Author: Lois | Page 61 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Fake Ministers in the Church

Marjoe Gortner was a child Pentecostal preacher. He was taught by his parents how to act and manipulate a crowd. He wasn’t following God and yet people flocked to his meetings and gave him money. He faked speaking in tongues. People bought the whole show, including ministers.

When he was older, he actually exposed himself through a documentary he had made. In it, he shares about his childhood and explains why and how things happened.

Everyone is not as they may appear to be and everything that happens in a church gathering is not always of God. People can easily be manipulated given the right circumstances.

These are only some things to consider. We must use discernment. Do not blindly accept everyone who says they have a Christian ministry.

Below are clips from the documentary.

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Distorted Vision

Have you ever put on another person’s glasses and everything you looked at was distorted? What once was clear and sharp is blurred and hard to define.

When I was involved in the United Pentecostal Church, I sometimes looked into the beliefs of groups considered cult-like and/or unhealthy, such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses. I could see the wrong in other groups, but had not yet realized all the unhealthy aspects of what I was heavily involved in myself. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Many who leave unhealthy churches often better see the abuse and twisting of scriptures after they have been out for awhile. While immersed in their former churches, they were seeing more through the group’s glasses, so to speak. When those glasses start to be removed, many are amazed they didn’t see things for what they were earlier.

If you are going through this stage, don’t beat yourself up. It is hard to see clearly when you are looking at the Bible and church events through the group’s glasses.

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The Rapture & Scared Children

*WARNING: This contains material which may be triggering to some*

Rapture drills. Hell House. End-time revivals. The Y2K scare. Have you experienced them? Children have been left traumatized by these, scared to death they may be left behind while their parents and others are taken away to be with God. Even later as adults, some suffer from PTSD due to how these teachings were instilled in them.

For those unfamiliar with rapture drills, these would happen with the young people at a church or camp meeting. Sometimes there would first be a fear based message on the rapture and then the drill would be held. One explanation I heard was that they would hold a Bible or songbook and on the count of three everyone would drop theirs. This was to show how sudden and unexpected the rapture would be. Then it was emphasized the need to do certain things in order to be ready.

Several years back, I found on DVD the old series of movies from Mark IV pictures on the end-times. Remember A Thief in the Night, Distant Thunder, The Image of the Beast and The Prodigal Planet. They were shown at my former United Pentecostal Church. When I watched them once again, years after leaving, they left me feeling much different and with a bad taste in my mouth. I no longer cared for them.

I firmly believe adults and children should not be scared into following God. While there is a time and place to teach about eternity and unbelief, the message to those who do not know Jesus should be the Gospel – the death, burial & resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is about how God so loved the world and what this means to them. The message is about a new life in Christ. It is Good News; anything other than this is NOT good.

It is no wonder many have a distorted view of God when they hear more about hell, torment, and being lost than they do about God’s love and mercy and grace. Scaring people into believing isn’t the way, whether that be through end-time movies, rapture drills, threats concerning standards, tongues, or anything else.

I am going to share some excerpts of a blog that shows how this affected a young girl who was raised in the United Pentecostal Church.

The second coming of Christ was presented as a real and present danger of everyday life. Jesus could return at any moment, with one loud trumpet blast by way of announcement. If you were not saved you would be left on earth, which would become hell, complete with Satan, fire and demons, where you would burn forever and ever. Everyone who had followed directions would be whisked away to heaven and it was all going to happen in the blink of an eye. Let’s just say I had some anxiety as a child.

Anyway, I repented about a million times for my kindergarten sins and got baptized when I was six.

…Up until then, the fear of hell was real. I couldn’t go to sleep at night, especially after church. Preacher after preacher …would tell tall tales of untimely deaths and tragic accidents. …My dad said he didn’t believe we were going to get out without a scratch; meaning some of us would be tortured and killed for our beliefs before the rapture. So he was no help getting to sleep.

There was a traveling evangelist named Brother Richard Heard. He would visit the church, preaching nightly, sometimes for weeks at a time. The Rapture was his thing. He could scare the shit out of you before halftime. I distinctly remember him saying, “I don’t think we are going to see 1977.” It was 1976, I was 10 years old and had to sing myself to sleep with happy little tunes to shut out the voices.

Another former Christian has a very good article about his evangelical experiences.

One stormy night in the summer of 1992, I walked down the basement steps of my parents’ house to await the apocalypse. The Iowa air was thick with humidity, the ominous green sky prophesying a tornado. My 10-year-old hands trembled as I laid out my inventory: animal crackers, juice boxes, a Bible, and every sharp knife in the kitchen.

My parents were home late and my first thought was that they’d been raptured up to heaven. I was a sinner who had been left behind to face the Earth’s destruction.

Unfortunately, countless children have lived in fear that was caused by grown-ups. I think many do not stop and think before speaking to a child about something that even scares adults. How do you expect a young child to process teachings on the rapture, hell or the book of Revelation?

Please allow your children to be children and have a childhood. They already have more than enough to handle with how some things are in this world. Teach about the love of God, his mercy and goodness, and don’t tell stories that scare them half to death, causing them to live in fear. Some children are more sensitive, internalizing and taking these things very seriously and it can have devastating long-term effects.

If you were harmed by these, my heart goes out to you. It should have never happened.

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Work Is Love Made Visible

I want to share a brief thought. It goes with what ‘works’ actually is. As most of us found, performance based churches often like to point to the book of James, where he says that faith without works is dead, in order to support some of their teachings.

One day at an old workplace, I was looking through a book of graphics which could be used in advertisements. In the religious section, one caught my attention. It said, “Work is love made visible.“

I think this is a good way to summarize exactly what James was teaching. Ephesians tells us that we are saved through faith and not works, yet James says faith without works is dead. Are these contrary the one to the other? No, they are not. (More could be said, but not in this blog.)

The examples James uses to show works, have to do with our actions toward others. Jesus stated that if we love him, we will keep his commandments. The works that we do come from the love in our hearts. These works will never save us, make us righteous, nor gain us any special standing with God. They are simply the evidence of what is in our hearts.

Work is love made visible. I like that!

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Forgiveness

This issue of forgiveness is one that periodically has been difficult to discuss in our main support group. There are many who are pretty hurt and at the time they feel there is no way they can forgive.

Some have become upset when I have shared the importance of forgiveness. Some who have been hurt in a church feel the offender must come to them and admit their wrong or ask for forgiveness first before they should forgive them. I disagree. Your chances of getting an apology from spiritually abusive leadership is slim to none.

I believe that forgiveness as a Christian is not an option. Yes, that means no matter how hurt one was. Yes, that means even if the hurt was deliberate and with intent. Jesus taught that we must forgive and if we refuse to forgive, then our own sins will not be forgiven.

We could look at this subject from a few angles. Jesus did not die for just some people’s sins. He took upon Himself the sins of all humanity. He paid the full price for those sins. If we will allow Him into our lives, He washes us clean from any and all wrongdoing we did. How are we viewing His sacrifice when we refuse to forgive? Think about it. Are we saying that what Jesus did wasn’t enough? That somehow the price should be greater for some people? (Of course not us, mind you.)

With this in mind, who are we to tell anyone they will not be forgiven? We didn’t pay the price, Jesus did. We didn’t even pay the price for our own sins. If it were not for the grace of God, would we not have many sins for which we’d have to give account? Because of this, should believers withhold forgiveness from others?

Remember when Jesus told those who had caught the woman in adultery that whoever was without sin, that person could cast the first stone to have her killed, as the law allowed? There was only one there who could have started the stone throwing, and that was Jesus. We all have been in need of forgiveness. We have all been in need of mercy. Should we not then extend this to those who have wronged us?

If we refuse to forgive and desire to harbor this in our hearts, doesn’t that person yet have control or influence over us? Things like this do affect us, whether or not we realize it. Forgiveness actually does more for you than it does for the person being forgiven.

Forgiving doesn’t mean it didn’t or doesn’t hurt. Forgiving doesn’t mean you have to trust the person again or renew any relationship. Forgiving doesn’t mean being a doormat, allowing yourself to be used over and over. Forgiving doesn’t mean that the person has no possible consequences to face.

Forgiving does mean it releases that person from you and also releases you from that person.

It greatly angers me at times when I see what the religious system has done to people. That doesn’t mean I hate the people in it or that I do not forgive them. Many people yet inside do things because it is all they know to do, with some parroting behaviors of others. Some have no idea how much they hurt people. Others do not realize the error they teach.

I changed during my involvement in an unhealthy church. I became judgmental and I am sure there were times I hurt people. I needed forgiveness for those things. And so do the people yet involved.

Some might respond, “Some people say, ‘Forgive and forget.’ Only God is truly able to do that. Yet, even with forgiveness, the Bible demands restitution.”

I don’t believe we are told to forget. We are human and have memories. Jesus remembered how Peter had denied him three times. Paul remembered that Demas had forsaken him. Even if we tried hard to forget, something on occasion would trigger the memory.

As to restitution, the Bible speaks of it but I don’t see where it is for us to demand. Restitution may not always be possible. For instance, how exactly does an abusive minister give restitution for giving someone a warped view of God or for causing people to follow teachings that were man-made? What about those who are no longer alive? How does someone do this when they don’t yet realize they are wrapped up in an abusive church environment and have a wrong mindset?

Doesn’t the Bible say that with what judgment we give, we will be dealt with the same? Do you not need forgiveness? Have you ever hurt anyone? Could you have hurt someone and not realized it? Would you not want that person to forgive you?

I know what it is like to have your reputation smeared. While I was in the United Pentecostal Church I had a good rep. After I left, my former pastor and some others periodically did things to try and tarnish my reputation. I have to live with the lies as sometimes you just cannot break from the cloud someone has placed over your head. Some people will always believe what they hear and never look into the veracity of what a pastor proclaims.

I learned that you cannot go running around trying to clear your name all the time. Much as we don’t like it and it hurts us inside, doing so causes us to lose our proper focus. God knows. He will not be made to believe any lies.

It may be difficult and take awhile, but we should all move toward the goal of being able to forgive those who hurt us.

Below is a video clip with a song about forgiveness. Perhaps it will help someone to realize the importance of forgiveness.

Forgiveness from Kenneth V. Jones on Vimeo.

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