John Todd
From RationalWiki
John Todd a/k/a Lance Collins was a 1970s sensation on the Christian church circuit claiming to have been born into a family of witches who groomed him for eventual placement on a high council of Druids known as the Illuminati. His tall tales were used as source material by Jack Chick for several of his tracts and comic books on the occult. During the time he said he was a Satanist (circa 1968) he was actually a storefront preacher and follower of the "Jesus only" theology of William Branham. Ironically, during some of the time after he claimed to have converted to Christianity (circa 1976) he was running a Wiccan bookstore.
He was, for a short while in 1978-79, a hot topic in Christendom. The apparent reason seems to be because his "testimony" dovetailed nicely with conspiracy theories then being circulated by the religious right about then-President Jimmy Carter. John Todd said Jimmy Carter was the Illuminati's main man, who they intended to place in power as the Antichrist. Jimmy Carter was in fact a born-again Christian, but since when did the religious right let facts get in the way of their political agenda? Today they are spreading the same rumors about Barack Obama.
John Todd eventually started making wild claims that many large fundamentalist Christian ministries were funded by and secretly promoting the agenda of the Illuminati, at which point he was investigated by Christianity Today [1] and Cornerstone magazines [2] and found to be an outright fraud.
Jack Chick's comic book Spellbound features Todd appearing under his claimed "witch name", Lance Collins. Spellbound claims the entire rock music industry is controlled by witches, who cast spells on the master tapes to cause evil spirits to follow all the recordings thus produced, resulting in kids becoming demon possessed from listening to rock & roll. The comic concludes with a good Christian record and book burning, during which a young born-again convert shouts "WOW! I feel F R E E!" upon seeing her heavy metal albums going up in smoke.
If you must, there is a website by a fan who continues to believe in his claims, with a lot of his taped speeches archived in mp3 format for your edification here.
