Two and a Half Men may be doomed, but its half-man, Angus Jones, has found his savior.
Jones, 19, who plays the lumpy, underachieving teenager Jake Harper on the sitcom, called the CBS show “filth” in now-viral videotaped testimony. The two-part testimonial was broadcast in a YouTube video Monday from ForeRunner Chronicles, a Seventh-Day Adventist ministry, and features Jones discussing his “awakening” with the website’s creator, Christopher Hudson.
“Please stop watching Two and a Half Men,” Jones urges viewers, warning them about the brainwashing boob tube and likening the lowbrow sitcom, which pays him a reported $350,000 per episode, to Satan.
“A lot of us don’t like to think about how deceptive the enemy is,” Jones says in the video, with Hudson nodding beside him. “I don’t want to be contributing to the enemy’s plan … You cannot be a true God-fearing person and be on a television show like [Two and a Half Men].”
Jones, who grew up attending Christian schools, says in his testimony that he was “hipped” on the ForeRunner even before he began worshipping at a Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Los Angeles several months ago. “I sent you an email just a couple of weeks ago thinking I could get your opinion on a few things,” he tells Hudson in his trailer on the Warner Bros. studio lot, where much of the testimony is filmed. “Now you’re here in California!”
Jones is rhapsodic about Hudson, who attributes their meeting to “God’s work.” But the actor’s spiritual mentor is a controversial figure who has long been waging a religious war on the entertainment industry and liberal America. In 2009, he gained notoriety after releasing a documentary on YouTube called The Jay-Z Deception, in which he accused the rapper of being a devil-worshipping Freemason. He also has declared masturbation a sin and referred to President Obama’s health-care plan as a “carbon copy” of Hitler’s health-care policies. In a recent scaremongering video, Hudson said New York City’s post-Hurricane Sandy gas shortage was a harbinger of a food-shortage crisis and cannibalism, referencing a “similar” event in the Bible when the city of Jerusalem was seized by the Roman armies in 70 A.D: “It was so severe that women began to cannibalize their own children. Your baby may start looking like a chicken wing.”
Disturbingly, Jones seems to have no qualms about Hudson’s extremist views, praising the ForeRunner Chronicles in his video testimony (“All the information is so great … Your videos have no doubt been a blessing to me.”). Hudson’s New World gospel also is popular on Seventh-Day Adventist media outlets like Three Angels Broadcasting, a 24-hour, international television and radio network.
“It’s very practical and applies biblical principles to modern-day society,” Yvonne Lewis, general manager of Three Angels Broadcasting’s urban network, told The Daily Beast. “It’s cutting-edge, scripturally-based, and doctrinally sound.”
Meanwhile, the official Seventh-Day Adventist Church has distanced itself from Hudson. “He’s an independent ministry, not a pastor,” said George Johnson, communications director for the Church’s North American branch. “He has no official ordinance or title with the church.”
Jones issued an apologetic statement Tuesday night claiming he never intended any disrespect for his Two and a Half Men colleagues “who have become an extension of my family.”
Warner Bros. and CBS have not officially commented on the actor’s tirade. But Jones’s former co-star Charlie Sheen, who was fired from the sitcom after going through his own highly publicized breakdown, weighed in on the scandal late Tuesday: “With Angus’s Hale-Bopp-like meltdown, it is radically clear to me that the show is cursed.”
