Category: Oneness Pentecostal | Page 65

A New Family In Our Church

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

Eventually, Dad came back home and back to church. The painful questions from members stopped after awhile, and things were pretty good. Then a new family came to church.

It was a husband and wife and two teenage kids. The husband and wife were preachers, and the teenagers (a boy and a girl) both claimed that they’d been ‘called to preach’. About half the church welcomed them with open arms, the other half stayed aloof from them. Friendly, but not friends. I remember my Great-Grandma (who helped build the church building) saying that her spirit just didn’t recognize their spirit.

My mom and the mom of this family became ‘best friends’. We started spending a LOT of time with them. Our whole family would go spend the weekend at their house almost every weekend, and during the week they were at our house all the time. Once again, things started changing.

The woman in this family told Mom how they’d all been Satanists before coming to God, and that she believed occult was infiltrating the church. They started buying tons of occult/witchcraft instruction books and comparing the practices outlined in these books to things happening in the church. Their conclusion was – demons were running rampant in the church and possessing the believers of the Truth in an attempt to thwart God’s Oneness revival.

My family was always the first ones to arrive at the church building, lots of times the doors weren’t even unlocked yet when we got there. This other family started joining us in arriving extra early. Mom and this woman and her daughter would go into a Sunday School room and ‘pray’. Often you could hear them ‘praying’ all over the church, other times there was silence. A few times Dad asked me to go in and get Mom for one reason or another. The times I went in they were sitting at a table talking, and stopped immediately and Mom angrily asked why I interrupted them. After a couple of those instances, they started locking the door.

Some things from this time that I heard them state: They could literally ‘see’ demons running around inside the church building. They could see demons when they looked in the eyes of some of the male preachers in the church. The pastor was ‘obviously’ demon possessed. The people who didn’t come to church as early as them to pray were ‘spiritually bound’ by evil, if not actually possessed.

Gossip started about their ‘prayer sessions’ and the questioning of me started just like it did when my parents had separated. “Why does your Mom go in there to pray with those women? Why can’t she pray out in the open? Why do they spend so much time in there? If they are actually talking to God, there’s no reason they should have to lock the door.” People seemed afraid to say these things to my Mom and the other women, so they said them to me, a child about 8 years old. Several of the men in the church started saying things like “locking the door gave an appearance of homosexuality more than prayer”. At one point the pastor actually asked them to stop going in there. They refused. He didn’t feel that it was right to “force” people into things, and didn’t want to start making rules about use of the church building, so nothing else official was done beyond his personal request to them to stop.

Mom’s behavior at home got more and more strange. She started giving away my things to the teenage girl in this family. I was tall for my age and she was short, so even though we were about 10 years apart we were pretty much the same size. A lot of times when I got new clothes she would ‘suggest’ that I give them to this girl. (Side note – we were poor, and new clothes were a rarity so I not only wanted, but needed to keep them.) Also, mother-daughter time had ceased to exist. This girl was 18 and out of school, so she spent a lot of weekdays at our house. Mom would send me outside to do my homeschooling with instructions to watch over my 4 year old sister at the same time. On days that they didn’t come over, she spent hours on the phone with the girl and her mother.

If my Dad, my sister, or myself complained, we were hindering her ministry. She would state things such as “I have a call from God to ‘clean up the church’ and if you stand in my way you’ll be judged with blasphemy. Do you want to go to hell and burn forever? Is that what you want? You kids don’t go bother your Dad at his job, don’t bother me while I’m doing mine.”

I started to act out against these things. Since I was a child, I acted out in very childish ways. I cried and would run away and hide whenever Mom would announce that we were seeing these people again. I intentionally started messing up my schoolwork hoping to force Mom to spend time with me. I tried to run away from home. I spent as much time at relatives houses as I possibly could. Soon, I noticed Mom and these other women watching me with a look of suspicion and hatred that scared me – badly.

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What’s the attraction ‘Then and Now?’

I can’t help but wonder how my fairly bright, for the most part- honest, kind, compassionate, hard working – family got so enmeshed in this out of the mainstream religious group.

Here’s what I came up with:

My paternal grandfather died very young, leaving my grandmother with 13 children to rear during the depression, my father was next to the youngest at 5 years old. My grandmother was a big woman (I am 5’10” and have had aunts also this tall) stern, honest, religious –a very strong woman (she had to be). She was a Methodist, back when the Methodist also ‘shouted their hair down’.

From what I have learned, this Oneness group started out with a great deal of emotion, caring, and a desire to get as close to God as possible, but without a lot of the legalism now such a big part of it. I can see how the early Pentecostal group would be attractive to a single Mom with almost nothing to call her own and 13 kids to care for.

I remember stories of her praying while bags of groceries magically appeared on her porch and praying for money for shoes for her kids and finding a couple of dollars in the ditch beside the road. I also heard stories of her whipping the kids with a razor strap on their bare behinds –they could not afford pajamas or underwear so slept nude and were a prime target for discipline at nite. My dad says he immediately started bawling and did not get whipped as hard as his stoic older brother. Four of her five sons became Oneness preachers. One a National foreign missions director, one a state district superintendent for over 20 years, one a lifetime minister who started 3 churches, one (the youngest) a local minister. Admittedly, they were ALJC (Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ), not UPC (United Pentecostal Church) –not sure even Grandma would accept the legalism of today’s group. She was killed in a train accident when I was 10 years old so I guess I’ll never know how she would have felt about all the changes.

My maternal grandmother also lost her husband early on; my mother was 16 when her dad died of a stroke. Neither grandfather had been in the church. My maternal grandmother was very short (under 5′ tall). She was very kind, sweet, loving. She had come into Oneness with her own mother when my mom (her youngest) was around 6 and my grandfather was being a bit of a womanizer; supposedly my mom has a sister about her age somewhere. He was also a non practicing Catholic and there was almost no contact with his side of the family b/c of the difference in religion. So, I can see this kind, sweet, grandmother being led into this with her mother, seeking peace from a difficult life. As a child, I sensed she didn’t buy into some of the ‘rules‘, suggesting I needed a haircut (at least bangs) and buying me pants to wear in the cold weather and shorts or pedal pushers in summer.

So that’s where it started for us. My family had a bit of drive and made a place for themselves in the churches; this encouraged their children in turn to remain where there was a sense of belonging and maybe a bit of importance. Later, some were successful in business and/or education and they tended to not stay so close to the group. By the 3rd generation, many were no longer in the group –some had switched to UPC (more power, more people, etc.), some stayed in ALJC (either out of loyalty, or to remain significant). Some opted out altogether but tended to not go to church anywhere else and just attend the group church occasionally –it is difficult to accept somewhere else when you have been indoctrinated so intensely. By the 4th generation, the group was losing ground and only the diehards were staying, but this is a big family and a not so big organization, so it is still easy to find someone in the organization that knows someone in the family, particularly in the ALJC.

So, I have answered my question, “how did my family get sucked into this?” I was one who stayed longer b/c I am typically pretty loyal and obedient but also b/c I gave myself and my family a bit of lenience with some of the rules throughout the years.

If we had never been born into this and my grandparents lived today never having heard of this, I would like to think there would not be ANY of us in this today.

Why would anyone want to be a part of this? I guess it is b/c it is promoted as a way to draw closer to God and also a way that one can actually do something important or be someone important –after we are ‘King’s Kids’.

Hopefully, now that I have gotten that out of my system, I can keep moving forward in God’s grace without the baggage – maybe.

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Discerning between truth and error

I am seeing a pattern in my reading.

Books written from the Oneness perspective seem to be full of opinion, personal revelation of scripture, and fear but short on footnotes, facts, or other verification of statements presented.

An example is The Phenomenon of Pentecost by Frank J. Ewart. While this book begins with inspiration and an exciting view of early Pentecostalism in America and other places, it soon breaks down into political squabbling and of course Ewart’s point of view is presented as the only correct course. Then, in my opinion, he crosses the line by proclaiming that those who did not see or accept this view began dying in horrible ways or their churches inexplicably burned to the ground shortly after their refusal to join him. Of course, those who joined him were blessed beyond measure with masses of converts, healings, etc; some also seemed to die soon after their conversion but we are not told what caused their deaths and these deaths were seen as natural and simply a sad passing to be mourned by all.

Ewart gives no authentication anywhere in his book for events that happened; thus it would be difficult to either prove or disprove his accounts.

I also read a small book created first as a paper submitted to a religious symposium, Essentials of Oneness Theology by David Bernard. Bernard does present some footnotes at the end of his paper but throughout bases a lot of his views or beliefs on simply his understanding of scripture. His implication throughout seems to be that he (and other Oneness believers) somehow have a deeper insight than anyone who does not agree with him. Although at one point he quotes a Trinity theologian also presenting belief in one God as Jesus Christ, he still insists that all Trinitarians believe in three Gods. I have yet to find a single book by any Trinitarian writer that proclaims anything other than One God; the difference is more in the nature of the persons or manifestations of God and understanding of Him, but not in the concept of there being one or three or two for that matter. I feel it is disingenuous of Oneness writers, like Bernard, to ascribe a belief in three Gods to Trinitarians without allowing an explanation of the real and actual differences in belief.

I have found other Oneness writers also base much of their writing on their own revelation or opinion.

This is a major difference in non Oneness writers such as Thomas Fudge, who gave footnotes ad nauseam to the point that almost every word he uttered could be verified.

I also see a difference in spirit in these books; for example, in Letters from a Skeptic by Gregory Boyd, there is no fear involved in his attempt to convert.

So using the Bible as a final authority, what is the real message of salvation? Is it hard to understand and only given by revelation to a select few? Is it given with intent to cause extreme fear if not immediately accepted and acted upon? Does it come with long lists of performance demands such as found in the Old Testament Law and present day Oneness groups? Is it a message intended to divide those who believe in Christ and his redemptive nature and plan into the haves and have nots? Or did God so love the world that he gave his only begotten Son that WHOSOEVER believeth on Him should have everlasting life? God is Love and he loves me and you; messages of fear and division and pride are nowhere encouraged in the Bible.

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‘God Is Against You’ He Shouted!

“If you believe trinitarians are saved…God is against you.

“…If you deny a holiness message of separation from the world in dress and conduct…then God is against you.

“If you wear jewelry or condone it….God is against you.

“If you condone women cutting their hair or men growing long hair….God is against you.”

You can read more of this diatribe in the photo.

"God is against you!" shouts the Oneness Pentecostal man. — “God is against you!” shouts the Oneness Pentecostal man.

Such is what I stumbled across today as I glanced at an Apostolic discussion board. I am so thankful and glad to be away from this type of teaching.

He started his post by quoting two passages: Jeremiah 23:32 & Galatians 1:8. (This is the only part of the post not seen in the screenshot.) He used these to justify all his “God is against you” statements. What a message of love he shared! Can’t you just feel it? Don’t you want to dash out and visit his church? No wonder people in unhealthy churches develop a distorted view of God.

I am reminded of the believers in Corinth in New Testament times. Oh, did they have problems. They were carnal and divisive. Spiritual gifts were misused and there was sin among them, including sexual immorality. They were worldly and some were arrogant.

Yet Paul in his two letters to them never started shouting and naming a dozen or more ways in which God was against them. He tried to correct and teach them in love. It wasn’t about shaming them or tearing them down. He wanted to build them up and help them to see their place in the body of Christ.

To me, the harshest words in the New Testament were made by Jesus to the religious hypocrites. He told people to beware of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. They were the separated ones; people who appeared to be religious and following God but inside they were dead. They wanted to stand apart from others in their manner of dress and where they sat. While they prayed and looked toward the heavens, they looked down upon the publican who knew their spiritual condition, and described to God the ways in which they were holier and better than him.

The author of that post should spend some time meditating about the passage immediately before the one he quoted in Jeremiah: “Behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the LORD, “who use their tongues and declare, ‘The Lord declares.’ (NASB)

Colossians 4:5 Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone. (NLT)

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A wayfaring man though a fool

Right after high school, I attended a UPC (United Pentecostal Church) Bible school. One lesson I remember was about the UPC oneness doctrine. S.G. Norris taught us to believe it by ‘revelation’; however, if we didn’t yet have the revelation, then we should just take it by faith until the revelation came because “obedience is better than sacrifice.”

Well, most of us were young, altruistic, very impressionable and looking for something to believe in. Many of our age-mates were buying into Hare Krishna, the Moonies, becoming a hippie, anything to give them the feeling of being important, on the cutting edge, far out . . . . . Believing the UPC ‘revelation’ was also a bit far out and cutting edge (after all this doctrine was only a couple of decades into existence at this time, Pentecost was not even old enough to be an antique yet) and it was also pretty safe –at least not likely to be physically harmful. So we gave ourselves passionately to this revelation or heresy depending on your viewpoint.

Years later, I graduated secular college. One lesson I remember from there was about logic, how you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you just can’t fool ALL of the people ALL of the time. The problem with logic was that no matter how illogical something might be on the surface, our human brains seemed to be wired so that we could twist them into believing even the most ridiculous dogma –for those of you who took humanities, think Jar Boy.

So, how does one decide what to believe?? My UPC pastor at the time said he could ‘argue all sides of almost any issue’. Today his UPC church has ‘levels of salvation.’

My then teenage son lamented “why doesn’t God just give us a specific list of rules?” My answer at the time was that God wanted us to have the pleasure of working it out using his instruction book, the Bible. I still think that is not too bad of an answer.

So if the plan of salvation is so simple that “a wayfaring man, though a fool need not err therein” why do we have a gazillion books and thousands of religions to explain it?? If God knows the ending from the beginning, why did he start with the LAW?? Why didn’t he just start with Christ and be done with it and not put humanity through all this angst?? Why did He need the OT (Old Testament)??

My thoughts:

The plan of salvation is truly very simple –Christ died as an atonement for man and anyone who believes has hope of salvation. So why is that so hard? That is so hard because human beings want to somehow be in charge, in the know, important, make up the rules, be in charge of the rules, etc. We can take any number of very simple tasks and write a thousand page manual.

So why did God make us this way? He could have made us more simple, more obedient, less questioning, less thoughtful. Well, that is an easy one — we are made in the image of God and even we understand the value of love that is not coerced, not paid for, not robotic. So God made us complicated beings for His pleasure – hey, He’s God, I have no problem with that.

Now back to the original question – why didn’t he just give us Christ from the beginning and save us all the OT angst? Why did He need the OT?

He didn’t need the OT, we did!

Because we would not have understood the value of Christ without what preceded Him. We have to have the LAW, the failures, the successes, the hopes, the dreams, the prophets, the kings, the priest, the plans, the fanfare to even begin to comprehend the value of the simplicity of a salvation so simple that even a “wayfaring man, though a fool need not err therein”.

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