Lord.” When his order is ready, the cashier calls out “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Way to get in a word for Jesus, right? Way to make a likely unbeliever perform like a seal with a bouncing ball. Hovind embarrassed this young woman, all so he could “witness” to other people in the store.
One commenter on the video had this to say:
This is hands down the best witnessing technique I’ve ever seen. Hovind gets Taco Bell, it’s degrading to Taco Bell employees, and nobody gets “saved.”
I agree.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Thrice-divorced young earth creationist and convicted felon Kent Hovind and I attended the same Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) college in the 1970s. Students at Midwestern Baptist College were taught that once people are saved (born again), they can never lose their salvation (fall from grace). No matter what people do after getting saved, they can never, ever lose their salvation. Salvation is God’s to give, and once he gives you the gift of eternal life, he will never take it away. Think, for a moment, of all the evil humans can possibly commit. If they were saved when they committed their heinous acts, they are still saved. Nothing, according to Hovind, can separate them from the love of Christ. Of course, this theology works well for Hovind, a man with a sordid, criminal past. No matter what Dr. Dino does, he’s still saved and will go to Heaven after he dies.
If you are unfamiliar with Kent Hovind, please check out the following video by McKinnon Mitchell. I make a minor appearance in the documentary.
Hovind reiterates the same soteriological beliefs he and I were taught almost fifty years ago. In fact, outside of changing his eschatological beliefs, Hovind believes the same things today that he was taught at Midwestern decades ago. His young earth creationist/theological presentations reveal a man who knows what he knows — what he was taught at Midwestern — but hasn’t learned a damn thing since. In other words, he is intellectually stilted.
As I listened to Hovind’s videos on the once-saved always-saved doctrine, it was a reminder of the fact that preachers like him are forced to admit that the preacher-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser is still a Christian. There’s no question about my salvation; that I was gloriously saved at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio at the age of fifteen; that I spent the subsequent thirty-five years devotedly following Jesus: building churches, preaching the gospel, winning souls, and teaching church members the Word of God. There’s no question, in my mind and that of countless Christian family members, former parishioners, and colleagues in the ministry, that I was a Christian. Yet, today I am an unrepentant, outspoken atheist; an enemy of God; an apostate; a reprobate. I am, according to Hovind, a saved atheist. Al praise be to Loki!
Hovind does talk about in his videos how God chastises disobedient Christians. Of course, the alleged domestic abuser Hovind uses violent language to describe God’s chastisement: he’s lurking around the corner with a hammer, ready to beat you for your disobedience. Even here it could be argued that my health problems are Jesus, the Prince of Peace, hitting me with a hammer trying to get my attention and bring me to repentance. And if the hammer beatings fail? According to Hovind, God will kill me. As regular readers know, I am seriously ill. I am on the sort side of life. I don’t expect to die today, tomorrow, or next week. But, a reading of the tea leaves of my life reveals that the battery in the Big Ben clock by my bedside is slowly losing power. Someday, it will tick, tick, tick, and stop. When I eventually die, Evangelical apologists, zealots, and critics will point to my death as God settling the score with me.
According to Hovind, after I die I will face the judgment of God: a Jack Chick tract, This Was Your Life, accounting of my life. On that day, Jesus will say to me, ” Not bad, Bruce, not bad. Say three hail Christopher Hitchens and then enter into the joy of the Lord. And with that, I will move into the mansion next door to the shack Jesus built for Hovind.
Let me say thanks to Kent Hovind for encouraging me in my faith. 🙂 See you soon in Heaven, Kent! 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
If I am going to write about Evangelicalism and the various players within the sect, I must read their blogs and news sites, watch their YouTube and Tiktok videos, and peruse their social media posts. I can’t accurately represent Evangelicalism in my writing if I don’t do these things. Believe me, I would rather not do so. Who wants to wade in a septic tank every day, right?
While there is a lot of diversity within the Evangelical tent, there are commonalities belief-wise and practice-wise across the Evangelical spectrum. It is not uncommon to hear “nice” Evangelicals say that people such as Fake Dr. David Tee (whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen), thrice divorced felon Fake Dr. Kent Hovind, and Revival Fires are outliers; that they are not representatives of Evangelicals as a whole. While these men are hateful, nasty, self-righteous bullies — certainly not followers of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, are they really outliers? Are their beliefs atypical for Evangelicals? Sadly, the answer is no. Their beliefs are normative within Evangelicalism. Based on my years of experience and observation, I know that Evangelicals are generally hateful, bigoted, and narrow-minded. Oh, many of them have big smiles and will shower you with love, but when you carefully examine their beliefs you find hate, bigotry, and closed-mindedness — in Christian love, of course.
Derrick Thiessen, Kent Hovind, Revival Fires, and others like them lack impulse control. They tend to just say whatever is on their addled minds. They don’t care how their words are received or whether they might cause harm. These so-called men of God say they speak on the Christian God’s behalf; that they are his mouthpieces. Other Evangelicals have mastered controlling their speech — in public, at least. That’s why you need to carefully examine their beliefs, or better yet, listen to what they say to their congregations when they think no one is listening.
I have heard scores of Evangelical pastors, evangelists, and missionaries preach over the years. Before the advent of the Internet, these preachers were insulated from accountability for what they said during their sermons. I preached 4,000+ sermons over the course of twenty-five years. Roughly half of those sermons were recorded on cassette tapes. As far as I know, none of those tapes survive. I have asked former members if they have any of my sermon tapes, but so far none have been found. I operated a tape lending library called the CHARIS Tape Library. Hundreds and hundreds of tapes were sent to people. As far as I know, none of those tapes survive. I suspect the tapes were either discarded or turned into Metallica mix tapes. Thus, all the hateful, nasty things I said in my sermons are lost to antiquity. For a number of years, I published a newsletter titled The Sovereign Grace Reporter. This newsletter was sent out to hundreds of people throughout the United States. Much like the aforementioned tapes, no copies of the SGR survive. I used to have hundreds of my preaching tapes and other memorabilia from my ministerial career, but in a moment of deep depression in the early 2000s, I piled these things in our backyard, poured gasoline on them, and lit a match. In a moment, twenty+ years of memories went up in smoke. While it felt good at the time, I regret doing so. (Please see Short Stories: The Night I Set My Life on Fire.)
I am insulated from my past words. All readers have to go on is my recollections. Readers will just have to take my word for it: Pastor Bruce Gerencser was a winsome, kind preacher, but he also had hateful, bigoted beliefs; beliefs he wasn’t afraid to verbalize from the pulpit.
It’s harder for Evangelical preachers to hide these days. When two Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB) mentioned me in their sermons, I found out about it. There just so happened to be people in their services who knew me. I have spies everywhere. 🙂 Everyone has a smartphone. Increasingly, Evangelical churches videotape their services. While preachers likely think that only like-minded people are listening, they can’t stop people like me from listening to their screeds, harangues, and attacks on people different from them. The ugliness is there for all to see if people are willing to pay attention.
Preachers such as Theissen, Hovind, and Revival Fires are quite happy to advertise their hate and bigotry for all to see. While many Evangelical preachers are more careful with their words, make no mistake, hatred and bigotry are common, regardless of the clothes they are dressed in. Yes, I know of kind, thoughtful Evangelicals, but all they are is the exception that proves the rule. They are the outliers, not Theissen, Hovind, and Revival Fires.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
In recent years, I have done a number of newspaper, video, and YouTube interviews. Doing so exposes me to the wrath and hatred of Evangelical zealots, especially of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) variety. To be fair, I also receive a number of positive comments, especially about my beard and sexiness. 🙂 Evangelical zealots typically attack my motives and character, often calling me names. Such people are fond of saying I am a liar; that they know me personally and know that my story is not true. Of course, these people never — I MEAN NEVER — come out of the shadows so I can confront my accusers. Instead, they hide in their parent’s basement, hurling invectives my way from their IBM 286 computer with a dial-up modem.
Over the coming months, I have two interviews on the calendar — Loki-willing. Like it or not, I am considered an expert on the IFB church movement. I’ll have reporters call me asking for background on the movement. One reporter emailed me for weeks, asking me to define IFB specific words he was unfamiliar with. I gladly obliged him.
Two months ago, McKinnon Mitchell interviewed me for his documentary on young-earth creationist, convicted felon, and wife-beater Kent Hovind. Hovind and I both went to Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan in the 1970s. Midwestern is an IFB institution. I was able to provide McKinnon background information on the people, beliefs, and churches that influenced Hovind. I thought our interview went well. McKinnon is a delightful man. I wished he lived near me. I would love to take him out for dinner and shoot the breeze.
If you haven’t seen my interview, you can view it on YouTube.
I want to focus on comments by someone named Rod Almond found on McKinnon’s first video:
Rod Almond, of course, is a fake name, possibly a reference to the “almond rod” found in the Bible. I have no idea who he is. Almond states:
He personally knows me
I am not to be trusted
I am full of bullshit
My goals (on this blog) are self-serving
I have no desire to help people
I am a liar
I am self-serving
He knows people I have personally lied to
He knows people I have trashed and used for selfish purposes
I am a sensationalist
and . . .
Damn, what comes after the “and”? 🙂
Over the past fifteen years, I have had a few Rod Almonds hurl accusations at me, always using fake names to attack my character and spread lies about me. One person said they were a former parishioner, another said they attended church with me at the Newark Baptist Temple in the early 1980s. Not one of these Rod Almonds will put their real name to their accusations. Why is that? If I have hurt someone, I genuinely want to know so I can make things right. I want to make sure that any misunderstandings are corrected. Despite offering them an opportunity to engage me on my alleged offenses, not one of them has been willing to do so. Instead, they lurk in the shadows, hurling rocks at me, along with my wife, children, and the readers of this blog.
Long-time readers of this blog know that I am an open, honest man. I’ve made mistakes — lots of them — in my life. I have gone out of my way to atone for my “sins.” In fact, this blog can be viewed as a fifteen-year act of penance. I write under my own name. I don’t hide from my past or present life. Anyone can contact me via the CONTACT page. I am literally a click or two away. Thus, I can’t help but conclude that the Rod Almonds of the world are not honest interlocutors; their objective is to cause harm or hurt. To such people I say, fuck off. 🙂
If you are someone who wants me to atone for some perceived “sin,” please contact me so we can talk. If not, I will assume you are a dishonest person who just wants to bitch, moan, and complain; a person whose only objective is to cause harm.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
McKinnon Mitchell is working on a documentary about young-earth creationist and convicted felon Kent Hovind. Hovind attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan in the 1970s, as did my wife and I. Hovind attended a couple of years before we did. As best I can tell, Hovind was at Midwestern the same time Polly’s father was (1972-76).
McKinnon contacted me looking for information about Midwestern, Emmanuel Baptist Church (the church students were required to attend), and the college’s president and the church’s pastor, Tom Malone. I was more than happy to talk with McKinnon about these things. What follows are two videos: one of my full interview with McKinnon and the other of my interview edited for use in part one of the documentary. I thought readers would be interested in seeing and hearing these videos.
If you do not know the name, Kent Hovind goes by the moniker Dr. Dino and he is an IBF member and someone who has preached against evolution for many years. He did do a 10 year stretch in prison for tax issues but that is over and done with.
The other day we went looking at BG’s website and came across this post-My Recent Interview with McKinnon Mitchell and the post contains a documentary that Mr. Mitchell is putting together to attack Mr. Hovind.
We will thank BG for letting our two posts stand untouched (we haven’t checked recently) and what we said in those comments still stands. We did wonder why Mr. Mitchell asked to interview BG for this documentary. We had to do some internet searching and found out the answer why.
Mr. Mitchell is as big an unbeliever as BG is. Mystery solved. Even though we are not fans of kent Hovind, we did not like what was being said in the documentary. Even though Mr. Mitchell said the documentary was not about an ad hominem attack, etc., on Mr. Hovind, the documentary was everything he said it wasn’t.
But those were not the biggest issues we had with this film. One of the things that bothered us was the accusation that Mr. Hovind plagiarized and parroted the words of other Christian speakers.
But those accusations only show how little the atheist knows about the truth and Christians. Once a Christian learns the truth, he or she is going to say the exact same thing as every other believer who has the truth and speaks out or writes about it.
It is not plagiarism or parroting. it is passing on what one has learned to be the truth to others. You are not going to be original because believers cannot speak anything but the truth. The Bible tells us that the unbelieving world can do nothing against the truth.
The only way for the unbeliever to attack the Christian is to create fictitious arguments and accusations. The unbeliever creates different strawman arguments against what a believer says or writes, then proceeds to attack their strawman argument even though it is far from reality and the truth.
This is what is happening in that documentary. While we do not really care for Mr. Hovind’s style of ministry and his weak content, we do not think he deserves this type of treatment.
Mr. Mitchell states in the documentary that he is trying to be a voice for Mr. Hovind’s victims but what can a film do that the law has not already done or can do if Mr. Hovind actually did something illegal.
Who is Mr. Mitchell that he needs to do anything to Mr. Hovind on his own or other people’s behalf? This is only part one of a multi-part series and we probably will watch the other parts to see what Mr. Mitchell has to say. I doubt that we will be impressed just as we were unimpressed with his website.
He had no about page, 3 posts, and not much else on it. We can only surmise that he is using this documentary to advance his career and harm someone who has done nothing to him. We have known about Mr. Hovind since about 2004 or 5 when we briefly studied at an IBF seminary and took his creation seminar as a credited course.
That did not end well for us [I wonder why? Enlighten us.] but that is water under the bridge. While we liked some of the content of that seminar but mostly we learned over the years that there are better sources for that issue [yes, me]. Yes, we are being very polite on this topic and we will leave it at that.
With that said, Mr. Hovind does not deserve to be treated in this manner. We already know that the filmmaker is not being honest and his anti-God bias shines through which proves our point. Objectivity is missing as well and so far there is no attempt to present Mr. Hovind’s side. [Yet, you provide no evidence for your claims.]
That may be because Mr. Hovind and his friends will not talk to Mr. Mitchell. You can watch the video on YouTube if you want and hopefully, the next parts will show up soon. We would like to hear what Mr; Mitchell has to say so we can talk intelligently on his point of view on Mr. Hovind.
Tee is obsessed, it seems, with defending rapists, child molesters, abusers, and other Evangelical miscreants. Why is that? Why does he always defend victimizers, but never victims?
McKinnon doesn’t need me to defend him. He’s more than capable of standing his own ground. McKinnon left the following comments on Tee’s posts:
Comment One
Well, hey, I’m always here to talk if you’d like 😉
You made a few claims that I think are very unfair, especially in regards to your assumption of my anti-god bias (which is very untrue) but I am perfectly willing to discuss this with you.
Have a good day!
Comment Two
Well, you publicly made accusations, so it only seems fair to publicly discuss this together (perhaps in a zoom discussion?)
I can send you a list of the issues (though it’s not a long list, this was a short article of course), but I’d like to at least ensure you’re criticizing me accurately. Also, just to be clear, I’m not mad, or being hostile towards you, if you’re not comfortable with a zoom discussion, I completely understand, but I genuinely just think you got the wrong idea about me, and the project is all.
In classic Fake Dr. Tee fashion, Tee responded:
I do not know why you have a problem with being publically outed. You did the same thing to Kent Hovind and did not, so far, give him the opportunity to refute your charges. Even if he refused, you still went ahead with your allegations without real evidence fueled by your biased point of view.
What I will do, is ask you to make a list, present your defense and I will post it unedited. Then I will respond. Keep in mind that when I used the bias, I took that from the very words you used. Those words exposed your unobjective attitude.
I do not have a wrong idea about you. You left the faith and do not have the truth.
McKinnon is unfamiliar with Tee and his nefarious tactics. I’ve been dealing with the man for several years now, so much so that I am now Dr. Bruce Gerencser, having a doctorate in Teeology. 🙂 Tee believes that once a person deconverts they no longer have anything of value to say. Evidently, knowledge learned immediately disappears the moment you tell Jesus to take a hike. This is why Tee specializes in character assassination and attacking motives. He rarely, if ever, responds to content. Instead, of interacting with the message, he goes after the messenger. In Tee’s world, unbelievers have nothing of value to offer the human race. Everything must be filtered through the inspired, inerrant, infallible Protestant Christian Bible for it to be correct and have meaning. Tee’s mind is enslaved to the Bible. Unable to see things as they are, he lashes out at anyone who doesn’t align with his peculiar view of the world.
Tee will never appear on video. He wants to control the narrative, so he will never agree to an open discussion about Hovind or anything else for that matter.
I apologized to McKinnon for putting him on Tee’s radar. Hopefully, Tee will quickly lose interest in McKinnon and return to his obsession with my bowel movements. Yuck, David, mind your own shit.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
McKinnon Mitchell is working on a documentary about young-earth creationist and convicted felon Kent Hovind. Hovind attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan in the 1970s, as did my wife and I. Hovind attended a couple of years before we did. Best I can tell, Hovind was at Midwestern the same time Polly’s father was (1972-76).
McKinnon contacted me looking for information about Midwestern, Emmanuel Baptist Church (the church students were required to attend), and the college’s president and the church’s pastor, Tom Malone. I was more than happy to talk with McKinnon about these things. What follows are two videos: one of my full interview with McKinnon and the other of my interview edited for use in part one of the documentary. I thought readers would be interested in seeing and hearing these videos.
Please let me know what you think about the content of my interview in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Young earth creationist, felon, and owner of Dinosaur Adventure Land, Kent “Dr. Dino” Hovind, was arrested last Friday on a domestic assault charge.
Kent Hovind, the Alabama evangelist and owner of Conecuh County’s Dinosaur Adventure Land, was arrested last Friday on a domestic violence charge after his wife claimed the pastor bodyslammed her, according to court records filed Thursday.
Hovind, who is known as “Dr. Dino” and has nearly 185,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, allegedly injured his wife, Cindi Lincoln, by bodyslamming her, sending her to the emergency room in late 2020, according to an order of protection Lincoln filed July 19 against Hovind.
“He wants to shut me up,” Lincoln wrote in explaining why she fears the evangelist. “He is dependent upon public opinion for his livelyhood [sic.] …. [I] fear he will kill me to shut me up.”
Lincoln also claimed Hovind sent his “right-hand man” to her rental property to threaten her and that he trashed the property the next day.
Hovind was arrested July 30 on third-degree domestic violence, records showed, and he was released from the Conecuh County Jail after posting $1,000 bond.
On his YouTube channel, Hovind proclaimed his innocence, saying he was “squeaky clean.”
“We’re going to come out squeaky clean,” he said. “There’s nothing to be concerned about.”
Hovind spent nine years in federal prison on financial-related offenses, including structuring bank withdrawals and failing to file tax returns.
News of the arrest and the request for a protective order was first posted by Robert Baty, a blogger who has been critical of Hovind.
Hovind has long been a controversial figure.
In 2006, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for tax fraud after failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and failing to pay taxes on wages for employees at the Creation Science and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Florida. Hovind has claimed that everything he owns belongs to God and that therefore he owes no taxes.
Hovind’s first wife was also sentenced to prison time on tax charges. The couple has since divorced.
Hovind continues to maintain his innocence in the tax fraud case.
After his release from prison, Hovind moved to Conecuh County, Alabama, where he set up a new Dinosaur Adventure Land, a Christian campground that promotes creationism. The campground’s logo features a brontosaurus looking up at three crosses on a hilltop.
Dinosaur Adventure Land is run by Creation Science Evangelism Ministries Inc., a nonprofit where Hovind serves as president. The charity collected $560,638 in revenue during the fiscal year 2018, according to documents filed with the IRS.
….
In a video posted after his July arrest, Hovind asked supporters to pray God would protect the ministry from outside threats.
“Lord, build a hedge of protection around us as we’re being attacked,” he prayed.
In 2020, Hovind sued the federal government and a number of government officials over his past conviction and the seizure of property belonging to his past ministry in Florida. That lawsuit was recently dismissed. An appeal is planned.
According to Hemant Mehta, Hovind was sentenced in September 2021 to thirty days in jail for domestic violence. I was unable to find any news sites reporting this story.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Jim Elliff, the director of Christian Communicators Worldwide, thinks Christians should avoid Bart Ehrman because he could cause them to doubt or lose their faith. For those of you who are not familiar with Evangelical-turned-agnostic New Testament theologian Bart Ehrman, his credentials are as follows:
Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He began his teaching career at Rutgers University, and joined the faculty in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC in 1988, where he has served as both the Director of Graduate Studies and the Chair of the Department.
Professor Ehrman completed his M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton Seminary, where his 1985 doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude. An expert on the New Testament and the history of Early Christianity, has written or edited [over] thirty books, numerous scholarly articles, and dozens of book reviews. In addition to works of scholarship, Professor Ehrman has written several textbooks for undergraduate students and trade books for general audiences. Five of his books have been on the New York Times Bestseller list: Misquoting Jesus; God’s Problem; Jesus Interrupted; Forged; and How Jesus Became God. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages.
His books include:
God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)
Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, & Invented Their Stories of the Savior
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
Forged: Writing in the Name of God – Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Ehrman is a royal pain in the ass for Evangelical pastors and theologians. His books are well written and quite devastating to many of the tenets of Evangelicalism — especially Biblical inerrancy and infallibility. His books are accessible, making it easy for the average Joe-the-plumber reader to understand the history and nature of the Bible. In other words, Ehrman has successfully bridged the ivory tower/pew divide. I heartily recommend his books.
Years ago, Ehrman participated in a debate with Craig Evans at a Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Midwestern is a Southern Baptist institution. By all accounts, Ehrman decidedly won the debate.
First, because Ehrman is a false teacher and we are forbidden to give such men a forum to express their views.
The Bible doesn’t treat false teachers kindly. It is one thing to talk with a skeptic who is asking questions to know the truth, or who is confronting you in public, but it is quite another thing to invite and pay a false teacher to come to your turf in order to present his views in an open forum.
Inviting a false teacher to present his errant views in order to persuade students and the public is like allowing a gunman to shoot randomly out into an audience of military personnel because it is assumed the troops have body armor. For one thing, body armor cannot shield against all shots, and for another, there are many people attending who have no armor at all. At last week’s debate, for instance, there were many people from the public who were not even believers. Some young people also attended, and some seminary students who are not yet prepared for the effects of doubt-producing verbiage…
Second, because the minority position almost always gains some followers regardless who wins the debate.
When you have a sizable crowd it almost goes without saying that someone will be convinced of the false views of the false teacher. You may sense an overwhelming approval of the debate by many who love the give and take, but fail to take note of the quiet student or outsider to the seminary now stricken with doubt about the Scriptures. Ehrman’s presentation might be all that is needed to move him over the line…
Third, because debates are not always won on the basis of truth alone.
We don’t need to comment much here, because you understand how this works. Ehrman clearly won the debate by the account of several attending. He simply won it by his cleverness and expertise at debating. His opponent, the believer, was well able to defeat him with the truth, but missed his opportunities in several places, giving credence to the idea that he was a better writer and lecturer than debater. In fact, this is the second time Ehrman won a debate at the same seminary, but against a different Christian opponent. What does that do for our witness? Though I have no question in my mind that our position on the reliability of Scripture is the right one and can withstand Ehrman’s arguments soundly, our side was out-debated.
Fourth, because many of the listeners will not have the opportunity to sort out confusing aspects of the debate with professors or knowledgeable persons…
Fifth, because doubt is insidious.
One seminary student who has now graduated told me that he occasionally had huge doubts about Scripture and God. They were not there often, perhaps only for a few difficult days or weeks once every year or two, but they were so strong that he found himself almost smothered by them when they came. This was a leading student, chosen as one of the best preachers of the seminary. Doubt is insidious. Like a drop of ink added to gallons of water, it can ruin everything. It is the fly in the perfume. We are naïve to think that, being free from doubts ourselves, others do not deal with them regularly.
When a man like Ehrman speaks, doubt-producing statements may be forever lodged in people’s minds, causing trouble when least expected. It only takes a tiny amount of doubt for some people to be destroyed. A weak person might believe his doubts rather than believe his beliefs…..
Where, oh where, do I begin?
There is no need for me to go through a lengthy refutation of Elliff’s post. His position is quite simple:
Bart Ehrman is a false teacher
Christians are not to listen to false teachers
False teachers like Ehrman cause Christians to doubt
Doubt causes people to lose their faith
Doubt must be avoided at all costs, so information that is contrary to the approved narrative must be avoided
Consider this. The doubting students that Elliff is so concerned about have gone to Evangelical (Southern Baptist) churches their entire lives and have at least four years of college education, most likely at Evangelical institutions. After a lifetime of training, four years of college, and after uncounted sermons and Sunday school lessons, the students still aren’t prepared to withstand hearing ONE debate featuring a non-Christian?
I have one word for this: pathetic.
Elliff lives in a world where the only truth is his truth– though he calls his truth “God’s” truth. Even though most everyone admits Ehrman handily won the debate, according to Elliff he won by deceptive means. Since there is only one version of the truth, Ehrman had to win by other means.
The money quote is this:
Ehrman clearly won the debate by the account of several attending. He simply won it by his cleverness and expertise at debating. His opponent, the believer, was well able to defeat him with the truth, but missed his opportunities in several places, giving credence to the idea that he was a better writer and lecturer than debater.
Elliff seems to have forgotten his Bible. If I remember right, the Holy Spirit indwells every follower of Jesus. When believers are called on to give a defense of their faith, the Holy Spirit gives the believers the words to say. Evidently, the Holy Spirit didn’t come through for Evans.
Elliff lives in an alternate universe where saying the Bible says _________ is the satisfactory answer to every question. It’s the equivalent of a child wanting to know why, and their mother telling them, because I said so. That’s the world Evangelicals like Jim Elliff live in. Any facts that don’t fit the approved orthodox narrative are rejected out of hand. Even when the facts are overwhelming, great lengths are taken to explain away the contrary evidence. Young-earth creationists such as Ken Ham and Kent Hovind (Dr. Dino) are perfect examples of this.
I left Christianity because I no longer believed the Christian narrative to be true. It was my desire to know the truth that ultimately resulted in my deconversion. If Christian seminary students, most of whom are studying for the ministry, cannot be confronted with contrary evidence for fear of losing their faith, I would suggest it is not a faith worth having.
Doubt should not be discouraged. Evangelicals should be encouraged to question, investigate, and test the beliefs which their pastors (and college professors) and churches say are true. A faith that will withstand the onslaught of the modern/postmodern world must be able to answer the questions the modern/postmodern world presents. Perhaps, that is the real issue. The Christian faith has run out of answers. All that is left is warmed-over dogma from years gone by, irrelevant and no longer satisfying for the needs of humanity.
It really is all about the Bible; on this point both skeptics and Evangelicals can agree.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
I want to share with readers several emails I received from a Fundamentalist Christian named Matt Nye. Nye is of the opinion that people reject Christianity and become atheists because they are sexual deviants. I hope you find his emails instructive. Pay particular attention to the fact that Nye tells me he is 21 years old and that he became a Christian after years as a porn-loving atheist/agnostic. My God, they must start watching porn quite young where he lives! Besides, since he was an atheist before he became a Christian, doesn’t this mean that he was a sexual deviant too?
One of Nye’s favorite preachers is Tim Conway, pastor of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas. I wonder if Nye is aware that I once was Conway’s pastor? Imagine, one of his favorite preachers had an unsaved, sexual deviant as his pastor. Gotta love the irony, right?
Based on several posts on his now-defunct blog, Matt Nye is a Calvinist. As a card-carrying member of the John Calvin Club, surely Nye knows that God has decreed and predestined me to be an arch-enemy of Christianity. And since I cannot overthrow the plan God chose for my life from before the foundation of the world, it’s God’s fault, not mine, that I’m a sexual deviant.
I hope you will also note in the one email that Nye asks me to watch one of convicted felon Kent Hovind’s seminars. Ken Hovind attended Midwestern Baptist College, the same college I attended in the 1970s. According to Wikipedia, in 2007, Hovind was “convicted of 58 federal counts, including 12 tax offenses, one count of obstructing federal agents, and 45 counts of structuring cash transactions” and sentenced to ten years in prison. In July 2015, Hovind was paroled. Now out of prison, Hovind, also known as Dr. Dino, has returned to his calling, preaching the gospel of young-earth creationism.
Here’s email number one:
Hi.
I noticed you said you left the Christian faith and are now an atheist. I have a question for you though. Before I ask you it, we have to define what a born-again Christian is. A born-again Christian is someone who knows the Lord, evidenced by 1 John 2:4.
So my question to you is this, did you know the Lord?
This presents a serious problem for you, because if…
A)… you say “Yes” then you are admitting there is a God and creator, but you walked away from him.
B)… you say “No”, then you are proving that you never were a Christian.
I don’t mean to sound condescending and I’m sure being a former pastor you know the scriptures more than a 21-year-old like myself, but according to 1 John 2:19 “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
You’ve had a false conversion my friend. I ask you to consider these things seriously because eternity is a long time to be wrong.
Email number two:
Hi Bruce.
To be honest, I don’t know you at all personally, as I am a nobody who stumbled across your site.
What I’m asking you to consider is this, were you truly “born-again”?
I was a false convert until the age of about 20 when the Lord opened my heart and saved me.
I’m willing I can describe your situation all those years. The “church” or “worship” part of Christianity is this “grit-your-teeth” sort of feeling. There’s also a sense deep within that you are rebelling against something. Like this energy within you that is fighting against something. I can assure you that “inner-rebellion” is completely gone. The only thing left is my sinful flesh which is dying little by little. Theology or preaching must have been your #1 thing while Jesus was just some accessory.
As I’ve said before, I don’t know you personally, but I assure you that the main reason people reject Christianity and become atheist is because of a sexual deviance. (Jude 1:18 “How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.”) Pornography is a big one. It was with me. I actually was atheistic/agnostic for some years and then intellectually became a Christian again, or “returned from a back-slidden state” thinking I was still saved. But when God saved me for REAL, he really revealed himself. Christianity isn’t a mental acknowledgement of the facts. Saying a sinner’s prayer and trusting in the prayer won’t do it.
Sir, I’ve had too many prayers answered to know that this isn’t just a coincidence. There really is a God. I plead with you, regardless of what you’ve heard about Kent Hovind. Watch one of his seminars and just think to yourself “Ok, there’s a chance I could be wrong, so I’ll be open minded” Eternity is too long to be wrong.
Email number three:
I’m amazed at how atheists can be so emotional over something they don’t believe in. I’m only spending my time to e-mail because I truly care about you, not to be condescending.
When you look at the Venus Fly Trap or any other Carnivorous plants, are you really going to believe that it was the result of a mutation? Here’s something striking, mutations have never been observed to introduce new information in the genome. Mutations can only scramble or duplicate existing information.
I made no attempt to engage Nye or answer his emails. After he emailed me the first time, I responded and told him I wasn’t interested in corresponding with him. I asked him to not write me again, but, in classic Evangelical fashion, he ignored my request and emailed me several more times. This kind of behavior is quite common among Evangelical zealots who feel duty-bound to share what “God” has laid upon their hearts. They have no respect for atheists, and seem only concerned with hearing themselves talk.
I suppose I should feel sorry for this young man. His head has been filled with foolishness that he thinks is “God.” He’s a youngster who pridefully and arrogantly thinks he knows the Bible and the mind of God so well that he can, with great certainty, pass judgment on my spiritual condition. Never mind that I have likely forgotten more Bible knowledge than Nye will ever know. All that matters to Nye is putting in a good word for Jesus. He’s told Bruce, the atheist the truth, and now that he has done his duty, he’s free to move on to other atheists who desperately need to hear that they are sexual deviants.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
