Reply to “Sound Doctrine” and Timothy Williams

Predictably, this seemly cultic sect failed to address the specific issues raised by Mr. Lister in his article, but sought to attack Moriel, David Lister, and Jacob Prasch as a means of circumventing the issues.

For the record:

• Moriel is not a discernment ministry (in the sense Mr. Williams claims his “sound doctrine” to be). Moriel is a Church planting ministry, an apologetics and anti-cult ministry, a Jewish evangelism ministry, a teaching ministry, and a missions agency with a children’s AIDS hospice and a Bible college in the Third World. Indeed, we are concerned with discernment, having a page on our web site devoted to discernment issues, because we believe all Christians should be discerning and aware of discernment issues. But we are not a discernment ministry as such, and neither is “Sound Doctrine”; they are in fact a pseudo Christian cult.
• Moriel has no ongoing dispute with Elim as falsely reported by Mr. Williams; they dropped their litigation years ago. Moriel never stated, as Mr. Williams falsely reports, that Elim said, “Join Elim and kill for Christ”. Elim never said that, and contrary to what Mr. Williams asserts, Moriel never said Elim said that. What we did say was that the political actions of certain Elim figures in Northern Ireland could (wrongly) create the impression that this was the case. The Elim litigation moreover was related to a host of issues surrounding money preachers, the Toronto Experience etc. What Mr. Williams reports is nonsense.
• From the media covered sex scandal of Elim’s leader in New Zealand, to the front page “baby’s funeral” scandal of the Elim leader in Northern Ireland who sued Moriel, to the Elim leader on the Isle of Man sent to prison for having sex with minors, to the Elim superintendent in the North of England found in homosexuality – Elim has so much scandal and bad press, the episode with Moriel was rather minor.
• Jacob Prasch & Moriel did endorse David Pawson’s earlier teaching prior to his book calling the Toronto Deception a “yellow light”. To Moriel, the light was red – Toronto is bad, and we objected to Mr. Pawson upholding a compromised position on Toronto in the arbitration report. This is not to detract from his earlier material with which we have always agreed, but without reference to Moriel, Mr. Pawson alienated a lot of his followers by compromising on the Toronto issue.
• Mr. Williams’s citation of a con artist and petty thief in Australia who set up a bogus Moriel and counterfeited our materials says all that needs to be said. This con artist was ruled against found by the courts when another ministry sued him for similar slander, but he later began placing groundless defamatory material on the internet regarding Moriel proven to be false. Among other things, he supported a woman leaving her husband to take off with another man and defended denials of the Trinity (a statement regarding this episode of some years ago is still posted on our web site for anyone interested, and the antics of the con artist are exposed on other web sites).

We do not know what Mr. Williams means by not having the qualifications to be a discernment ministry. First of all, we do not claim to be one. Secondly, if he wishes to talk about theological credentials or academic qualifications – such things alone hardly qualify one for discernment and don’t impress us. (Although Jacob Prasch will gladly put his Cambridge and LBC qualifications up against Mr. Williams’s qualifications any day, if he has any.)

We stand by our position concerning “Sound Doctrine”, whose adherents did attempt some affirmation of Moriel at one point. The practices and beliefs of this organization we do not believe to be scriptural. Unlike Mr. Williams however, we are pleased to focus our comments on their beliefs and praxis, and leave personalities out of it. We are only prepared to respond to issues, not personalities in this matter.