TIM TEBOW AT 15:01

Football failure Tim Tebow is apparently still a star -- in certain dodgy corners of the Christian-right world:

... Tebow is slated to speak on April 28 at 9:15 a.m. during a Sunday worship service of the First Baptist Dallas, according to the church's website....

First Baptist Dallas is an approximately 11,000-member church led by senior pastor Robert Jeffress, an evangelical Christian who has built up quite a reputation for himself in circles among the religious right.

In October 2011, Jeffress endorsed Texas Governor Rick Perry for president, then went on to claim that Islam, Mormonism and Judaism are heretical religions "from the pit of hell."

On the eve of the presidential election in November 2012, Jeffress warned his Dallas congregation that President Barack Obama's re-election would "lead to the rise of the Antichrist," according to The Christian Post.

... during the same speech where he endorsed Rick Perry in 2011, Jeffress told a crowd at the high-profile Values Voters Summit that gays should not be allowed in the millitary because "70 percent of the gay population” has AIDS.

He has also claimed that gay activists are trying to hide "the link between homosexuality and pedophilia," according to Right Wing Watch....

Despite his nasty remarks about Mormonism, Jeffress did go on to endorse Mitt Romney in the 12012 general election:

Jeffress told [radio] host Janet Mefferd that he has "made peace" with voting for a Mormon, despite it being very clear that Mormonism "is a cult, it is a false religion" whose members "worship a multiplicity of Gods" and "deny the Bible."

... The Texas-based pastor ... warned that if Obama is re-elected, America is "about to go over the moral and spiritual cliff from which there is no return," because the Democratic administration is "openly involved in high-handed sins" and shaking its "fist in the face of God" with its policies on abortion and gay marriage.

Jeffress also thinks Catholicism is satanic:

... the early church was corrupted by [a] Babylonian mystery religion, and today the Roman Catholic Church is the result of that corruption.

Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn't come from God's Word, it comes from that cult-like, pagan religion. Now you say, 'pastor how can you say such a thing? That is such an indictment of the Catholic Church. After all the Catholic Church talks about God and the Bible and Jesus and the Blood of Christ and Salvation.'

Isn't that the genius of Satan? If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don't do it with purple paper and red ink, you're not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.

And that's what Satan does with counterfeit religion. He uses, he steals, he appropriates all of the symbols of true biblical Christianity, and he changes it just enough in order to cause people to miss eternal life.

Jeffress has also written many books, including one book that, to judge from its title, might be categorized as "apocalyptic self-help": Twilight's Last Gleaming: How America's Last Days Can Be Your Best Days. And in case you think Tebow is the only genial-seeming Christian to hang out with this hatemonger, the publisher notes this about the book:

Includes a foreword by Mike Huckabee.

Maybe Mike will show up in church with Tebow on April 28 -- and hell, maybe Huck's pal Ted Nugent will show up, too. It could be a happy-go-lucky hate all-star team.

(Via Truth Wins Out.)

UPDATE: Headline in the New York Daily News: TIM'S HATE DATE. (Via Joe. My. God. Daily News story here.)