CHRISTIAN MEDIA RESEARCH - Profiles - False Prophets

Pastor David Wolfe is a rapture cult pastor that has broadcast over Shortwave and satellite for many years. Originally on the Amerinet Network with Jeff Baker,Wolfe has been caught on air intentionally lying on a repeated basis.

His ministry organization, The Fountain of Truth, controls a radio station in Rochester New York. Wolfe also has interests in insurance, in addition to his pastorate in New York. During his Amerinet Broadcasting days, on numerous radio programs, David Wolfe demonstrated that he is indeed, a very slippery character.

For instance, on many radio broadcasts, Wolfe would make extremely questionable statements defending the pre-tribulation rapture; then, when questioned about those statements on air in the following weeks, instead of defending them, he would actually deny making the original statements! This made him very difficult to combat theologically as he would simply deny saying anything difficult to defend whenever he was 'put on the spot' with uncomfortable questions.

This pattern continued for many months until Christian Media began to tape his many false assertions. We would then record his subsequent denials of those assertions, and then play them back to back over the air.

In these programs, Wolfe would say "Matthew was written to the Jews" as a way of deflecting Christ's obvious statement that His return would be "immediately after the tribulation of those days" (Matthew 24:29). The classis cult statement is that Jesus comes back at the end of the tribulation (as the text plainly says) for the Jews -- thus they try to say that the prophetic scriptures in the book of Matthew were not addressed to Christians.

This assertion is usually coupled with an explanation that the "elect" Christ is coming for ("his angels....shall gather together his elect" Matthew 24:31) are the Jews. While it's clear that Peter told us the elect are the Christians (II Peter 1:10), no-one could even come back at Wolfe to ask him about that text because, a week later, he would deny ever saying the elect are the Jews!

This went on for weeks. A caller would ask Wolfe where the scriptures say that Matthew was written to the Jews, and Wolfe would then deny ever saying he said that! Then another week would go by, and Wolfe would say "of course, Matthew was speaking to the Jews..."

On other occasions, Wolfe would say "I never said the elect are the Jewish people" when he most definitely had made such a assertion a week before! With this deceptive pattern, it became clear that the man was willing to openly lie to keep from being asked scriptural questions he could not answer. Thus, it was necessary to actually record his statements and the subsequent denials of those statements in order to pin him down. These edited broadcasts (aired on the prophecy program The Apocalypse Chronicles) publicly humiliated David Wolfe.

To put it bluntly, David Wolf is just another liar -- and a particularly bad one at that. A partial transcript of those recordings is in print in the book The Rapture Cult, and the edited broadcasts were later released as a tape set.

Shortly after this embarrassing clash, on August 8 1999, Wolfe was an on-air guest on another show hosted by a rapture cultist named "Chaplain" Tom Cole. Predictably, since CM had greatly damaged Wolfe's credibility with our broadcast of his conflicting statements, Wolfe denounced Christian Media's James Lloyd as a malicious false prophet.

On that program, Cole and Wolfe took a call from a rapturist listener who proceeded to pitch the now discredited theory that Ephraem the Syrian, a 4th century pastor, had written about the pre-tribulation rapture 1,600 years ago. The caller read a section from an ancient writing that he said was authored by Ephraem the Syrian. Because this particular quote is frequently read out of context, it superficially sounds like a genuine reference to pre-trib from the 4th century. The truth is, of course, decidedly different.

Actually, later in the very same document the caller was reading from, the author clearly states that Christ comes back for His church after the tribulation. Of course, that part of the ancient writing was not read as the caller only had a partial quote in his possession -- and that quote was reprinted from another liar's newsletter in the rapture cult -- that newsletter having been yet another reprint from still another newsletter, in a regressive pattern.

Not only that, but the document being read on air was not even written by Ephraem the Syrian! Students of ancient church history know the textbooks call this work Pseudo-Ephraem because it is believed to be a forgery from the 7th century by an unknown writer seeking to pass it off as the work of the then famous Syrian pastor.

The revealing thing about this is, this issue is examined in the James Lloyd book The Rapture Cult -- the same book that David Wolfe had obviously read as his radio statements indicate. Yet Wolfe said nothing -- instead taking the opportunity to deliberately distort the facts, for he proceeded to indicate how this ancient manuscript "proves" the pre-tribulation rapture! Serious students of Bible prophecy can find a complete copy of Pseudo-Ephraem in Dr. Robert Gundry's book First The Antichrist (predictably out of print as there is not much of a market for the truth), or in a large library in works from Paul Alexander, who is considered an expert on Ephraem the Syrian.

However, that's not the end of the story as scripture teaches us that things do tend to deteriorate when refusing the leading of the Holy Spirit as Wolfe continues to do. Some time later, Wolfe had added a woman named Deborah Bell as his co-host when the program had been moved to the Genesis Network.

Apparently Deborah Bell was residing in the church that the married David Wolfe pastors. In a very strange episode, Deborah Bell died of a gunshot wound sustained in David Wolfe's church. She was shot with Wolfe's gun, and the only witness was David Wolfe. Even though the authorities asked him to, he refused to take a lie detector test, and without any solid evidence to the contrary, the shooting was ruled a suicide.

Knowing the 'Wolfster' (our favorite name for the old fraud) as we do, we can't help but wonder what really happened to Deborah Bell. She was, after all, on the radio in a leadership position arranged by David Wolfe -- a role that should be reserved for mature believers. At the very least, under his religious tutelage, she apparently didn't fare too well