You may remember that Rick Perry put together his "Response" prayer rallies with the help of a slew of NAR figures.  One of them was John Benefiel, an Oklahoma City-based "apostle."  He heads up the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, one of the numerous prayer networks that is at the grassroots of the NAR.  Among other things, he thinks that the Statue of Liberty is an idol, that homosexuality is being used by the Illuminati to control the world and that his prayers caused DC to be hit with an earthquake in 2012 to punish us for the influence of Masonry.  Well, this weekend he paid a visit to Cindy Jacobs, the mentally unhinged "prophetess" who is one of the NAR's top leaders.  Benefiel claimed that the entire North American continent, including the United States, is under satanic influence because ancient Egyptians dedicated it to Baal.  People for the American Way got a clip.

Benefiel and the Jacobses were talking about the need to do "spiritual archeology" in order to better understand how to break demonic curses over our nations.  Benefiel then discussed an "assignment" that God had given him.  He claims that thousands of years ago, ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians came to North America and left scads of rock art, or petroglyphs, claiming it for Baal.  One problem--Baal was not an Egyptian god.  I know that these fundies think that anyone who isn't a Christian is a closet satanist, but this is ridiculous.  Watch the whole thing on Vimeo, if you can stand it.

PFAW thinks that Benefiel may have based a lot of his "research" on the findings of Barry Fell, a marine biologist who delved into the origins of numerous inscriptions found all over North America.  Fell claimed that several of these inscriptions are proof that several Old World civilizations visited North America years before Columbus.  That claim has been completely debunked by several better-versed scholars, and some of his claims have been called outright fraudulent.

That being said, I have to wonder--is this claptrap being taught in Christian schools and Christian homeschool curricula?  Wouldn't surprise me if it was.