Just now, who is America's most inconvenient man?
Pastor Terry ‘cynical’ Jones sure seems like a sarcastic person to turn into…...
Jones, a grayish 58-year-old who packs a .40-caliber pistol on his hip, heads a little congregation on a pine-studded area of Gainesville, Florida, -- perhaps 50 members in all. The Dove World Outreach Center, as the church is well-known, is actually a local, spirit-filled church that is found in across America, since the earliest days of its birth.
Pastor Jones had been a former hotel manager and part-time pastor. In 1981, Jones & his wife Sylvia to set up a sister church in a working-class locality in Cologne At first, Terry and Sylvia Jones split time between the Cologne and Gainesville churches. Then in 2008, they cut ties with the Cologne church after members accused the couple of financial improprieties linked with their side business, TS and Company, which is owned by Terry and Sylvia Jones. TS and Company, sells vintage furniture on eBay and was supposed to support the churches.
Terry and Sylvia Jones have also been accused of labor abuses. Allegedly, they use students from Dove's religious school. Gainesville authorities have been investigating the church's tax-exempt status.
Jones, a Missouri inhabitant who is allegedly has an honorary degree from the unaccredited California Graduate School of Theology, spent some 20 years there before returning to the United States to lead Dove World Outreach in 2001. Jones' daughter, Emma Jones, accusing her father of ‘wrongdoing’. She had broken with the church, calling it a "cult" that "forced us with oppression to be obedient. They used mental violence. If you are not obedient, God will punish you." Emma Jones told The Gainesville Sun (a News Paper).
Terry Jones used to preach in a much different message than the other pastor in "The Apostle." And that is why Jones' job to burn copies of the Holy Quran to mark the 9/11 on this Saturday, has managed to dictate the news and global politics. Other former church members in Florida and Germany also described Jones' style as offensive and cult-like.
Jones judges that Islam is a "false religion" that is "of the devil" and thus must be defeated. Nevertheless, he believes Islam is also threatening to take over the United States. Therefore his justification "We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam," Jones said. "We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats. It is time for America to return to being America."
Jones astonished the media with the news on Thursday, that he was abandoning the Koran-burning episode. He said he had arrived at an agreement with Islamic officials in New York City to shift the planned Islamic center from a site near ground zero, means this compromise had alleviated him and had changed his mind to burn Korans.
Jones and the Dove Center first drew coverage a year ago when some members sent their children to area schools on the first day of classes with t-shirts emblazoned with the church's motto, "Islam is of the Devil." The children were sent home by school authorities and media coverage followed.
"As of right now, we are not backing down," Terry Jones told NBC on Wednesday. However, he added, "If God told us to do it" -- burn the Korans -- "then I guess he could tell us to do something different."
What nature of individual he is- we may well presume from the following observations by Diana Breuel, a church member in Cologne, told a German news agency:
"He wasn't a pastor who takes care of everyone,"….. "He didn't project biblical values and Christianity, but put himself as a person in the center of things."
Courtesy -Net
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