New Age Community Church

6418 S. 39th Avenue, Phoenix,   602-237-3213

One morning, early in March, as I lay in my bed contemplating the day ahead, I had a dream or some kind of a vision.

        I was talking with a minister of a small church. It was a healthy church and the children seemed to be happy. The minister told me of a man named Buliou (or something like that) who, for a s few years during the 20th century, travelled to hundreds of small churches in the West.  When the priest or minister would listen, he told them of their responsibilities to their members, especially the children . He said things to them like, “Straighten up!” or “Be honest!” or ”Do the right thing!”. Whatever he told them, many listened and today a few remember him and try to to do the right thing. The minister I was talking to in my dream. Showed me a mural the church members had painted on the wall, showing this Buliou speaking to the minister.  He was simply dressed and non-descript, but clearly he had had made a deep impression on this church.

At this point the vision or dream faded and I heard a voice saying to me,. “Cleanse the Temple!!

I did not fully understand the meaning of what the voice said, but I did understand that the temple reffred to was that large building in Mesa. When the voice said to me, “Cleanse the Temple!? I knew that he was speaking of our  nation— its religion and its government.

I pondered this vision for several weeks, seeing a fuller and fuller interpretation of it.

The Bible tells the story of Jesus “cleansing the temple” 2000 years ago.

When worshippers came to the temple, the custom was to make money offerings, but no graven image was permitted in the temple, so special coins were minted, called temple coins, that had no images on them.  When people came to the temple they exchanged their worldly money for temple coinage which they used for their contributions.

Various men were available to make the exchange, but they charged an exorbitant fee or did not give a fair exchange. These are the profiteers that Jesus drove from the temple.

Today we have profiteers in government and religion. They must be driven out to keep our nation healthy and safe.

I don't; have to dwell on the corruption in Washington where power and money are the coinage and our Senators and our Representative are the money-changers, the profiteers. There is profiteering going on throughout the national government, but it could not exist without Congress turning a blind eye.

We all want clean air and clean water. It is for this reason that Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) We all thought this was a wonderful thing, but we did not know that Congress had sold us out to the big corporations.  The reason the EPA was created was not to protect the environment, but to protect the big corporations.

If Congress has passed laws making pollution illegal, then individual A mericans would have sued anyone or any company that polluted the environment. Pollution would have ended in less than a year.  This frightened the big corporations, so they are the ones who secretly  backed the EPA. The law now provides that only the agency can sue polluters.

This is why we still have plenty of pollution and it is a good example of political corruption .  The Congressmen were paid off to free the polluters from the possibility of tens of thousands of lawsuits.  Now, a polluter can say he cannot afford to make the changes necessary to stop polluting. It would be too expensive. It would cut into his profits. So the congressional committees say, “Oh, we’re sorry. You are excused. We don’t want to hurt your profits.”

Now to profiteering religion. A man takes in half-a million dollars or more as a pastor and he calls himself a “:man of God”. Religion is one of the biggest businesses in the nation.  I have a problem with that. Yes, there are many small religious organization  that do not profiteer. I am speaking about the ones with TV shows.  TV shows that cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce. TV shows that continually ask you to “Keep those love-offering comings, so we can continue this work.”  And what is the work. It is producing a TV show that asks you to send in your money. They make millions. Don’t you have a problem with that?

Okay, there are the three issues:

These are mony of  the same things I have been writing about for years>  So why the vision?

I think is was to impress upon me the importance of what I have been writing and to get me to say more and more importantly, to ask for your help.  I am an old man, I have been doing this for over 50 years.  I am from a different generation.  MY methods are probably old fashioned.  This work need more people to get involved.

We have got to act now.  If things keep going in the way they are now, it won’t be long before we are all in big trouble.  You can’t point your finger at one person and say, “He’s responsible?”

We are all responsible, some more than others.

The problem is not so much the people, as it is the system.

But the people in power have come to be so much reliant on the system to provide them with the wealth and power that the system has made them addicted to, that they resist violently any steps to correct the system.

This is why the people have to make a lot of noise.  The people, that’s you and me, have to speak up and demand that the government correct the flaws in the system. Not with more laws, but by implementing a few corrections that you can read about on our website.

When some company is not making sound business decision, it is not up the government to bail them out.  Let them go bust.  Then other companies will learn what not to do!

As far as religion goes. How about this: We never want to tell anyone or any organization what to say or what to preach, but what about this.  Let’s have a ruling that anyone who accepts money for teaching something, must be able to prove that it is likely to be true, that it is not a fable, or that it is a reasonable conclusion.

That certainly would have a chilling effect upon those who want to tell us what God’s will is. 

I ask all those of you who care, “Come out to the New Age Community Church  on Sunday mornings, and let’s talk about the problem and see if we can come up with some like of a program to awaken America, to get the nation interested in “Cleansing the Temple.”  

                   --Rev. Dr. John Rodgers