There have been a lot of reaction to this. Some of the better ones I’ve found:

Rev. Wil Gaffney picks apart some of the claims made by Messer.

13. The notion that there is such a thing as a “king chromosome” is a fiction, as is the claim that it is kohenic, that is priestly; the Israelite and Judean monarchs — there were queens as well — were not priests.
14. The man’s articulation of what “God wants,” is to say the least unsubstantiated outside that particular setting.
15. The man never says how he knows that none of Long’s ancestors or relatives has ever seen a Torah scroll.
16. While there are some traditional reflections on the human body — including DNA and chromosomes — in the mystical Kabbalistic tradition, the speaker is crafting a verbal montage without reference to the classical texts or their theologies.

Anthea Butler at Religion Dispatches has been watching Long for awhile:

I wish I could say I was surprised by Long’s latest antics, but I’m not. Actually, I am surprised he stayed away from the church this long. After declaring in December that he was taking a hiatus to work on the problems in his marriage, Long has returned with a new lacefront and a defiant attitude. Having a fake rabbi declare him “King” of a fading, dying mega-church is a joke, but what is not are the deluded New Birth Members cheering him on.

Clearly they have drunk the “Kool Aid” and I don’t use that term lightly. I’ve believed since my trip to New Birth back in 2010, when Long promised to fight his civil case, that New Birth was a cult-like organization. Long’s hold over his congregation reminds me of Jim Jones. That may sound harsh, but Jim Jones slept with his members too, before leading the People’s Temple into the jungles of Guyana.

Messer is sometimes called a Messianic Rabbi, but he’s part of the “Hebrew Roots” movement, which other Messianic Rabbi do not accept. Apparently, this is all just part of Messer’s shtick. From Bartholomew’s Notes:

This is not the first time Messer and his scroll have come to the rescue of a beleaguered evangelist; in 2007 Tampa Bay Online reported from Randy White’s Without Walls International Church, following White’s split from church co-founder Paula White:

[Randy] White preached for a few minutes before turning over the pulpit to Ralph Messer, a Messianic rabbi from Denver who teaches about the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith.
Messer preached about the Torah and Jewish entrepreneurship and spoke again at the 11 a.m. service, where he led the congregation in a prayer that ended emotionally for White.

The Torah that Messer presented is apparently linked to Rabbi Menachem Youlus. According to the Grey Lady, Youlus has recently confessed to fraud:

For years Rabbi Menachem Youlus, a self-described “Jewish Indiana Jones,” received plaudits from those captivated by his stories of traveling to Eastern Europe and beyond to search for historic Torahs that were lost or hidden during the Holocaust.

But on Thursday, Rabbi Youlus stood inside the federal courthouse in Manhattan and confessed that he had made up those tales of daring.

“Between 2004 and 2010, I falsely represented that I had personally obtained vintage Torah scrolls — in particular ways, in particular locations — in Europe and Israel,” he told Judge Colleen McMahon of Federal District Court. “I know what I did was wrong, and I deeply regret my conduct.”

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I had hoped that this would be an online affair, but apparently you have to pay $10 just to see this thing. I suspect that it’s designed to help you reach the verdict,
“Yes, I am possessed by a minor demon!” At that point, Larson will have a line of products and help sessions designed to let you bind the demon and free yourself – all at an affordable price, sorry no credit, but guaranteed to work because you have no chance of proving anything in court.

Via Dangerous Minds

If I had any doubts, The American Jesus has just killed them with a post about “Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Program” a public-access show from the late eighties produced by David Hart. Hart created the show to spread the good news of Christian Science, and what better way to spread the word of Mary Baker Eddy than with singing, dancing alien puppets?

No, wait, it gets better … or worse … probably both. After twenty something years, Hart is back with the NEW JCSBLP:

[The video promptly got marked as private. Thin skin? Oh well ...]

On the other hand, they’re both mythical creatures — so I guess this is perfectly appropriate.

Latest indications are this relatively small comet has broken into even smaller, even less significant, chunks of dust and ice. This trail of piffling particles will remain on the same path as the original comet, completing its unexceptional swing through the inner solar system this fall.

This means that all the panic and godawful singing were a waste of time … OR DOES IT!!?!?!

io9 has been following some truly bizarre fringe theorists who think they know the TRUTH that NASA is trying to cover up. One is Alex Collier, whose theory is a mash-up of Christianity, Star Trek and sheer insanity. Collier has argued that the comet is actually a perfect cube, that the GOD of the Bible is actually an acronym for a Galactic Obliteration Device, and that Jesus was part of the Borg Collective.

As usual, this theory comes with a rats nest of linked sites. io9 links to The Canadian National newspaper, which is very … how to say this politely … very Canadian. They link to the page of the Luciferian Liberation Front, who seem to have abducted their website from the year 1996. And these guys are about one full Time Cube:

The writers of Star Trek the Next Generation were being prophetic in their visions of the Borg ship when they portrayed it as a giant cube. The inspiration of the Lightbringer; Lucifer, is manifest in their attempts to show humanity the connection between the amorality of collectivism and the New Jerusalem but no one seems to be listening…until now.

My favorite part is how they describe how the Kingdom of Heaven is basically a Borg Cube:

When we dissect the cube of heaven we see that it is constructed like a living cell with its own system of energy circulation and metabolism.

Would you drink cow urine? These guys do.

….

Let me reread that statement … nope, still sounds completely bonkers.

Anyway, they’re called Back to Lovecraft. Via SF Signal, here’s an interview:

I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade, but even Lovecraft didn’t like Lovecraft’s poetry. Later in life he admitted that it was all pretty bad.

I wasn’t sure what it was at first… but ends up it’s a moray eel.

It looks like the start of a horror film to me.

How do you think it ended up in the middle of a hike?

(via)

From The American Jesus, who points out that Tony Anthony really is an evangelist and really has a book entitled Taming the Tiger. All the rest … you be the judge.

She starts, naturally, with an anecdote: a professor of hers named Lester managed to think his way out of a heart condition by “systematically let[ting] go of every negative emotion he was experiencing.” And of course, “after he had attained this state he found that he could heal people and fix objects, such as broken TVs, merely by ‘seeing them as perfect.’”

Stephen Law recently felt compelled to comment:

Are you actually suggesting that if we really, really believe we can fly by flapping our arms, and jump of the roof, then we will fly? Surely this takes the “power of positive thinking” too far?! [...]

One danger of this sort of nonsense is that it leads to blaming people for their own illnesses. If you’re ill, it’s your own fault! Banish those bad thoughts. You just need to *think* your way to health.

Gerloff’s response was largely unhelpful, and ended with the statement: “By the way #2, if people can levitate–as has been demonstrated–then why shouldn’t they be able to fly?”

Walk away, Stephen. Just walk away.