Controlling and manipulation…more cultic activity!

7/28/2013
Well, at the end of church today I can honestly say that I have not grown in God’s Word for having been there, but I did get about 2 hours of preaching on what an awesome man Pastor K is! I know this because HE TOLD US HOW AWESOME HE IS!

Please HELP ME GOD!

I tried to just concentrate on reading God’s word as I sat in church next to my husband today. Church lasts about 2 hours, so I ended-up hearing about half the sermon despite my best efforts. When I go to church, and I only continue in this church because my husband is not willing to leave yet, I wonder what kind of sermon it will be. Will it be mildly laced with false doctrine or is it going to be outrageous? Today was outrage after outrage (heresy after heresy).

Below are a few of the things I caught and can recall.

• The snake (or serpent?) is whispering in your ear right now! And he could be the one sitting right next to you! He’s whispering…and some of you are listening! (pitting spouse against spouse, family against family, friend against friend??)

• He said, “If you leave here (meaning his church) you are breaking a covenant with God (prior to this he made a point of 2 covenants Christians make; the first was marriage and the second was at the time of our new birth where we make a covenant with God) God brought you here!” (He said that if we leave his church, we are breaking a covenant with God and our very souls are at stake. Many in the congregation said “amen” to this! Ugh!)

• A few years ago (about 10) there was a falling away from his church of some higher ups (elders and others he had appointed to assist him). He talked about how they ended-up as nothing after they left; those who have tried to start churches/ministries have either got pitiful ones (while his is doing so well! Oh the PRIDE!) or they have fallen back into sin.

• He said, “Some of you think that because you read your bibles at home (contradicted what he said earlier when he said to the congregation that they aren’t reading their bibles!) and pray at home you think you are in God’s will!” (Uh!…Yeah!)

• Once again this pastor stated that his church is the only church around preaching the truth. Only place in town that preaches truth.

By his saying these things, he reaffirmed the indoctrination and hold on his sheep! Why oh why do people fall for it!? It makes me angry that people are being lied to!

I just thank God that He has opened my eyes…hearing K’s lies and pride angers me because of the deceit that he is propagating. But God has a purpose and I trust Him. He opened my eyes for a reason. I pray that He will soon open my husband’s eyes also!

I also am going to step-up my prayers for this “pastor”.

I left a cult, accepted Christ as my Savior and wound up in a…CULT??? Part 2

As soon as I received this new understanding, I immediately stopped watching Creflo Dollar and Joyce Meyer. I started to hear when false doctrine was being spoken in church. I tried to share my new found discernment with my husband, but as of yet he doesn’t see what I see.

I have become a Berean now, or I’m starting to be a Berean. I still get a little angry when I learn/discern something new and realize that the pastor is using a false doctrine to bamboozle the flock! The Lord is always faithful and true though and helps me to understand that he loves the pastor and the flock and wants them to be His. Besides, I’m not leaving my partner behind. I pray daily and frequently that the Lord will also reveal these things to my Husband. If I try to tell him about the problems I’m seeing, it doesn’t hold water with him and I understand that it won’t until the Holy Spirit reveals it to him.

I would like to look for a new church to attend, but we live in a small town in a remote area and there are not a lot of choices so I realize I may not find what I’m looking for. My husband however, not seeing the things wrong that I see, thinks that I’m expecting the pastor to be perfect and he says no matter where we go we aren’t going to find a perfect pastor/teacher. I agree with him that we won’t find a perfect teacher but I think we may find one who teaches the bible and doesn’t propagate false teachers and false teachings…but for now we are still in the church.

I also think that my husband’s reluctance to look elsewhere has to do with when the pastor repeats from time to time the edict, “if you were saved under me in this church, you stay under me in this church!” My husband has stated that he believes that we aren’t supposed to go to any other church because we were saved here. This pastor started his church 30+ years ago and many have come and gone in his congregation. Might he be putting forth this false, non-biblical edict because he is a little frustrated that some get saved in his church and then find the need to go elsewhere to be fed? Taking their tithes and offerings with them?

My sister-in-law, who is married to my husband’s brother, was a Christian for 20 years prior to starting to attend this church. When I mentioned some of my concerns to her, she said that she had noticed the same things almost immediately.

It seems rather cultish to me! And having come out of a cult, I’m cautious! When I mentioned some of the control issues that the pastor seems to want to force on the members to my sister-in-law and that I thought it was like a cult, she informed me that many people in the community that we live in consider our church a cult.

My sister-in-law stated to me that she believes that the ministry where we attend church is a good place for people to get saved, but that there then is no foundation given to the people, no opportunity to grow in God’s word. Instead, a false message is given about, health, wealth and prosperity (the pastor holding himself up as the prime example). And instead of encouraging growth in God’s word, he tries to keep the “sheep” submissive and under his control. He doesn’t have much time for “sheep” that get hungry and look elsewhere to be fed.

What I believe is that God can do for people as he has done for me. He can use a church such as this to spoon feed you His gospel, you can get saved, he protects you from the false teachings and then when you get to a point where you are ready for more he opens your eyes of understanding to what is wrong. At that point, it’s time to make a choice to stand for God and get away from the false teachings or to turn the other way and put your faith in the man who promotes the false teaching.

These are the things that I’ve observed or that I’ve heard said by family, church elders, the pastor’s wife, or the pastor himself regarding this particular ministry:

• The other pastors in our area should be under our pastor because he has an anointing on him.
• The pastor was given a vision 30 years ago that is coming forth; the pastor has Habakkuk 2:3 on the wall as a confirmation of his vision and also Acts 26:16-18 which is Paul’s vision of the Lord.
• He sends his congregants after strange fire (T.D. Jakes, Morris Cerullo, etc.).
• He has stood in front of us and told us that because he is living in the will of God (may not be his exact words, but was the gist of what he said) he drives a new vehicle, his wife drives a new vehicle, etc.
• He announced in church one Sunday that my sister-in-law was blessed with a new car, I was happy for her! Then I learned that she and her husband took a loan for the new car, so she went into debt for it…I don’t really consider debt a blessing, sometimes it’s a necessity, but not a blessing! Also, as a point of interest, this sister in law lives payment/rent free in the home that was left by her mother.
• On more than one occasion this pastor has talked about how other church congregations in the town say bad things about his church because the people are blessed as can be witnessed to by the new vehicles they drive…again blessed to be in further debt??

We live in an economically poverty stricken area of the country. A new car, in this area, is a status symbol above and beyond what it may be considered in the rest of the good ol’ USA. I’ve come a ways now since first seeing there was a problem with the church we attend, but I know I have a ways to go still. God’s word is what I base all truth on and I rely on Him to and the Holy Spirit to guide me.

Thanks again for stopping by!

I left a cult, accepted Christ as my Savior and ended up…in a CULT??? Part 1

I didn’t know that I would, within less than 2 years of being delivered from Mormonism, need to get delivered again…this time from false doctrine in Christianity! I found myself in an “full-gospel” bible church with threads of Word of Faith and Shepherding winding through it! I thank God thought that he’s opened my eyes to this and I trust Him to take me all the way through it.

Here is more of my story.

After I came out of Mormonism and my husband got saved from his Catholicism, we enjoyed a solid year of growing in the Lord together. We went to our little church with the pastor who is a local “boy” who has an “anointing and calling and a vision” on his life. We never missed a Sunday and still don’t to this day. (I’ll explain more sometime on why I’m still there)

I was starting to have a tough time with Women’s bible study though. I had been attending bible study faithfully for about a year plus and I was starting to notice that I wasn’t getting much out of the studies. It may have been because we DIDN’T STUDY THE BIBLE at these meetings! I mean, we cracked them open and read a few verses, but the bible studies usually consisted of the pastor’s wife teaching us how to anoint our houses with oil and rebuke the devil and his demons or how we are under the pastor’s rule. In all fairness, we did learn other things (like the truth behind Halloween, its not for Christians!) that I’m thankful for but we never really had in-depth bible study.

Women’s “bible study” would start with the testimonies of as many as 30 women. Testimony time could take up to 2 hours as each woman would take a turn and, as women do, unload a lot of emotion and experiences from the prior week. At the end of 2 hours of testimonies, we often times would only have about 10 or 15 minutes spent on the actual “bible” lesson.

I found the testimonies of the other ladies inspiring at first! Many times the sisters were so emotional about what they’d endured during the week. They talked about how they were able to overcome what had “come against them” by their faith. This built me up! I too would talk about my experiences from the prior week and what wonderful ways the Lord had helped me or taught me! But I noticed that I didn’t have the other ladies’ emotional “oomph” added to my testimonies.

A couple times I tried to add some “oomph” to my testimony so as to fit in with the other ladies. I often felt as if the others were being tolerant of my testimony, but really wanted to hear from the sisters with the more exciting testimonies…and we had 2 or 3 in the group that always took up the most time and told the most emotional and uplifting testimonies. Their testimonies always had me and the other sisters clapping and saying “Praise the Lord!”.

I prayed for discernment and about why I didn’t have more of an emotional expression when sharing the wonderful things the Lord has/had been doing for me. I saw the other sisters being so emotional and, although I felt just as thankful and had experienced similar blessings in my life as they, their testimonies seemed so uplifting.

So I prayed and asked Him for discernment. As I prayed for this, over the course of 3 months or more, I began to see things a little differently. I began to see the ways the sisters who delivered emotionally exciting testimonies as more of a cultural quality, a “church culture”. I think each congregation must develop its own unique culture.

In December 2012 or January 2013, as an endeavor to step-out and do more to make friends from church, I made plans to meet a few of the ladies from church for the evening while our husbands would be at men’s bible study. As we gathered, the sweet lady in whose house we were meeting asked if we wanted to watch one of the DVD’s from T.D. Jakes’ “Woman Thou Art Loosed 2012 Conference”. The 3 ladies there besides myself had gone to the conference in October. I had not felt the desire to go to the conference in October and so had ostracized myself further from the “church culture” by not doing so.

We all agreed to watch the DVD. I was interested in it as I kept hearing from many of the sisters at church about how wonderful the conference had been. The other sisters decided we should watch Paula White. I didn’t really care for what I’d seen of her in the past. Once I had watched a few minutes of a video she’d made on YouTube, what she was saying and doing in the video didn’t seem very Christ-like to me. But I thought that the sisters who were there with me had been in the Lord for as many as 20 years and I figured they knew better than I which preachers were of God.

So on went Paula White. I sat the whole time watching not believing a word she said! Gobbledygook mixed with scripture is what it sounded like to me! The other ladies were saying “Praise the Lord” and raising their hands and seemed to really get into what was being said by her. At one point I kind of laughed when Paula was talking about “birthing new ideas” or something similar and one of the other sisters looked at me funny, like why was I laughing?

After that night, I figured there was really something wrong with me! I couldn’t elicit the emotional response to Paula White that the other sisters could and my testimonies were more of a subdued nature than an emotional, exciting nature (I thought maybe this was because of my Mormon background? I have definitely discovered that I’m not a Pentecostal/charismatic but more of a conservative Christian) I continued to go to the Lord and ask for discernment and that he give me His love to show others. Now I also asked that He forgive me my unbelief and help me to believe as He wants me to believe. This included, believing like the other sisters and our pastor believe…as long as it was His will.

The unwritten understanding of which preachers are acceptable and lauded in our church include; Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Morris Cerullo, Benny Hinn, Juanita Bynum, [she did get kicked off of their accepted “list” after she turned gay] Joel Osteen, and Perry Stone…I may be leaving someone out but you get the picture.

Instead of giving me the ability to believe in the afore mentioned “list”, the Lord showed me that those who were accepted by my fellow church members were actually false teachers. I was stunned! It was like coming out of Mormonism all over again! I was a little angry, just like I had been initially when coming out of Mormonism! It hurts to find out that you are being bamboozled. Why can’t the other congregants see the untruth? The lies?

I’ve decided to blog my experience. My journey. I reached out to someone on a blog who had blogged their similar experience and learned that what God was doing was giving me discernment. I hope that my experience can help someone else.

I will be writing more. Thanks for stopping by!

My deliverance from Mormonism

I was in a false religion, the Mormon Church, for 33 of the 42 years of my life when I asked Jesus Christ to be King of my life.

My conversion story goes like this.

My husband and I weren’t quite married yet when we started going to church. When we got married in 2011. We had started attending a non-denominational church a couple of weeks before we got married for which I was very thankful! My husband wasn’t Mormon so we compromised and began going to a church where many of my husband’s family members already attended. Many of his family members are born-again and had been praying for him for 20+ years.

Even though we were attending this church and it wasn’t the Mormon Church I still considered myself a Mormon and felt like it was a step towards returning to activity in the Mormon Church. I had become “less-active”, as the Mormons put it, over the previous 4 years or so. At that time I thought the church we were attending did not have the “fullness of the gospel”, as the Mormon’s think they do, but I liked the church and the people who attended there.

My husband, prior to going to church and prior to us being married, dealt with many addictions like alcohol, cigarettes, swearing and gambling. Although I did not participate in these things, his addictions certainly affected our life for the negative. So when he started going to church with me I was so pleased and relieved! I hoped that he would get serious about God and give up those destructive activities.

Around the same time that we started attending church, I found a site online called “Setting Captives Free” that I thought was nice because it was biblically based and there was a bible study program on there for people who eat too much called, “The Lord’s Table”. Even though the program was based solely on the Bible (and I as a Mormon believed the bible was flawed) I thought to myself, “Well, it is the Bible and we believe in the bible and so it certainly can’t hurt to do this study.”

I did the online “Lord’s Table” bible study along with continuing to attend church. I had also started to attend women’s bible study at our new church. In the “Lord’s Table” bible study, I learned things I’d never understood before about “Living Water” and what we really desire in our life is to seek God. I learned about the Cross and for the first time I gained a small understanding of what it really was that Christ did for us there! Praise the Lord! I didn’t lose much weight but I gained Christ as my King!

The things I was learning in the “Lord’s Table” bible study were backed-up, confirmed at the church we attended! I was excited! This was a whole different bible than what we had learned about in the Mormon Church and it was being opened up to me!

I prayed the sinner’s prayer at the church one day during this time when the pastor asked me to say it, along with my husband.

For me nothing mind-blowing happened immediately after saying the prayer but a gradual change began to take place over the next month or so, this would be the month of October 2011. I would say that at the beginning of October I was lost in Mormonism and by the end of October I was a born-again Christian!

One thing that took place during this period, along with the bible studies and church attendance, is that I witnessed my husband being changed also. He had stopped drinking a week or 2 prior to our wedding and he didn’t go back to it. The desire to drink had been taken plum away from him. Also, sometime during this period of time my husband and I watched a movie on TV about polygamy in the Mormon Church. I remember thinking as I watched the movie how despicable polygamy was and how could it be from God? That was when I started to examine the things in the Mormon Church that I’d always held as truths and I began to look at them with a desire to discern truth from fiction. I remember thinking for the first time, “what if it isn’t true? What if the (Mormon) church isn’t true?!” Not long after this, I came to know that the Mormon Church wasn’t true!

I remember the pivotal moment and even where I was in our house when the first thought came to me that, “I know the Mormon Church isn’t true! Is God even real?” and in the next instant I said, “Yes! God is real! I believe that there is a God!” And after that is when my conversion came, it came on over a few days but I could feel that I was changed, different, a new creature!

That was at the end of October 2011, my husband’s story of conversion happened along with mine and he considers January 2012 to be his month of conversion.