Arkansas church’s ad draws spotlight
It’s ‘Islam’ nuke claim creates stir
A church in rural Hot Spring County has been getting national media attention after it placed a fullpage advertisement in The Tennessean newspaper Sunday saying “Islam” would detonate a nuclear device in Nashville on July 18.
Based in Bonnerdale, an unincorporated community 10 miles east of Glenwood, Future for America is an evangelical corporation that focuses on youth development programs, according to its federal nonprofit tax filings.
Future for America provides “worldwide evangelism tours that encompass week-long Bible prophecy schools and distribution of monthly newsletters and tapes to a subscriber list of 500,” according to its Form 990 filing for 2018, the last year for which its tax records were available on Guidestar.org.
Future for America is a public charity because it is a church, according to the filing.
Future for America had $1.2 million in net assets at the end of 2018. The organization received contributions and grants of $727,520 that year and similar amounts for the three previous years.
“The ministry of Future for America is to proclaim the final warning message of Revelation 14 as identified by the prophecies of the Bible and the spirit of prophecy,” according to the group’s mission on its website, futureforamerica.com, “The end-time fulfillment of Bible prophecy is no longer future, for it is taking place before our eyes. The historic, prophetic understanding of Seventh-day Adventism is now present truth.”
A click on the “about” button of the website takes viewers to You Tube videos of sermons by Jeff Pippenger, who is 68, according to Arkansas voter registration information.
Future for America isn’t listed among Arkansas incorporations with the secretary of state’s office. But Future News Inc. is. It was incorporated in 1999 by Kathryn Pippenger of Bonnerdale.
She is also listed on federal tax records as treasurer and the only full-time employee of Future for America. She was paid $41,851 from the nonprofit in 2018.
Attempts to reach Future for America by telephone and email were unsuccessful Tuesday and Wednesday. The Southern Poverty
Law Center, which monitors hate groups, also didn’t return a call or email asking about Future for America.
When asked if Future for America was on Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s radar, Amanda Priest, a spokeswoman for the office said, “we don’t have any complaints on it.”
The Tennessean ad stated that “Islam” would be behind the attack and that Donald Trump will be the last president of the United States. According to the ad, this prophesy was divined from the Bible.
After the ad was published, The Tennessean fired its advertising manager and apologized to Muslims. The newspaper is owned by media conglomerate Gannett Co.
“The sales and design teams did not fully read the context of the ad content in its entirety and subsequently approved it,” Kathy Jack-Romero, the president of local sales for Gannett, said in a The Tennessean article published Monday. “We apologize for publishing this ad and we specifically apologize to the Muslim community, in Nashville and more broadly. This should have never happened.”
The ad in Sunday’s The Tennessean instructed readers to go to July18.news for additional information.
“We have made the case that the prediction for Nashville is based on its association with Greece,” according to a summary at July18.news. “Those that know Nashville know that it is called the ‘Athens of the South.’ It was in Athens, Greece, that the Parthenon temple was located, and its perfect scale model is in Nashville with a statue of the goddess Athena inside. Education, war, and the Greek games are all prophetically represented there.”
The summary also refers to “the influence of unsanctified music on the mind,” noting that Nashville is the nation’s country music capital and that country music was part of the stew that resulted in rock and roll.
‘False education, competition, humanism, war and unsanctified entertainment can be associated with Nashville, and this association comes from a city that resides in a part of the USA that is known as the Bible belt,” according to the summary.
According to The Tennessean article, Future for America will be refunded for the ad.
“Separately, Gannett will donate the $14,000 value of the ad sale to the American Muslim Advisory Council, a Nashville-based advocacy group,” according to The Tennessean. “The company is also giving the council $50,000 in advertising credit, which will be used for multiple Islamic organizations.”