#2826: Bert Farias

Bert Farias is a self-decared “messenger of the Lord carrying a spirit of revival to the Church and the nations”, i.e. a fundie dominionist, who is associated with Charisma magazine and who runs something called the Holy Fire ministries together with his wife Carolyn. Apparently, the ministry is guided by words and ideas that pop into Bert’s head and which he assumes is God speaking to him and telling him how important his work is in the distinctive style of contemporary American NAR-associated evangelicism (“your vision is to build a city not made with hands – to take a people to a place where I am, sojourners in a land, a vision not of man”, and so on). He has also written a couple of books with titles like “Tongues: the elevation of a mystery”.

 

Farias is, of course, committed to Biblical supremacy and inerrancy, and is accordingly concerned with various aspects of modern culture; indeed, “there is a diabolical plot to remove major sections from the Bible – a move that we don’t even talk about today” (Farias talks about it a lot, at least). Such sections targeted for deletion would likely include the authors’ opinions on homosexuality – Farias does not like homosexuality, and has for instance declared that gay-friendly Christians and churches “are tools of Satan”; during the 2016 election primaries, he also firmly denounced Pete Buttigieg, referring to him as “Petunia”, calling him a “trophy of Hell” and accusing him of trying to indoctrinate the public with homosexuality: and to clarify the stakes, Farias concluded that Buttigieg’s “abominable lifestyle” is bringing the “death rattle of a nation.”

 

Indeed, Farias has his own theory of homosexuality: Homosexuality is caused by fart demons! In choosing to be gay, a person chooses to engage in “unclean demonic practices”, and “homosexuality is actually a demon spirit. It is such a putrid smelling demon that other demons don’t even like to hang around it.” He knows this because “a genuine prophet of God [who shall conveniently remain unnamed] told me that the Lord allowed him to smell this demon spirit, and he got sick to his stomach.” Indeed, the demons are so repugnant that they even drive pigs to suicide. Farias’s research was published, as you’d expect, by Charisma News, where Farias also implored gay people to “not get upset with me,” since they “will see that I am actually trying to help you.”

 

Lamenting the 2020 elections and how “the antichrist spirit is now the dominant spirit throughout America and the nations of the world,” Farias called out those who went against Trump and supported “evil” and urged them to repentance: “If only more professing Christians acted like Christians at the ballot box our nation would’ve never reached this point of crisis,” said Farias [no link provided].

 

Diagnosis: Fundie who is worried about fart demons will probably do just fine.