“The only thing worse than going on stage and trying to make people laugh is going into courtrooms and lying to a whole bunch of people just to steal their money,” says Jeffrey Lemasters Tahir in his short YouTube video expressing his philosophy of life and views on comedy[1]. The short video was ostensibly recorded to be an example of comedic riff, but the jokes thinly cover a cynical worldview that is out of place for a lawyer. According to the American Bar Association Code of Professional Responsibility Canon 9 states, “a lawyer should avoid even the appearance of professional impropriety.”[2] Jeffrey Lemaster Tahir goes far beyond avoiding appearances, he leans into his dishonesty. And despite the fact that the video is supposedly made in jest, his comments about his blatant dishonesty reminds one of the saying, “Many a true word hath been spoken in jest”.[3]

His next joke is even more telling, “You know, my daughter's teacher called me the other day and said, ‘We’ve got a problem. Your daughter has been stealing money from other kids in school and lying about it.’ I said, ‘And where's the problem?...I want my daughter to be a lawyer!’”[4] And he does not get any better as he continues, “So I really am a lawyer and I actually do go into courtrooms and lie to people for a living.” He concludes the video with this, “I want you to keep this in mind no matter what you do, no matter where you go, never never trust a lawyer and always praise Him daily.”[5] Good advice, especially if Jeffrey Lemasters Tahir is the lawyer.

My Visit to Thousand Oaks SDA Church on 6-29-2024

I ran across Jeffrey Lemasters Tahir at the Thousand Oaks Seventh Day Adventist Church where he works as an associate pastor to senior pastor Jon Clark. That day happened to be his last day, afterwards he will apparently go to continue working on his side project Vival Church and his other role at Riverside Community Seventh Day Adventist Church, where he still appears to be active. The congregation gave him a heartfelt goodbye, showered him with praise, gifts, and made a pneumonic device with his name. One congregant took the word “R” in his last name and made the word “Renegade”. Pastor Tahir, who gave the sermon that day, said in his opening remarks that “Renegade” was his favorite. As he began to speak it was easy to see why. Sermon begins at 1:04:14.

His sermon was loosely based on the well known parable in Luke 15 about the prodigal son. But his interpretation of that parable had his own, very unique eisegesis. He proposed the return of the prodigal son in this manner, “What if the son had returned hand in hand with a pregnant prostitute?”[6]

However, it is important to note that the son did not return with a pregnant prostitute in the Bible. He returned empty-handed. The reason scripture writes it in this way is because it is emphasizing his willingness to leave his former life behind and embrace whatever was coming when he was willing to obey the Father completely. The point is to emphasize the son’s repentance and willingness to do anything just to be back in the Father’s house and compare this to the incredible love of the Father by reinstating his son to his previous position with honors.

But in Tahir’s version, the son does not leave everything behind, instead he brings his former life with him, back to his Father’s house. According to Tahir’s implications, the Father’s love is greater than his distaste for the son’s sinful lifestyle, and he would have accepted the son back into his house, pregnant prostitute and all. But this nullifies the point of the parable, and takes away from the meaning instead of adding anything useful.

Tahir was not finished butchering the parable, though. He continued, saying, “What if the prodigal son had returned hand in hand with a boyfriend? Would the dad have turned around and walked back into the house?”

It is interesting that he made this particular example. The tactic is one used many times by the radical left in politics and in the church, the appeal to sympathy through the vehicle of marginalized groups. The marginalized groups obey a strict ordering based on the current zeitgeist, and much like the weather man looks outside and takes the temperature, the radical leftist determines the hierarchy of marginalized groups based on the feelings of his peers. The hierarchy is flexible, but currently, the rankings are as follows (in order from most oppressed to least): transgenders, gays of any flavor (L-G-B-Q-I-A-2S-+), any Gazan, Hamas, Muslims, blacks (first black women, then black men), Native Americans, hispanics, anyone who has committed a crime, politically left-leaning white women, politically left-leaning white males, and lastly Asians and of course, white males.

The implication Tahir is making about the gay prodigal son is the Father would not have rejected his son even if he were hand in hand with a boyfriend because the Father is aware of this hierarchy of human significance, as all the “Awakened,” or “Woke” or “Illuminated” are aware. His rhetoric then has the effect of making the audience uncomfortable because it puts their moral framework in contradiction. On the one hand, the audience knows homosexuality is a sin. However, the Father is all loving, and to reject the son would not be loving, therefore there is a paradox, and what used to be clear is now unclear.

This has the effect of brainwashing the audience, or lobotomizing them. By constantly forcing them to struggle to determine what is right and what is wrong and even inverting those concepts, pretty soon people lose the ability to do so. What the audience should have remembered was that by Tahir’s own admission (above video), he was a professional liar.

There is no contradiction in the parable, Tahir blatantly invented it. The Father would never accept someone in open sin, it is as simple as that. If the point of the message was to point out God’s grace, the correct parable would have been John 8, where the woman is taken in the very act of adultery. Importantly, in the sermon Jesus tells the woman, “Go and sin no more,”[7] but Tahir did not use this parable because Tahir apparently does not want people to stop sinning.

In his opinion, Seventh Day Adventist “have turned the law into a golden calf.”[8] Again, he is attempting to fragment the minds of the congregation by juxtaposing two contradictory things, the Law of God (which is good) and the golden calf (which is evil). By holding these two contradictory things before the congregation he is confusing them and making them unable to discern between what is actually good and evil, everything can be either one in their minds. To be fair, the writings of Paul do some very tough analysis of the Old Testament law, which is why Peter writes some have misunderstood[9]. However, when discussing the Jew’s attempt to establish their own righteousness the New Testament is careful to balance those statements with ones like “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”[10]

Yet, Tahir does not make any attempt to balance his statements. The law is always the problem along with Christians who use any common sense. For example, he brought up as an illustration the story of a woman he knew who was being prepared for baptism. The only problem was, when she was nearing the day of baptism the pastor confronted her about the boyfriend she was still living with. Apparently she was still having an open sexual relationship with him outside of marriage. The pastor denied her baptism until she could fix this issue. To me this sounds like a job well done. However, in Tahir’s mind this was a mistake. Commenting on this action by the pastor he says, “We’re not called to stand at the door and say who cannot come in to him.”[11] But he is wrong.

Lying is a strong word. It requires intention to deceive, not just the dissemination of falsehoods. A person can be sincerely convinced of wrong and not lie. In Tahir’s case, however, I feel it is something more sinister. His cynical video extolling the perjuries he had committed indicates what kind of commitment he had towards the truth, none at all. What is more, these statements were made after he became a Christian. In his video he states, “I took Jesus into my heart as a Jew because it turns out there's truth in what you read. There's truth in the Bible, there's power.”[12]

And to prove that Tahir did mean what he said on that video and that he was not joking, I submit this evidence to you. Tahir likely changed careers because he was disbarred from being a lawyer for forging the signature of a judge on official documents! I was able to obtain his court documents regarding his disbarment in 2017[13]. According to these public documents “Tahir was charged and pleaded guilty to felony forgery.” Further, “Tahir’s forgery conviction necessarily involves the intent to defraud. Crimes involving the intent to defraud involve moral turpitude per se” (Ibid.) Tahir was summarily disbarred by the Supreme Court of California.[14] Tahir did not attempt to fight the conviction, he pled guilty to the crimes.

In the public record they mention that he made no attempt to defend himself, “On January 24, 2017, the Office of the Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar (OCTC) filed a motion for summary disbarment based on Jeffrey Lemasters Tahir’s felony conviction. Tahir did not respond.”[15]

Keep in mind, these crimes are so severe they are felonies, not misdemeanors like traffic tickets. This is all the more ironic given his statements in his video that his job as a lawyer consisted of, “going into courtrooms and lying to a whole bunch of people just to steal their money.” Obviously, in Tahir’s case, it was not a joke.

Yet there is more. Tahir is also a self-described magician. He has a business website dedicated to this hobby of his on www.thebash.com, where people can rent different services. On this site he offers his services as a magician, claiming, “Jeffrey Lemasters Tahir is a serious magician for a serious audience. Jeffrey is an expert in bringing a full stage style illusion show to a small room setting. To do so, he brings his entire family, all of whom make the magic come to life.”[16] Apparently, his wife is also in on his act as she appears in the photo with him. There are also many videos of him on YouTube demonstrating his tricks and he is apparently a founder or heavily involved in the organization called the Fellowship of Christian Magicians, whatever that means. If you want to catch Jeffrey live, you might have luck at the Canyon Crest winery where he performs weekly.

After the sermon I wondered, how did this person get access to a microphone in the Adventist church? But, really it is not surprising. Thousand Oaks is not really different from any of the other churches in the area.

Is it possible that the head pastor did not know any of these things? Was my random visit to this church just the only time he said things like these? Of course not. You do not allow ‘renegade’, disbarred individuals to speak in your church, send them off with loads of kind words and shower them with expensive gifts, if you are not complicit. What about the conference? Can we really believe the conference did not know? Did they not know Pastor Jon Clark’s viewpoints on LGBTQ issues, his view on the Bible, and his anti-Adventist stance before they installed him by fiat on this church? They know. They know and they are involved in the entire scam foisted upon the Southern California Conference of installing figure-heads and mouthpieces for leftist propaganda.

The goal is the destruction of all conservative values in the church and to isolate and beat down into submission all contrary viewpoints by forcing us to listen to sermons that are either openly hostile or so mind-numbingly boring we will forget who we are. But we can never forget or we will be forgotten in heaven. We must, by pen and voice, confront the false teachers, press together on truth, and move forward even in unofficial channels if necessary.

“Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

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Dillon Valadez is a member of the Ojai Seventh Day Adventist Church where he serves as an Elder. He has lived in Southern California for 25 years and enjoys the outdoors. He works as a financial engineer supporting the trading activities of a company in the mortgage industry. He has a wife and a baby on the way.

References

ABA Code of Professional Responsibility. (1969, August 12). American Bar Association.

County of Ventura, T. S. C. o. C. (n.d.). 202200564413CUWE [Jeffrey Lemasters Tahir vs. Lindsay Nielson].

Ebsworth, J. W. E. (1893). The Roxburghe Ballads (Vol. VII). The Ballad Society.

Embracing Your Calling [Film]. (2024). Thousand Oaks Seventh Day Adventist Church. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4_7EU40Ik

Jeff Lemasters Tahir - Magician Riverside, CA. (2011). The Bash. Retrieved July 2, 2024, from https://www.thebash.com/magician/jeff-lemasters-tahir

State Bar of California. (2017, March 14). Recommendation of Summary Disbarment.

Supreme Court of California. (2017, July 13). In re Jeffrey Lemasters Tahir on Discipline.

Tahir, J. L. (Director). (2009). Laughing Lawyer Speaks [Film]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqXH7wZJ31w

[1] (Tahir, 2009)

[2] (ABA Code of Professional Responsibility, 1969, Canon IX)

[3] (Ebsworth, 1893, VII)