Last week, we learned about a church in Dalton, Georgia that had supposedly been the site of a miracle. Church member Jerry Pearce said oil had been dripping profusely from the walls of the church and his personal bible, and he began giving it away and doing a traveling tour of the supposedly holy relic.

That story came to a halt this year when reporter Wyatt Massey of the Times Free Press received a tip saying that Pearce was a regular customer at a local tractor supply store in the area, where he bought large quantities of… oil.

The church shut down and Pearce stopped giving away the “oil.”

But Massey has another update on the story. This one’s even stranger.

Pearce has apparently relocated to Cleveland, Tennessee, where he’s now a member of a new church. And wouldn’t you know it, that church is the site of another miraculous sighting.

Robert Bankston, pastor at Soaring Eagle Ministry and Teaching Center, said he and other people began finding gold chunks and flakes throughout the church over a series of days in early February. … The men claim the dust and chunks would appear when no one was in the church, though the two men claim churchgoers saw dust appear on their Bibles during a service. In an interview this week, the men claim they never said the gold-colored pieces were actual gold.

That’s not what church members said. In fact, around the 25:00 mark of this video from February 8, you can hear worship leader Brodie Allred talking about how oil appeared on his guitar and gold chunks were in the church. No one’s pretending it’s not real.

Allred kept pointing out the gold chunks in now-deleted Facebook posts obtained by Massey:

Bankston went even further in saying this was all true:

… Bankston said the gold would be collected to pay off the debts of Christians and Allred discouraged church members from taking home any of the pieces they found.

It’s practically the same con that occurred in Dalton, Georgia. And there’s an obvious common thread.

The amazing thing is that several members of the Cleveland church are now getting the hell out of there. They want nothing to do with this cheap ruse:

The events splintered the Cleveland church. Members reported leaving, believing they were being deceived by their leader. Harry Brannen resigned from his position as associate pastor a week after the events began. He did not want to be a part of what was happening, he said. “That’s the reason,” Brannen said. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

Pearce denied having anything to do with these new “miracles.” And this time, the church isn’t allowing investigators to take samples for further testing. Reality is the enemy of whatever it is they’re trying to sell gullible Christians too ignorant to ask tough questions about what they’re being told.

