Westboro Watch

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

WBC to picket the Superbowl!

America has made an idol out of football. You care more about who wins than you do about your souls! If you spent even a fraction of the time you give to football on finding out what the Lord God of Eternity requires of you, this counry [sic] wouldn't be in the mess it's in.

We come to warn this foolish generation that the return of the Lord Jesus Christ is at hand:

Re 14:7 Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.

God has blinded your eyes and stopped up your ears so you do not even see or hear your destruction coming upon you! You have no money, jobs, homes, or hope - but you have your football!

Your only hope is to repent and obey today before it's too late!

Carmel Lutheran Church is a den of iniquity! They pedal the God loves everyone lie. Luther would be appalled to have his name attached to the lies you spread.

Mt 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

v. hat·ed, hat·ing, hates
v.tr.
1a. To feel hostility or animosity toward.
b. To detest.
2. To feel dislike or distaste for: hates washing dishes.

v.intr.
To feel hatred.

n.
1. Intense animosity or dislike; hatred.
2. An object of detestation or hatred: My pet hate is tardiness.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
--1 Corinthians 13:4-7

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
--John 3:16

The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.
--Psalms 5:5

• WBC is right; God hates almost everyone! (Christ's atonement is limited)
• It's just David's words; God doesn't actually hate people. (God's word wasn't written by verbal, plenary inspiration)
• The Bible is a book of fairy tales, taken seriously only by obtuse crackpots. (Okay, maybe not THAT strong of an opinion...)

A love–hate relationship is an interpersonal relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate. This relationship does not have to be of a romantic nature, and may be instead of a sibling one. It may occur when people have completely lost the intimacy within a loving relationship, yet still retain some passion for, or perhaps some commitment to, each other.

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
--2 Corinthians 5:21

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (See Isaiah 53:5)
--1 Peter 2:24

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
--Isaiah 53:10-11

Hello, Cap'n Coconuts and Alyzza!

I was perusing your site and was surprised and pleased that someone has finally done a clean edit of the manuscript. I was close to the author and therefore I am in a position to provide some details on how the story was sprung loose. It has been a presence on the internet for 18 years.

Thank you, Alyzza, for taking the time to polish this work.

Few people realize the digital version of "Addicted to Hate" is not the original manuscript authored by Bell. As you have obviously spent a significant amount of time on the edit, perhaps you will enjoy this background information.

I have long ago lost track of Bell, but I do recall some of the things he told me about the case. It's one I'm sure he still recounts, as he was very amused by the actors and the play.

He was hired personally by the editor to find the goods on Phelps and "cut him off at the knees" in a full length book. This followed some insults Phelps had directed toward the editor and his family that were taken much to heart.

Taschler and Fry were staff writers who had initially been assigned the job, but they had failed to turn up enough dirt to satisfy the enraged editor. At this point, Bell was found and brought to Topeka.

In August of 1993, Bell was able to convince Fred Phelps that, even though he was a journalist, he was vulnerable to a Westboro conversion--something that would have caused the paper no end of embarrassment. As a result, Bell was allowed to spend two weeks living inside the cult's compound and even established a strong romantic rapport with one of Fred's daughters during that time.

You simply can't make this stuff up.

Bell followed his tenure at the Westboro compound with a five-month investigation, concluded in February of 1994, that turned up leads going back decades, including the possibility Phelps had once been addicted to drugs provided illicitly by a local pharmacist. Bell's work also pointed to intriguing links between the Westboro Baptist Church, the Christian Identity Movement, and as yet unidentified military elements in the area around Fort Riley and Junction City. Following the Oklahoma City bombing a year later, the Kansas Attorney General's Office asked to review hundreds of pages of research notes that Bell had amassed.

But when Stauffer Communications, the media corporation that owned the Capital-Journal, was suddenly put on the block, the corporate office lost all taste for a book about Phelps. This is because when a company is sold, all pending lawsuits apparently must be resolved. As it was thought Phelps would sue at first publication--a challenge Stauffer had at first relished-- these new circumstances would have forced a quick and expensive settlement on the publisher.

Perhaps you can understand then why the paper took the steps that it did:

First, it quietly collected all existing copies of the work, then, without warning, it suddenly fired both Bell and the editor who had commissioned the book. It was 1994, and Bell preferred to work on an Olivetti-Lettera 32, a sleek little manual typewriter, thus his product existed only in hardcopy. The publisher knew this and was thorough enough to search Bell's desk and seize a second security copy.

All to little avail.

For the paper, the problem did not go away. Rumors quickly spread around Topeka that the Capital-Journal had been frightened into killing the investigation and firing the principals behind it. In response, the newspaper claimed it would soon print the original, much shorter, and less damning piece written by Taschler and Fry.

Sympathetic employees inside the paper kept Bell informed on the projected publication date, and only days before the Taschler-Fry article was to appear, Bell filed suit to determine ownership of the intellectual property. He also submitted as evidence the entire manuscript, a third copy of which he had secretly kept. Since court testimony is exempt from litigation, the manuscript could now be leaked without fear of a lawsuit from either the publisher or Phelps.

Bell then left more copies on file at the Kinko's in Topeka, Lawrence, and Kansas City. None of this was his own idea, but that of a prominent trial lawyer, Jerry Palmer, who called it "libel laundering" and claimed it was his own invention. It may well have been. Palmer was a former president of the American Trial Lawyers Association.

The next day, The Pitch, a weekly alternative paper in Kansas City, hit the stands with the headline: "Scared Stiff in Topeka: What the Capital-Journal Is Afraid to Tell You about Fred Phelps." This was accomplished by prior arrangement with its editor, CJ Janovy.

Stauffer Communications was left flat-footed. Its ham-handed response was to send attorneys to local radio and television stations, forbidding them to quote from the text. This astonished the national media to the point the Washington Post ran a long article in its Sunday edition concerning how strange it was that a paper would attempt to suppress a story it had commissioned itself.

A few days later, the manuscript was ordered sealed by the court. The master copies of the manuscript left at the Kinko's were seized by Stauffer's attorneys, but not before several dozen were purchased and circulated. The Capital-Journal then ran its own vanilla version of the Phelps' story to general public mockery.

The following weekend, without Bell's knowledge, friendly elements in Topeka held a two-day bash, a rather wild party where the celebrants took turns digitalizing the entire text. While this allowed the book to go immediately up on the net, the manuscript was seriously flawed as a result. It was riddled with words misspelled, replaced, or deleted, while sentences and entire paragraphs were left out or recast in tangled prose.

In addition, and as you guessed, Alyzza, the version submitted to the editor was only the working draft. Bell had thrown in a great deal of information, but had no expectation it would all remain in the final text.

It was the one thing Bell regretted about the adventure. However, he was loathe to remedy it since he was forbidden by the court from further dissemination of his work.

This then was the version that would go viral on the internet and remain there for 18 years until you saw fit to correct it, Alyzza. I know my old buddy is thanking you, wherever he might be.

If I can, I would add that Bell loved closers. At the end,

"fierce white toothed beasts come to trip the flesh of our indolence."

was originally written as:

" fierce white-toothed beasts come to rip the flesh of our indolence."

That, and Yates was William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet. Again, wherever my old drinking and writing buddy is, he's smiling on your gracious deed...

And it's difficult to believe that, in part due to the greed and cowardice of corporate journalism, we're still stuck with Fred today.

So, Cap'n Coconuts, if you wanted to get THAT story out, you'd be an angel indeed...

WBC will picket Jeff Dunham at the Sprint Center in KCMO to warn this generation to flee from the wrath of God to come.

Your entertainment industry has become your idol and is full of filth.

Jeff Dunham, you have been given one of the largest bullhorns in this nation and have the God-given duty to use that to glorify God.  Why don't you create a puppet and skit that does so?

Meanwhile, the faithful servants of God at WBC will remain in your streets crying out wisdom.

[They then proceed to quote Proverbs 1:20-33]

"My father is addicted to hate. Why? I can't say. But I know he has to let it out. As rage. In doing so, he has violated the sacred trust of a parent and a pastor."

--Mark Phelps, son of Pastor Fred Phelps

1. Westboro Baptist Church is... well, a Baptist church, and
2. I'm a Baptist and strongly disapprove of them.

"The Baptists are the only known body of known Christians that have never symbolized with Rome."

--Sir Isaac Newton 

"The institution of the Anabaptists is no novelty, but for 1300 years has caused great trouble in the church."

--Ulrich Zwingli, Protestant reformer 

"The sentiments of Baptists and their practice of baptism FROM THE APOSTOLIC AGE to the present, have had a continued claim of advocates, and public monuments of their existence in every century can be produced."

--Alexander Campbell, founder of the Campbellites

• B: Bible as Sole Authority. The Bible is the only authority for Christian faith and practice. Jesus ripped the Pharisees a new one for putting tradition over the weightier matters of the law, so we see no need to do the exact same thing they did. Sola scriptura all the way.
• A: Autonomy of the Local Church. Each church runs itself, basically. There are no boards or hierarchies that make decisions for individual assemblies. Thus, one cannot expect individual churches to always 100% agree on everything, particularly when comparing good Baptist churches and Westboro Baptist Church.
• P: Priesthood of Every Believer. Each believer can personally come to God through our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, because he is the only mediator between God and men (1 Ti. 2:5).
• T: Two offices: Pastor and Deacon. Just two groups that have any authority over how the church is run.
• I: Individual Soul Liberty. Each person has the right to believe what he wishes to believe in this life, free from any governmental demand. Believers do, however, have the right to influence others and vice versa.
• S: Saved (and baptized) church membership. Each church is an assembly of local believers. Unbelievers and the unbaptized (or baptized wrong) may visit the assembly but cannot join in membership until they are saved and baptized right.
• T: Two ordinances: Baptism and the Lord's Supper. We believe that both of these were meant to be ordinances performed by all local churches, not just something done in the book of Acts.
• S: Separation of Church and State: Neither the Church nor the State have any authority over each other. Baptists do not believe that government should be run (in this age) by a theocracy, or that the church should be government-run for any reason. Both are free to influence each other, though.

• T: Total Depravity. Due to the Fall of Man caused by Adam and Eve, mankind is totally enslaved in sin. Because of this, man is inclined to serve his own lusts and desires instead of the God to the point of being morally unable to follow God without His intervention. (Total here means that sin affects every part of man--it doesn't mean that every man is as evil as possible.)
• U: Unconditional Election. God has chosen from the beginning who he will reconcile to himself--not based on their virtue, merit, or faith, but grounded in his mercy alone. God chooses to extend mercy to those he chooses and refuses mercy to those he hasn't chosen.
• L: Limited Atonement. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is meant to atone for only the elect God has chosen, and no one else. It is limited in scope, not in power.
• I: Irresistable Grace. God's grace to the elect will, at some point in their lives, forcibly overcome all their resistance to accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
• P: Perseverance of the Saints. As God is the sovereign predestinator of the fate of all mankind, none of the elect can cease to be the elect and lose their salvation. Christians that fall away were either not saved to begin with or will return to Christianity.

For God so loved the elect (and only the elect), that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever is part of His elect (and only the elect) should not perish, but have everlasting life. 

No. You are probably thinking of John 3:16, which says no such thing. The word translated "world" in that verse (kosmos) NEVER means every individual of mankind who has ever lived (see, e.g., John 17:9)

--WBC FAQ

1) an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government

2) ornament, decoration, adornment, i.e. the arrangement of the stars, ‘the heavenly hosts’, as the ornament of the heavens.

3) the world, the universe

4) the circle of the earth, the earth

5) the inhabitants of the earth, men, the human family

6) the ungodly multitude; the whole mass of men alienated from God, and therefore hostile to the cause of Christ

7) world affairs, the aggregate of things earthly

     7a) the whole circle of earthly goods, endowments riches, advantages, pleasures, etc, which although hollow and frail and fleeting, stir desire, seduce from God and are obstacles to the cause of Christ

8) any aggregate or general collection of particulars of any sort

     8a) the Gentiles as contrasted to the Jews

     8b) of believers only

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
--1 Timothy 2:1-6

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."--Leviticus 18:22

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."--Romans 1:26, 27

WBC will picket the Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.  The film makers and actors who perform in the films have been given a great podium from which they have the duty to cry aloud, spare not, lift up their voice like a trumpet and shew the people their transgression and (America) their sin.  Isa. 58:1

This generation waxes worse and worse as the years go by.

The film industry has greatly contributed to the decline in society.

They promote filth and sin at every opportunity, then have awards ceremonies to celebrate promoting sin and disobedience to God's word.

Be sure to read GodHatestheMedia.com for more information about the people who influence our film and media outlets and thereby influence society.

• T: Total Depravity. Due to the Fall of Man caused by Adam and Eve, mankind is totally enslaved in sin. Because of this, man is inclined to serve his own lusts and desires instead of the God to the point of being morally unable to follow God without His intervention. (Total here means that sin affects every part of man--it doesn't mean that every man is as evil as possible.)
• U: Unconditional Election. God has chosen from the beginning who he will reconcile to himself--not based on their virtue, merit, or faith, but grounded in his mercy alone. God chooses to extend mercy to those he chooses and refuses mercy to those he hasn't chosen.
• L: Limited Atonement. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is meant to atone for only the elect God has chosen, and no one else. It is limited in scope, not in power.
• I: Irresistable Grace. God's grace to the elect will, at some point in their lives, forcibly overcome all their resistance to accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
• P: Perseverance of the Saints. As God is the sovereign predestinator of the fate of all mankind, none of the elect can cease to be the elect and lose their salvation. Christians that fall away were either not saved to begin with or will return to Christianity.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:44:48)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; WHO WILL HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; WHO GAVE HIMSELF A RANSOM FOR ALL, to be testified in due time. (1 Ti. 2:3-6, emphasis added Note: the Greek word thelo means "I wish/will." The wording in verse 4, where thelo is, is a little wonky in the 21st century, but the verse basically means "Who is willing that all men be saved...".)

WBC to picket the 8th circuit arguments as you try yet another avenue to shut up the words of the Living God. 

At issue here is the sovereignty of the Living God and whether the servants of the Almighty God may be punished for lawfully proclaiming and praising the marvelous words of the Most High, to wit:

thank God for killing american soldiers in His wrath and executing His promised vengeance on a people that will not hear and obey the law of God!

The servants of Satan screech from the roof tops:

The land is not able to bear all [H]is words.  Amos 7:10

The words of God are hated by wicked men.

Wicked men hate my words.

Therefore, I must be speaking the words of God.

So your answer is to try to keep His servants from warning that your destruction is imminent and that your sons and daughters are still coming home in body bags.  But your faithful servants will continue to deliver the message and tell you to SHUT UP and DRINK from the cup of God's fury!

Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you.  Jeremiah 25:27

Heed the warning and obey your God today!

Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?  (Ezekiel 33:11)