The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. - 1Timothy 3:1-7 (ESV)
I understand that the world of discernment can sometimes be murky to navigate. One definition says that discernment is differentiating between what is right and what is almost right. I understand why someone like Joseph Prince can trip people up, because he is so good at his brand of distortion. I even understand why far too many well intended Christians cater to Joel Osteen. Who doesn't like being told they can go to heaven and never change who they are here on earth? Then there are the opposite type of teachers, false prophets and assorted hucksters. What I refer to as low hanging fruit. Someone like Jennifer LeClaire for example, with her sneaky squid spirits, angels of abundant harvest and fake ministry school run out of a room at the Fort Lauderdale Airport Holiday Inn. Or Benny Hinn, with his four decades of magic suit coat waving, horrifically inaccurate prophecies, and a myriad of flock fleecing teachings that he randomly pretends to repent of.
Another piece of low hanging rotten fruit is Greg Locke. Mr. Locke made his bones as a forerunner of the recent trend of YouTube fake deliverance preachers. As such, he falsely believes and teaches that Christians can be possessed by demons. While that was his early persona, which he rode to national recognition, he has forever shown the ability to morph himself into what he thinks will be more lucrative versions of Greg Locke. The next shift occurred when he became a firebrand NAR dominionist preacher. As such, he became infamous to his earlier state of merely being recognized. This shift earned him over 2.2 million Facebook followers because people love to hear their own carnal political beliefs echo in their brain as being sanctioned by God Himself. As if the Lord cares one whit about our carnal politics - spoiler alert! He doesn't. That said, Locke had several videos go viral including him ranting that a person could not vote Democratic and be a Christian, which is odd because his chosen messiah in Donald Trump has been the least Christian candidate in this country's history. He has called people in his own church witches. He has held book burning events in the backyard of his church, cause you know, what books would Jesus burn. He is an equal opportunity jackass who doesn't know what he is speaking about by telling parents of kids with autism that their kids might be demon possessed instead.
He also has pretended to know something about vaccines and virology by refusing to close his church during COVID and throwing out anyone who dared to wear a mask. He has also furthered many absurdly inaccurate conspiracy theories regarding vaccines. I am reminded of Pastor Loren Sandford, who also refused to keep his church closed and bragged that "no one in his church" had caught COVID. Then everyone caught it. Then Sandford caught it. Then Sandford died from it. The NAR COVID disinformation affected even seemingly solid pastors like John MacArthur, so Locke is hardly alone here. If I want to better understand the Book of Hebrews, I would ask my pastor. If I need to better understand a world plague, I would not ask him and do you know why? Because he doesn't know anything more than I do! In this age of social media, anyone can think they are an expert by reading posts or tweets from people they never heard from. Christians should be wiser than that. Greg Locke is a bottom feeder, who recently has started to shift again. This time into a fully accepted leader in the Charismatic community. Charisma News has rallied the troops to start rehabilitating his image, after he paid his penance for writing a book against Benny Hinn, many years earlier. Once Locke apologized and sang Kumbaya with Hinn, he was embraced by the Charisma bandwagon. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is that in the middle of all of this, Locke divorced his wife of 21 years to marry his mistress and secretary Tai. Now, Locke denies infidelity, but we are all adults here and can do simple math. He married Tai the same year he divorced his wife. It matters not because Locke never had biblical cause to divorce his real wife, making Tai of course, an adulteress. This subsequently, makes his charges against political opponents regarding their morality as pathetically hypocritical. This is a man who urged his followers to not get the COVID vaccine. He called the entire pandemic, which has killed over seven million people worldwide, "fake." God only knows how much blood is on Greg Locke's hands, which he will answer for. He also wrongly insisted that President Biden would never be sworn in and was at the January 6th attempt to overthrow our government. He stoked the anger by tweeting beforehand that "we must fight" and "this means war.' Two days before the insurrection he tweeted that "If you don't have convictions worth dying for, you've never learned what living is - rise up!" Greg Locke has always been this brave with other people's blood.
Now I know that the key verses go ignored by Locke and I would expect as much from a man who pastors a church with no elders, no board, and no congregational votes. Nonetheless, we are bound by scripture and the key verses today outline quite clearly the standard for leadership in God's church. On nearly every one of these criteria, Greg Locke falls woefully short. After all that has been outlined and believe me, this barely scratches the surface, we know that Greg Locke is far from above reproach. His entire identity is to be below reproach. He feeds off of it and builds his perceived persona around it. Greg Locke is most definitely NOT the husband of one wife. He has no self-control, is not respected, not hospitable, with no ability to teach, or be gentle. He clearly is a lover of money and quarrelsome. Beloved, I know we gloss over these verses as somehow not being compatible with the world today but that is entirely the point! Those that would lead in the body of Christ should not be compatible with the world today! I am not talking about perfection. I can see someone falling short in one area that he is working on with the Lord but Locke fails nearly everything on the list! These are not suggestions from God! This should be the bare minimum for someone seeking to be an overseer on the church of God.
How much more so, if they seek to be an apostle? Protestia recently reported that both Greg and Tai Locke have been installed as apostles. Fellow fake demon hunter, Mike Signorelli praised Locke via video, claiming Locke will activate and impart the "oil of anointing to subdue and take territories and nations." Perhaps an even more disturbing facet is that this appears to have been arranged by the adulteress wife Tai. It seems Tai wanted to surprise her hubby (and gain the title herself) so she enlisted their good friend Malachi O'Brien to oversee the installation as apostle. O'Brien at one point was the Southern Baptist Convention 2nd Vice President. In his remarks, O'Brien even praised God for the conflicts that were all Locke and had little to do with the Lord.
So, in summation, we have an absolute troll of a fake pastor, false prophet, and NAR dominionist false teacher, who has now been granted the office and title of apostle by his friend. Not only that but his adulteress wife for some reason also gets to pretend she is an apostle, even though she is the one who arranged for the entire thing. The truly sad thing is that anyone, let alone 2.2 million people would follow such and obvious charlatan. He is wholly and entirely disqualified from ministry, let alone being an apostle. It is absurdities like this that drive people to cessationism. Only in the warped world of Charismania can a man who participated in the attempt to overthrow the government, mocked a worldwide pandemic as fake, held book burnings at his church, and divorced his wife to marry his secretary be now referred to as "apostle." Oh, and the adulteress wife as apostle as well. This lunacy is not lost on the dying world who blasphemes the way of Christ because of the acceptance of such low hanging fruit as Greg Locke. I would hope that we all see the need to mark and avoid.
