You know, I used to always think that pimp-a-long Eddie Long was abusing the good of the legacy of Martin Luther King Junior. I used to think Long and King were like night and day. King taking a $1 salary from the SCLC, while Long lives like a tycoon. King, never known to be pimping for cash, and Long, well you know. Long led a march in the name of King against homosexual behavior getting special recognition from government, while in all honesty we can’t find record of King speaking on the issue and his family has been divided on what they say he would say. Their division just happens to match their views on that issue. Of course Long could have led a stand against homosexuality solely in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who told us marriage is for one man and one woman in scripture such as Mark 10:6-9. But let me be honest with you and stop beating around the bush. Long was playing on King’s name while trying to be in the good graces of the King family. Then, suddenly Bernice King became a member and minister at his church, just after Long had said that Coretta Scott King (who was living then and at times visiting his services) had “passed the mantel of King” to him. I was there, I heard it with my own ears and saw the words come from Long’s lips with my own eyes. I was surprised he didn’t have lady-King pour oil on his head! It was all a play on name recognition and race for FAME.

Well with all that said, it seems that Long actually has found something from the bad of King’s legacy to emulate, plagiarism! Well, Eddie Long has found a way to do it that is authorized by the creator of the content, so it’s not the true definition of the term “plagiarism”, but it is a case where he’s using the work of someone else and posing as if it was genuinely inspired right into his mind by the Holy Spirit.

Pastor inspiration: Divine or online? Surfing for sermons: Sometimes desperate ministers lift texts from Web. By JOHN BLAKE The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 05/12/07 Two days after the Virginia Tech shooting, Bishop Eddie Long walked before the congregation of his Lithonia megachurch and said the Holy Spirit had a message for them. The senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church preached a sermon he called “Act of Man or Act of God?” He talked about a “misguided, twisted” student who murdered 32 people before killing himself. He invoked the book of Job and punctuated his delivery with dramatic sighs and anguished grunts. The congregation was shouting by sermon’s end. ew, if any, knew the inspiration for Long’s sermon wasn’t confined to the Holy Spirit. It also came from sermons.com, a preaching Web site that offers pastors prepackaged sermons for a fee. Long’s words matched large portions of a Virginia Tech sermon with a similar title (”Acts of Man and Acts of God”) posted on the site. A Google search revealed that at least three other pastors — including one in Alpharetta — had preached long passages from the Internet sermon. Parishioners who dwell on the meaning of their pastor’s words now face the question: Is the sermon an act of man or an act of the Internet? Sermon borrowing — called “pulpit plagiarism” by critics — is spreading among the nation’s clergy. “The kerosene on the fire is the Internet,” the Rev. Thomas Long, a professor of preaching at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology (and no relation to the New Birth pastor), wrote in a recent article in Christian Century magazine. Pastors pinched for time no longer lean solely on divine inspiration. With a credit card and a few mouse clicks, they can surf sites like sermons.com and desperatepreacher.com to find sermons to fit virtually any occasion — Mother’s Day, say, or Easter. The sites serve as the Home Depot for homilies. Any preaching tool is available. Some pastors, though, don’t let on they’ve sermon-shopped. They pass the ideas off as their own. Critics say they’re dishonoring their calling and deceiving their flock. …

Now I do recall a time when Eddie Long (and this was back when the building on Snapfinger Road was being used, for you who know about Eddie Long’s church) told us about a woman who was going home and quoting Long to her husband, who she felt was not acting as a godly man should. Long told us the husband became angry, even threatened to kill Long. This is when all his “security” suddenly started showing up around him and he told us that if we say something he said, to say the Lord gave it to us, don’t put his name on it. It seems Long is doing the same with whole sermons.

The bottom line is, why should people go hear words from Long if they can buy and read a sermon themselves? If it’s good to lift sermons, why didn’t Eddie Long note that the Holy Spirit supposedly led him to sermons.com? Have some of the deceptions of the prosperity doctrine been coming from Sermons.com too? If a pastor can’t think of what to say, why can’t he just say the church needs to pray, instead of buying a sermon? And we must wonder which packages did Eddie Long buy? Like a man at a loss for words, Long won’t comment yet. He’s probably waiting for someone to give him words to say in response. Anybody, and I mean ANYBODY can buy a sermon online and recite it! But I’ve told you, Eddie Long is not a bishop and does not represent the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. Eddie Long runs scams and games to get money and that’s all.

Desperatepreacher.com also has profound words for people to say.

True men of God seek wisdom when wondering what to say, as James informed us.

James 1:5-8 (New King James Version) 5) If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6) But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7) For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

And for anyone trying to use that scripture to endorse prosperity doctrine, I highly recommend you read more of the book of James.

Hat tip to reader Sheldon for the AJC article.

update 5/17/2007 11:07AM: Here is why it might be better for Eddie Long do a Milli Vanilli and continue to use sermons written by someone else.

Fresh What???
We know he didn’t get THAT from the Holy Spirit!

As you can see, when he makes up his own, it can be pretty awful. I told you, folks like him have become a true joke!