August 03, 2006
Seeds of a Cult
I’m having trouble accepting a statement made by one of our leaders during a recent meeting. He said, “…anyone who speaks against the direction the church is going, in our mind [the elders], speaks against God.” Let me say I’m certain our elders honestly believe they are taking our church in the right direction. That being said, the assertion that they feel I am ‘speaking against God’ if I disagree with their direction for the church is mind blowing. One would expect this type of thinking from Jim Jones (Jonestown) and David Koresh (Branch Davidians), but not from leaders of mainstream Christianity. The Apostle Paul says, “Test everything. Hold on to the good.” (1 Thes. 5:21 NIV). The direction of the church can be tested.
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Gail;
----Ahhhh! Mmmmmm! Allow me, one more time...ahhh...to deeply inhale that fresh air of truth! It is so good! "Test everything," yes! How precious and vital to the church and it's direction is the Word of God! "Hold on to what is good!" Thank you, Gail!
----OK. Enough with the emoting. Please allow me to reference the earlier portion of that elder's statement from which Gail quoted:
----------"This eldership is con-
-----vinced, and you guys need
-----to hear this through, this
-----eldership and this staff is
-----convinced that this church
-----is headed in the direction
-----that God wants it to go.
-----Absolutely! Without ques-
-----tion! We've prayed about
-----it, we've talked about it,
-----we've discussed it, we've
-----read every single one of
-----your letters thoroughly.
-----Every one of them, so we
-----understood. And we are
-----more convinced now that this
-----church is headed in the
-----direction that God wants it
-----to go than ever before.
-----This is the most unified
-----staff and eldership that I've
-----ever seen."
----This is certainly a statement from the bottom of that man's heart! But read it carefully. What is missing from his list of evidences for God's direction being in the church? Oh yes, but of course! The Bible! Just what Gail was talking about: testing everything against the Word! If those men had searched the Scriptures carefully it would have left a bigger impression on his spontaneous memory than any of the other evidences he listed, and it would have been there.
----I caught it immediately, as he was speaking, because I have searched the Scriptures carefully concerning these matters. So I called him on it, "What? Then you run this church by your own mind, then?"
----"No! No! We run it by God's Word!" He quickly backtracked.
----But it was too late. His heart, in the sincerety of the moment had been spilt forth. And something had been found missing.
----I have been testing against the Word the way these men have been running that church for several years now. I wrote to the church a letter containing fifteen pages of the Word of God juxtaposed over the actions in their leading. They were so furious over the mismatches it exposed that they claimed it to be full of untruths and libeled me before the whole church! But I could have written twice as much (and maybe should have) had it not been during the most busy season of my year when I wrote it.
----The Lord God did not give us His Word to play patty-cake with. His Word is His guidance and direction. If what is going on in your church does not have definite, discernable roots in the pure truth of His Word, then your church has house cleaning to do - no matter how unanomously conspired are its elders.
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