Last week, waiting for the light to change outside my corner deli, I appropriated a stack of old Harper's Magazine issues sitting at the curb, bundled with twine for a recyclables pick-up.

Inside a May 2005 issue was a 12-page report "inside America's most powerful megachurch," as a subtitle from the article read.

"No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted (Haggard), and no church more than New Life," writes Harper's contributing editor, Jeff Sharlet, in his first-hand account.

As president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), made up of some 45,000 churches and 30 million Christians, Haggard enjoys weekly phone conversations with President George W. Bush or one of Bush's advisers.

Just three weeks ago, he and his Colorado Springs church were the subject of a one-hour NBC primetime special by Tom Brokaw.

So what's the guy's M.O.? He's a false teacher, just like the kind the Apostle Paul warns to look out for in the days leading up to the Rapture.

Among lots of easy, easy tip-offs, Haggard believes the Devil talks to him. Look at this passage from Sharlet on Haggard: "Sometimes, he says, Control (Haggard's term for evil forces) would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. 'Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,' he claims Control once told him, 'and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.' "

He also believes the Devil interacts with his followers. In a memo Haggard delivered earlier this year to his congregation, in preparation for NBC's arrival, he cautioned: "If a camera is on you during a worship service, worship; don't dance, jump, etc. … Jumping and dancing in church looks too bizarre for most to relate to. … Don't talk about the Devil, demons, voices speaking to you. … Instead, tell your personal story in common-sense language. … Don't be spooky or weird. Don't switch into a glassy-eyed heavenly mode."

Haggard boasts that God's talked to him for years about his own ministry through visions, events and prophetic revelations ("he believes he foresaw Internet prayer networks before the Internet existed," reports Harper's). Once it was God speaking through a kids' baseball game!

"In Letters from Home, Haggard's book of advice for his children, he tells of a word from God he had while watching a baseball game at summer camp," reveals this month's cover story on Haggard in Christianity Today magazine. "At one moment 'the Holy Spirit came upon me and said, [If you will obey me, your life will work like this.]' Haggard watched as the team at bat began to hit every ball, scoring again and again. Then, 'the Holy Spirit came on me again and said, [If you disobey me, your life will go like this.]' The team got few hits. Their opponents became formidable."

Imagine suggesting God manipulated whether or not a baseball team wins all in order to teach Haggard a lesson.

It's the silliest of pure pagan superstition and yet even officials in the highest levels of our government revere him as some super-authoritative "man of God" with good sense and speaking the truth.

You just scratch your head and think, "What in the world's going on?!"