Brother Stair's Historical Background

The following is a brief historical background on Stair. In an August 1996 interview by Susan Hogan-Aubach, found on this website: http://www.anarc.org/naswa/badx/shortwave/bro_stair.html.

Susan is the religion reporter from the state newspaper in Columbia, SC. Stair told her he came from a Nazarene & United Bretheren background and became a believer and dropped out of school, both at the age of 16. He then said he was currently the age of 63 and had been in the ministry for 47 years. If you deduct 63 from 47 you get 16, which means he entered the ministry with, not only, no religious training but also not completing high school.

Stair's lack of education is very evident by his grammar and especially the way he pronounces the names of well known people in the news. He tells his followers to not watch TV, but surely he listens to the news on the radio, so you would think he would know enough to not call the Palestinians - Pallastines, or Benjamin Netanyahu- Benjamin Net Daniel, or Yitzak Rabin -Yat Sick Rabin.

Most people don't have to read well to be able to hear and repeat someone's name, but apparently Stair's hearing is impaired as well as his ability to read - which explains why he has mistranslated so many scriptures, as I will endeavor to show below.

One thing I am very concerned about, that I realized while listening to Stair, was that when reading scripture he doesn't indicate when he is inserting his own commentary into the scripture, so unless you are reading along with him you would think his commentary and his own interpretation is what scripture is actually saying when it isn't. He also rarely gives scripture references for his quotes so you COULDN'T follow along even if you wanted to.

In the interview with Susan, Stair stated before he started his own ministry he had been associated with the Assembly of God and the Full Gospel Church of God. It has also been reported in an article entitled, Heresy Watch: R.G. Stair (http://members.tripod.com/~DavidBogart) that Stair used to work with the Tent Revivalist A. A. Allen.

According to Hank Hannegraff, in Christianity in Crisis, pages 30, 31, A. A. Allen was a huckster, miracle worker and healer, who was expelled from the Assembly of God, arrested for drunk driving, and died from Sclerosis of the liver. If it is indeed true that Stair was heavily involved with A.A. Allen, this will give us a big clue to Stair's religious training and background.

The Heresy Watch article mentioned above also stated that Stair doesn't believe in the Trinity. I haven't heard him mention this yet so I will not comment on it other than to say if this is indeed what he believes then it may be that he is not saved afterall. I say that because anyone who does not believe Christ is God, hasn't got the slightest grasp on who Jesus really is and it leads into a lot of other erroneous doctrines.

Stair doesn't allow his people to watch TV, which isn't all that bad - I rarely watch it myself because of the un-Christian influence. However, he also tells people to not go to Doctors, at all, and this comes from somone who, not only hasn't had any medical training, hasn't even finished highschool. He doesn't even allow his people to go to the doctor for something as essential as checkups for pregnancy.

According to an article written by the Christian Research Institute (http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/crj0094a.txt) Stair was implicated when one of the ladies in his church had a stillborn child but wasn't prosecuted.

As I was listening to Stair's radio programs I came across several things he said that I didn't agree with, but they were mostly eschtalogical matters not necessarily pertaining to salvation. That is, until he started talking out against PreTribbers and saying how they were damned and leading their followers to hell. This caught my attention for sure.

One thing I have noticed in recent years, while critiqing false teachers, is that once they get off on one wrong doctrine (and it usually starts with an erroneous belief about salvation) then they are prone to gather up a lot of other wrong doctrines, and begin to distort scripture left and right. The articles I have provided on these pages will hopefully give you an example of how little Stair really knows about the Bible

Back to: Brother Stair: False Teacher