Weird Teachings of Fred Coulter

 

The future, according to Coulter
Photo by Zach Chisholm

2  But there arose false prophets also among the people, as among you also there shall be false teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

~ 2Pe 2:1 (ASV)

Someone I know made some comments about a couple of “messages” (the person could not bring themselves to call them “sermons”) by Fred Coulter.  I decided to investigate.  What I found was not what they were referring to, but rather I found a bizarre patchwork of conspiracy theories and related ideas that are beneath anyone touting themselves as some sort of “scholar”.  Move over William Dankenbring!  You have competition in the lunatic asylum!

First of all, I was forced to watch part of a couple of videos by him.  Amazing how he can write all of those books, but his online articles are sparse considering how long he’s been around.  The first thing I noticed was how boring he was!

With a deep voice like that, you would think that it could hold your attention for some time, but in one video he rambled on for ten whole minutes without making a single significant point.  I actually started scrolling up and down on the side looking to see what other related videos there were, and he then started talking about how important his message was and if you had a short attention span you’d better shape up because it would take more than fifteen minutes to explain it.  I was amused as I realized I was about 16 minutes and 30 seconds into a half-hour message on absolutely nothing, so obviously he’d been timing the message.

It was an unintended admission that he knew he has trouble holding people’s attention, and now he’s going to blame the victim, just like most wife beaters blame their wives for their actions.  It became obvious really fast that what I was watching was someone who was full of themselves.

And, that later was bore out when I finally found some online printed material.  It says something when upfront you are given a preface and another entire page about the author.  EW Bullinger, as a contrast, never put his name in the Companion Bible, for he wasn’t interested in fame but for helping others study the Bible.

I also figured out early on that I was dealing with a person obsessed with conspiracy theories.  For example, did you know that Jesuits are infiltrating the Church of God and Seventh-Day Adventists?  Apparently, they use “Neuro Linguistic Programming”.  Somehow, I’ve never heard of it, but it is “on the television every day“, “in the news every day” and even “in every book”.  I guess I don’t watch or read the right things.  Or, maybe Wikipedia is right about NLP being a pseudoscience.  Anyhow, that was the shortest of the videos I could not suffer through.

On the Christian Biblical Church of God (CBCG) website, they have an article on “Targets of the Illuminati and the Committee of 300” by Dr John Coleman.  I don’t know who he is or his association with CBCG, but it is obvious that the church agrees with the views printed in the article.  Frankly, it is a list that would make Alex Jones proud.

In fact, one paragraph of “Monetary Dictatorship & Prophecy” could have come right from Prison Planet:

Come over here to Revelation 12:9: “And the great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent who is called the Devil and Satan, who is deceiving the whole world…” And there’s never been a time in human history where they have been able to have control over the whole world wherever anyone is. And they are perfecting chips that they are putting in people’s brains, which you will hear about on days three and four of the Feast of Tabernacles, where they can control people, know where they are, know what their thoughts are. And you see, as I point out in the sermons during the Feast of Tabernacles on those days, they are on the verge of doing many of these things, but there’s one little problem they haven’t been able to figure out. Though they can enhance the human mind with chips, with computers, and virtual reality, and all of these things, they haven’t figured out how to control the evil. So if they enhance the human mind with no control over evil, guess what else they’re also going to enhance?

In that same article, he says the bear is both the Persian Empire and “Soviet Russia”?  I’m not sure how that works.  However, that’s not the only mistake this so-called scholar makes:

Also the religious system of the Roman Catholics have 666 stamped all over it. You can go online and look it up and it’s about a hundred page download of the history of why the Roman Catholic religious system has 666, so you will probably find 666 in the religious system, 666 in the governmental system, and 666 in the business system. And that equals eighteen–doesn’t it?–which is three times six–is it not? And it starts out with what? Three sixes. That’s just something to think on, something to look at.

Anyone who touts his credentials in Greek spouting such nonsense should be ashamed of himself!  It is the ignorant who make claims like this.  For clarification, here is the passage in the ASV (the KJV says something similar):

¹⁸ Here is wisdom. He that hath understanding, let him count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man: and his number is Six hundred and sixty and six.

The number is not three 6s!  It is not 6 + 6 + 6!  It is 600 + 60 + 6!  There is a difference.  Knowing this much may mean the difference between knowing what to avoid and what not to avoid.

It matters because Greek and Hebrew alike use letters for numbers.  The name of the Beast will mean either a word or a number depending upon how you read it.  I don’t know for a certainty who it is, but I know there is a lot of speculation about what it could be.

One interesting fact about the number is that some, but not many, translations have “616” instead of “666”.  Some believe the 666 is for Nero Caesar.  In ancient Hebrew, it would have been more like Neron Kesar transliterated, which becomes Nrwn Ksr because Hebrew has no vowels, and that in Hebrew adds up to 666.  However, in Latin, it would have been simply Nero Kesar, and that would have added up to 616.  So, it could have been that someone “corrected” the error along the way.

If push came to shove, though, the weight of evidence is for 666, and it could mean an entirely different name in reference to the time of the end, so it is best to keep an open mind.  Still, it will be representative of a name, or a title, which is often translated “name”, and it will not be three of the same letter as 6 + 6 + 6 would require it to be.

I’ve also seen some references where Coulter believes that there must be an entire physical temple built prior to Christ’s return.  This is the polar opposite to James Malm, who ironically takes so many other things too literally, manages to spiritualize the entire notion of a temple or even a daily sacrifice away.  Both of these are erroneous and dangerous teachings.  It is clear that in order for the daily sacrifice to be taken away, it must exist, and there must be some sort of structure in place for sacrifices to occur.

However, the insistence there must be a physical temple, and not just an altar, means that people may be unprepared to flee if and when necessary.  People in Jerusalem will need to flee and do so quickly, as Jesus said to not even turn and pick up your coat.

Coulter calls Christmas, Easter and Halloween (not sure why he keeps bringing that one up) “occult holidays” instead of the traditional COG term “pagan holidays”.  I dunno, maybe it’s more accurate, but it certainly is more dramatic.  It just adds fuel to the fire that he is drawing attention to himself.

In fact, the only video I could watch all the way through was one in which he kept bringing up what he did last time.  Yes, he said it showed God’s glory, but he kept talking about how he showed it previously.  This seems way too prevalent with the COGs.  It is one thing to point back to something you wrote or said before when it adds to what you are saying, but when it becomes a continual habit, that is more telling than most of them realize.

There are a lot of studies and material not available on their site.  You have to contact them for it.

Bob Thiel has some other doctrines of Coulter on the COGWriter site, namely some “sea of glass” doctrine that seems out of place with events in Revelation.  He seems to be confused on some other prophetic subjects, in fact.

So, while I did not find any direct evidence about what sent me searching out CBCG in the first place (although there are rumors here and there that are vague and not worth reporting), and while some of his beliefs are perhaps merely muddled, I am concerned with what appears to be a fascination with conspiracy theories and even those that border on science fiction.  He even purportedly was given to reading bumps on people’s heads while in WCG.  While he hasn’t quite gone to the extremes that Dankenbring has with UFOs and pyramids, it is quite concerning!

My advice is to steer clear of that group.