It's been that kind of summer.....

[Merry]

There seems to have been a lot of 'stuff' people have been hit with this summer. Apparently the devil is ticked off with us, and that is a tiny bit of comfort, but it is still hard.

I just had the third confimation concerning the whereabouts of two very good friends of mine. I have been searching for them off and on for about five years. They were a married couple, very bright folks, she had a Master's in microbiology, he held a Bachelor's and when we were all in our early twenties we went to the same Bible college, which turned out to be run by a very serious cult. How does that happen? Well, primarily all it takes is being raised without a knowledge of scripture or attending a church that seems to have no link with reality or it can involve looking for a place to answer the questions your church says can't be answered. Where I was at, those would have been the 'top three' reasons.

About 18 years ago the thing came unraveled and I jumped ship, but my friends insisted on staying and I did not hear from them after that. I hoped maybe after a few years perhaps, they would drift away from the thing. And that sounds close to what happened. About four years ago, according to what I learned, they decided to finally go, except the day they left, they were in a hi-way accident and both husband and wife died.

I'm not sure what I think about it all right now, but if you're reading this and you are a Pastor or some one who runs a church, please,take good care of your flock.

[DrRita]

Dear Merry,
I so appreciate your story and your transparent honesty. I am so sorry for the loss. I pray for your comfort and encouragement.

I believe the enemy has trapped many of God's children in the web of deceit whether it be in a church (cultish) setting or by the ignorance of Biblical knowledge. My husband and I had our own experience some twenty years ago in a church that veered off course and had to be pulled out by the merciful and wise hand of God. False teaching harms more people than any other single trick of our arch enemy. There is no other defense except sound Biblical teaching. I am appalled at the number of people who don't even know the basic tenets of Christian theology. Several years ago my husband and I decided to dedicate our lives to teaching and equipping the saints for the works of the ministry. We started a small Bible college founded not on denominational doctrine but on God's word. We haven't had a great number of students, but our students have gone on to start churches, international ministries and work with people in their local communities. You are so right Merry about pastors tending their flocks. Feeding them properly, equipping them with the word and watching out for predators is so important. Pastoring is a tough job and an incredible responsibility. I would hate to appear before our Lord having sheared the sheep and sold the wool of those I was entrusted to care for!

Oh my, but I could ramble and rant about this subject for hours. :mad: I will now get down from my soapbox and return to my writing tasks. :o

[Merry]

Thanks, Doc, you response is a comfort. No one is going to 'get it right' all of the time, but all you or any Pastor can do is walk as honestly before God as possible. You do a great work sending well-taught students out into the world. Keep up the good work.

[FireFeet]

FireFeet has thoughts too big for words....so she just hugs Merry.

[wgjones3]

We as Christians, and even non-Christians, have this uncanny nack for taking at face value anyone who claims to be Christian, almost without question. If they're bad, then they're a two-faced hypocrite--rarely if ever do we hear anyone state the plain truth. It takes nothing more than a breath and a will for deception to state that one is a Christian. I can't tell you how that has come to play in my own church over the last year.

Basically, though, I can tell you that anyone who usurps spiritual authority over another will be judged accordingly. The blood of your friends will not go unavenged. I know that's a hard concept to take hold of and even harder to find comfort in, but in the scheme of eternity, time is but a speck of dust, and our portion of time isn't even significant enough to measure. The people responsible for this will die, they will face judgement, and they will--regrettably or not--face the consequences of that judgement without reprive or end.

You know, I've heard all kinds of theories as to why America is in the spiritual state she's in. Everything from an increase in demonic activity to the prevailing allure of the occult. The truth is, these things are symptoms of the real problem. The real problem is the church. That's why there are 300 denominations in this country, most of which fight and agrue and bicker and claw at each other, trying to establish their doctrine as supreme truth.

There's one thing Dr. Honvid says that I wish every Christian in America could get through their thick skulls. The Bible isn't some mythical artifact that must be interpreted for consumption. It says what it means. It doesn't even take an average intellegence to read it. And if somebody is telling you that the Bible doesn't mean what it says, then they're trying to hook you into a cult.

We have 300 denominations in this country because, at some point, somebody got mad because their idea of God wasn't being taught so they started their own church, or because God moved on a congregation and they had the audacity to think they could methodize and formalize their services to make God move each and every week. Paul says it so clearly, we are a body, each member has a different function. Yet, in America, we are a collection of body parts that are no more joined or united than medical waste in a college lab. I am sick and tired of churches with the grand vision of growing congregations and building buildings. What about saving souls and reaching the lost?

Merry, you ask how a cult can run a Bible college? It's quite easy. The task of learning the Bible isn't something that is bestowed on teachers to teach us, it's not bestowed on preachers to preach it to us, but it's bestowed upon us to learn it. Yet you won't hear many preachers telling new converts that because they want them nursing off their church and pumping money into it, especially if that preacher knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that what's in the Bible is a complete 180 from the way his/her church is going.

[Merry]

Amen, Bill.
You know, one question bugs me and it won't be one of those questions I hang onto because at this point there's not a thing I can do about it: why didn't we catch on earlier? I mean, the three of us weren't stupid. And we even saw the hypocrisy in a couple of the adjunct faculty, so much so that we said, to heck with it and drove them off. Well, I confess, perpetrating a series of unfortunate events against arrogant, hands-off instructors is kind of a college definition of 'fun' and I probably would have stuck around for that. Honest, FireFeet would have been proud. But then, just a couple of years later, there's my friends, telling me how fortunate we were God didn't slay us for our earlier direspect to such wonderful 'men of God.'

The only thing I can think of is that it's awfully easy to get comfortable. Sort of like the frog in the pan of cold water that heats up slolwy around him 'till he cooks.

Dr. Hovind has it right. While I can see the need to be taught pratical guide lines of studying the scripture, bottom-line if you need some 'guru' to interpret the thing, then it's a cult. Even in mainline churches I would shake myself now and then just to make sure no one has decided to lower you over the heat......

[wgjones3]

Yeah, I was in a "mainstream church" where the pastor thought it was okay to embezzle money and have affairs with married women--and people still said I needed to go appologize to him for leaving the place.

Bottom line is this: the human mind is constructed to accept what it knows to be reality as reality. That's why you hear so many stories of torture victims who sympathize with their captors, of battered wives who protect their abusive husbands, of otherwise intellegent people abandoning all sense of logic to defend the insubstancial idiology of their political party. Hitler, Stalin, and Marx all knew that if you control how people think about the world, you can change the way they percieve the world. That's why it is so important to study the Bible, to remind ourselves of how we're supposed to live, and not let anybody tell us how to live.

Paul had it right--of course, he was a genius of monumental proportions--but we look now as through a dark glass. It's like we have spiritual sunglasses on. We only see what's right in front of us. Someday, we'll all take off the blinders and see things that would blow our earthly minds, but until then, we're stuck with the blinders and the sunglasses. All we can do for people is pray. Logic, I've found, is something few people place any real value in (unless they're using it to defend their own perception of the world).