“Pastor with 666 tattoo claims to be divine”

  • There aren’t many news sto­ries that start out with “The min­is­ter has the num­ber 666 tat­tooed on his arm.” But that’s how this story starts out. Greg brought it to my atten­tion as a sort of “News of the Weird” item. And that’s the way I started to read it, my ironic detach­ment started slip­ping before I got very far.

    Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda is not your typ­i­cal min­is­ter. De Jesus, or “Daddy” as his thou­sands of fol­low­ers call him, does not merely pray to God: He says he is God.

    “The spirit that is in me is the same spirit that was in Jesus of Nazareth,” de Jesus says. …

    De Jesus and his believ­ers say their church — “Cre­ciendo en Gra­cia,” Span­ish for “Grow­ing in grace” — is mis­un­der­stood. Fol­low­ers of the move­ment say they have proof that their min­is­ter is divine and that their church will one day soon be a major faith in the world.

    But even de Jesus con­cedes that he is an unlikely leader of a church that claims thou­sands of mem­bers in more than 30 countries.

    De Jesus, 61, grew up poor in Puerto Rico. He says he served stints in prison there for petty theft and says he was a heroin addict.

    De Jesus says he learned he was Jesus rein­car­nate when he was vis­ited in a dream by angels.

    “The prophets, they spoke about me. It took me time to learn that, but I am what they were expect­ing, what they have been expect­ing for 2,000 years,” de Jesus says.

    The church that he began build­ing 20 years ago in Miami resem­bles no other. Fol­low­ers have protested Chris­t­ian churches in Miami and Latin Amer­ica, dis­rupt­ing ser­vices and smash­ing crosses and stat­ues of Jesus.

    There’s such a need for an edu­ca­tion in (lower case ‘o’) ortho­dox Chris­t­ian beliefs. And I also think there’s a basic moral ele­ment miss­ing for a totally implau­si­ble fraud like this to have attracted thousands.

    It is news of the weird, for sure. But it’s also just pathetic. And if you’re old enough to remem­ber Jim Jones and the mass sui­cides in 1978, it’s also scary.


    Related posts:

    1. Other quotes
    2. No room at the inn. Or the megachurch.
    3. Now play­ing at a denom­i­na­tion near you
    4. Prayer request
    5. Let’s play “Celebrity Convert!”

    February 20th, 2007 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 02.20.2007

    As a wise old elder once told me “Y’know, if they aren’t in the mar­ket for it, they wouldn’t buy it…” sigh.…and my kids keep telling me I should be a cult leader and retire from construction.

  • Grace

    Well, it’s not like I don’t won­der about that. How in the world do these peo­ple man­age to get thou­sands of fol­low­ers? Enough for him to have a six-figure income, which he brags about.

    Unbe­liev­able.

  • Erica

    O my gosh! I was just doing research on this guy! Unfath­omable, huh? He told CNN that he makes 140,000 dol­lards a year. Bleh. He also says he’s GREATER than Jesus because Jesus spoke in para­bles and he speaks the truth.

    BTW 2 years before he called him­self Jesus he was say­ing he was the rein­car­nated Apos­tle Paul.

    There’s more I learned that I heard from his OWN MOUTH. I.E. “I preach free­dom of indul­gence. There is no sin, there is no devil. If you are a cho­sen one no mat­ter what you do, you will go to heaven.”

    Hmmm…Yay for those people.

  • Grace

    The more things change, the more they stay the same. These false prophets always sound alike. The “I am God and/or Jesus” thing: David Koresh, Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, Joseph Smith. The “being above sin if you’re a fol­lower” thing: Rasputin, for one. And prob­a­bly, if I knew my his­tory bet­ter, count­less others.

  • Cather­ine K.

    Lord have Mercy, Lord have Mercy, Lord have Mercy…

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