I’ll never forget the time I was sitting in a boarding gate waiting area, and the man on my left was telling two ladies sitting with him about how his life was filled with wonder ever since he started praying the Prayer of Jabez daily. I kept my mouth shut.

I love Jesus. I am a Presbyterian who can stand up in church every Sunday and recite the Apostles’ Creed with full integrity. But lately I’ve been wondering if there isn’t a body of myths that’s being passed around by fellow Evangelicals without any concern for verification.

In the 1980s there arose great clamor over something called Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). Hundreds of thousands of people were suddenly claiming that they had participated in SRA rituals in which humans were sacrificed to the Prince of Darkness. It was widely accepted as fact. Books written by ex-satanic cult members and revealing grisly details were published and sold in Christian book stores. But then somebody asked the question, Hey, if all these people are being sacrificed, why aren’t there any missing person reports being filed with the police? Turned out Christian counselors were inadvertently planting false memories in peoples’ heads. Counselors were also planting false memories of childhood sexual abuse; one girl reported her dad, for some reason he confessed and went to jail, later it developed the abuse never happened.

In recent years there have been reports – and books written – about huge numbers of Muslims receiving dreams and visions of Jesus and then converting to Christianity. I accepted it as incontrovertible fact. But then the thought occurred to me, why are these stories being reported only by Evangelical sources, and are not being verified by disinterested secular sources? Also, I noticed that this mass movement only happens in remote, inaccessible places, Turkey-In-A-Straw-Stan. I mean, there are now millions of Muslims in America. Are large numbers of them receiving dreams and visions and converting? Where is the evidence? I live in Malawi. The population is anywhere from 13 to 35% Muslim (according to my students’ term papers, nobody knows for sure). I don’t see large numbers of Malawian Muslims coming suddenly to church because they got a vision of Jesus. It’s always somewhere over yonder, far away.

We’re reading about dastardly plans on the part of the Obama Administration to implant microchips under the skin of Americans so Barack can keep an eye on them. Think about the rocky start Obamacare got. Can you imagine the massive resistance on the part of the American public to mandatory microchip implants? Imagine a long line of citizens standing at the Government Microchip Center. A mother is holding her child in her arms. “Mommy, I’m scared,” cries the child. “Don’t worry darling, microchips don’t hurt,” she soothingly says. Yeah right. How much time before Barry’s term expires?

It is claimed that Barry was born in either Indonesia or else Kenya, and that he is a secret Muslim. If he were born outside the U.S., I think it would be easy to bribe a “Third World” records clerk who could produce the solid evidence. Even if it’s true that the liberal American news media is involved in a conspiracy to suppress such evidence, just think what foreign sources like Rupert Murdoch and European and Russian newspapers would do with it! If he really is a secret Muslim, I can think of a way to find out for sure: invite him over for dinner, and serve pork chops. See what he does.

The short term mission trip has become a sacred cow within American Christianity. The belief is that long-term missionaries have become dependent upon teams of lay volunteers who come in the summer and spend a week. They usually do menial manual labor projects because local people don’t know how to do them or else they collect large numbers of “decisions for Christ.” The fact is, many missionaries are often relieved to see the teams go home at the end of the week, so they can get back to work.

The Blood Moons theory has become popular. The idea is that four times in 2014 – 2015, the moon will acquire a reddish color, hence “Blood Moons.” The first occurred in April 2014, the next one will be in October 2014, the one after that will be in April 2015, and the final one will be in September 2015. It is said that these Blood Moons (visible in the Western Hemisphere, not in Israel) are prophesied in the Bible, and that they portend cataclysmic consequences for today’s Israel, and that therefore we can know the End is near. The problem with the Blood Moon theory is that it is impossible to falsify it. There is always something going on in Israel, so that if the morning after a Blood Moon a car backfires in Israel, someone will exclaim “Blood Moon! Blood Moon caused that!”

The other day I saw a post on Facebook that claimed the Lord Himself revealed the name of the Antichrist. In Luke 10:18 Jesus says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” The post explained that the Aramaic word for “lightning” is “baraq,” while the Hebrew word for height (hence “heaven”) is “o-bama.” Therefore Jesus has revealed to us that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. Without going into a language study, this is all utter nonsense.

There seems to be a widespread belief that sometime in the future, in fulfillment of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39, Russia will invade Israel on horseback because it wants the mineral content in the Dead Sea. This is a very arid region, so they’d better bring lots of water and oats for those horses.

I’ll never forget the time I was sitting in a boarding gate waiting area, and the man on my left was telling two ladies sitting with him about how his life was filled with wonder ever since he started praying the Prayer of Jabez daily. I kept my mouth shut.

Don’t even get me started on what I think about people like Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen and the Health and Wealth Prosperity Gospel!

I love my fellow Evangelicals. I only hope that they are diligent in checking their sources and doing the necessary verification so as to protect the credibility of the Evangelical Christian faith.

Larry Brown is a minister in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and serves as Professor of church history, world history, hermeneutics and missions at the African Bible College in Lilongwe, Malawi.