By Alan Franklin

The best news we have heard in a long time is that Robert Schuller's palace of varieties, aka The Crystal Cathedral, has filed for bankruptcy! Great! Let's hope their trashy TV programs go off air sometime soon. So much for the alleged "power of positive thinking." Maybe Shuller and his buddies need to grit their teeth and pray more positively, to the assorted deities that they think may be listening.

Unfortunately the begowned one- anyone bidding for Schuller’s robes?- is unlikely to be out of business- business being the operative word. His wealthy buddies range from Rupert Murdoch, who got his awful sham of a spiritual show onto British TV, to Rick Warren, C. Peter Wagner etc.

But as Sandy Simpson wrote: "The point is that positive thinking is busted.

" Why do I say that? ‚   Because I'm sure they weren't all sitting around positively thinking and confessing that they wanted to go bankrupt! ‚   Not only is this practice patently unbiblical, it also doesn't work outside of "Christendumb". ‚   All you have to do is tune into the cooking competition shows to see any number of ego-bloated people who positively think they are going to win and then take a well-deserved nosedive. ‚   That is ‚  one of the ‚  reasons I watch those shows ... to see people who are complete ‚  postmodern narcissists ‚  take a hard fall from pride. ‚   However, they never seem to learn their lesson as I am sure Schuller and his other heretical buddies won't either."

I endorse our friend Jacob Prasch’s remarks on hearing the news of the crystal "catastrophe" (ho ho ho):" Fallen, fallen is Babylon The Great "“ may Saddleback, Willow Creek and TBN be next."

And so say all of us! I often wondered when Pat and I wrote our book Goodbye America, Goodbye Britain, what would happen to all the name it and claim it, positive confession, prosperity-teaching churches when the financial roof fell in, as it is now about to do in America.

Will their God of prosperity get the blame when their cars and homes are repossessed? I think we will soon find out. I’m glad our church building is an old hut that should have been knocked down years ago. We don’t owe a cent on it.