Author: Lois | Page 39 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

If You Were To Die Tonight

If you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?

I saw this again the other day and I set it aside as I wanted to write about it. I grow so weary with seeing things like this. Unhealthy churches distort the Gospel and they change people’s focus from God to other things. Relationship with God is replaced with performance based religion. The message of grace is twisted and people develop warped views of God due to the faulty teachings and practices. It is about escaping hell. It becomes about bringing people to their church and not necessarily into a relationship with God. Let me give an example of what I believe to be this faulty evangelism focus.

Tim Downs is an Apostolic evangelist and pastor. His stated vision is to train Apostolics (Oneness Pentecostals) how to win souls and reach the lost. Some years back he released a poorly made DVD titled, Do You Want To Go To Heaven Or Hell (screenshot), which was touted as a ‘soul winning’ method. (The first link takes you to the film on YouTube and the second to a print out of his method.)

His approach involves asking people if they want to go to heaven or hell and then he quickly transports them to a church, gets them water baptized and attempts to pray them through to tongues. The approach seems to be to avoid hell and because of this, I view it as motivated through fear. People who come to a church or God that way often do not last and understandably so. Besides not becoming rooted, they are not hearing about the love of God and how much he cares for them. Instead, it becomes about fleeing eternal torment and is a seemingly ‘quick fix’ to that scenario.

Take note the scripted discussion in the video. Do you notice the wrong emphasis? How does this compare to what we see in the New Testament, of when believers were sharing the Gospel to someone who didn’t know? Here it is all about avoiding hell and being baptized ‘the right way.’ This causes people to believe they need to follow a few steps and they are assured of going to heaven. It’s about what THEY must do to be saved. Hey- that’s what the initial focus and hurry is all about- going to heaven or going to hell. It isn’t about coming to know Jesus.

The method used by Downs, and similar ones by others, misses what becoming a believer is about. It isn’t about going to heaven or hell. Church today is so messed up that it has strayed so far from early Christian practices that in many ways it bears little resemblance.

If you are using this misguided focus to reach people, please stop to take a long, hard look at what you see in the New Testament. Do you recall Peter, Phillip, John, Paul or any of the others ask people something like “If you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?” or “Do you want to go to heaven or hell?” Even Jesus himself never went around asking these questions. Did they focus on getting people baptized ‘the right way’ or was it about having a new life with Jesus? Was it about numbers being added to a church’s or evangelist’s statistics, or was it about how God loves us and the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus and what that means to them?

While such methods may produce numbers which may seem impressive without further investigation, what are the long term results? Are people doing what is told them simply to have a false assurance that they will go to heaven? Like with the scare tactic of the rapture messages, how many go for a short time and then leave or not even return at all after their initial encounter? Let’s use Downs’ own statistics as some food for thought.

On his evangelism website, Downs writes that in 2011 he left evangelizing to pastor a church in Georgia. It is stated, “In the first year they baptized over 712 people in the name of Jesus…” Yet when we go to the church website, we find that “They have seen incredible growth since opening the church on May 1, 2011 with having an attendance of 200-300 on a regular basis.” What happened to those several hundred missing people from the first year and who knows how many in the years thereafter? Did they ever come to know Jesus or have a one on one relationship with him? Or was it nothing more than avoiding hell and wanting to go to heaven? These are things we should seriously ponder.

The question should never be “If you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?” Rather, the focus should be on the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus and believing and placing faith in him. It should be about God’s love for us and on having a personal relationship with God. It isn’t about heaven or hell, but about knowing and following our Creator.

[2023 Edit: Since this was written in April 2017, Downs and his wife Holly divorced and in July 2019, he married his daughter-in-law, Stephanie, whom his son had married in 2012. He is pastor of Hope Center in Michigan City, Indiana. It is touted as a “a non-denominational church,” but is Oneness Pentecostal.]

Jewelry Questions

The teaching on jewelry can vary from church to church or area to area in some religious organizations. In my former church, wedding rings were fine, but in some of our other churches they taught you’d go to hell if you wore one. My church didn’t teach against things like tie tacks or cuff links, though some do, and a few members of our church got caught up in that and left. Jewelry that was not OK where I attended were necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and such.

What did your church allow or disallow? Were you taught you’d be lost should you wear any jewelry? Were you shunned or considered backslid? I vividly recall one United Pentecostal Church General Conference where a minister got up and spoke against the evils of wearing a wedding ring. James Kilgore, then the assistant superintendent, went up afterward and let it be known that everyone did not believe the same on that issue.

In the Bible, wearing jewelry is not mentioned as being sinful. Ezekiel 16, in speaking of Jerusalem, God shares how he decked her with gold and silver bracelets, neck chains, forehead jewels, and earrings. In Exodus 11 God instructs Moses to tell the people to ‘borrow’ jewels of silver and gold from the Egyptians. They did this when they left the country and does anyone really think that no one wore any? Later in Exodus 35, it shows the people giving bracelets, earrings, rings and other jewelry to be used toward building the tabernacle. If God doesn’t want believers to wear jewelry, wouldn’t God be sending very mixed signals by these examples? Stop and really think this teaching through.

What scriptures did you hear used to support the teaching that Christians are not supposed to wear jewelry? Did you later see they were taken out of context? And if these standards are really God’s rules, why do they change from church to church or area to area?

If God has not commanded believers to refrain from wearing jewelry, we need not follow man’s teachings on the subject. It doesn’t matter how many ministers and pastors shout it from a pulpit, it doesn’t change the truth of what is seen in our Bibles.

Against Oneness Pentecostalism Giveaway

Thanks to the generosity of Michael R. Burgos, Jr., we are giving away two brand new copies of his book, Against Oneness Pentecostalism . This was released in 2016. It contains many footnotes. Michael plans to issue a second edition of the book later this year and it will essentially be his doctoral dissertation.

In one review of the book, Nick Norelli wrote in part, “In the near 25 years since the publication of Gregory Boyd’s Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity there has been a dearth of critical interaction with the arguments and exegetical underpinnings of Oneness Pentecostal theology. Michael Burgos has taken up this task in Against Oneness Pentecostalism. Here Burgos interacts with the top Oneness Pentecostal theologians and expositors of our day and finds their arguments wanting.”

Some may be interested in Michael’s earlier book addressing Oneness Pentecostalism that was released in 2012 , Kiss the Son: A Christological Apology in Response to David K. Bernard’s The Oneness of God.

This giveaway is only open to those with a USA mailing address. It doesn’t matter if you have won or requested material from us in the past, you are free to enter this drawing. To enter, please make a comment in response to this blog post to show you are interested. Then on Friday, March 31 after 6pm eastern time, two names will be drawn from all the entries and the winners will be announced here. If I do not already have your mailing address, be sure to respond to my email (so be sure to use your actual email address when entering). If you do not respond by the following day, you will forfeit your copy and I will draw another name.

EDITED April 29, 2017 to add: This is a free PDF copy of the second edition of Michael Burgos’ book, Against Oneness Pentecostalism, with 55 pages of new material. You can sign up with only your email address to get a copy. https://www.academia.edu/32655863/Against_Oneness_Pentecostalism_An_Exegetical-Theological_Critique [EDIT: Link no longer works.]

Brief Thoughts On Bitterness

For those of us who left abusive unhealthy churches, the warning against bitterness is an appropriate one. Whether a bad experience was in a church setting or totally unrelated, one needs to be on guard to not allow bitterness to remain should it be encountered. Bitterness will hurt you more than anyone else in the long run and you will never heal.

Some current members of unhealthy churches love to throw out the bitterness label should a former member mention anything that appears to be negative about the church, its leadership, or the teachings and practices. It is done in an attempt to discredit and silence them.

While people can twist what bitterness is, or attempt to scare people with verses pertaining to it, the fact remains that bitterness is real and is something the Bible tells us to put off and not allow to remain in our lives. Sometimes we do not want to admit we have a problem, but denial of it will not help one to overcome. Because a verse was used against you in a wrong way or was twisted, does not mean that we can avoid the true meaning of the passage.

There are indeed people who struggle with bitterness after leaving an unhealthy church environment. Does everyone? No, but many do for varying lengths of time. The key is to not allow it to remain for months and years. We cannot brush it aside and simply claim it is anger and say we’re allowed to feel angry when that anger has actually turned to bitterness. This is like anything else- if one denies the struggle, they can’t be helped much. Don’t be afraid to admit struggles.

If one speaks about their past unhealthy church experience, does this mean they are harboring bitterness in their heart? No, this in itself is not bitterness. I’ve been accused of being bitter in having my spiritual abuse website because I speak about what happens in abusive churches. The website would be a whole lot different if it was done out of bitterness! Speaking about your experience does not mean you are bitter—-but how you speak of it may give a clue that you might be.

Talking about our experiences does not mean we are hanging on to the past. The admonition to “Get over it and move on” is unhelpful and shows ignorance of the complexity of the situation. Normally in unhealthy churches, certain questioning is not welcomed and one usually is not at liberty to openly question the validity of teachings or how the church is operated.

When one leaves, there are usually many questions and issues which need to be addressed in order for the person to heal, recover and sort through the various teachings. Some need to discuss and vent more than others. They need to be given space to do this. Doing so does not equate to being bitter or holding on to the past.