Category: speaking in tongues | Page 10

Broken Bones & Whiplash In Church

This is another ‘random memory’ that something made me think about today.

It’s often preached in UPC (United Pentecostal Church) churches that when it comes to “shouting” or “dancing in the spirit”, no one will ever EVER get hurt unless the person doing the shouting is faking. From what I’ve seen, this is just not the case.

The main incident happened when I was around 10 or 11. My great Aunt was the one doing the ‘shouting’. She was being prayed for up front, speaking in tongues, and started shouting. She bumped into the altar and it turned over and landed on the foot of an elderly lady who was standing up front praying and it broke her foot.

The reaction of the entire church was pretty ugly. They told my Aunt that she was faking, and she was shunned and verbally abused for several months after that. My reaction was “WHAT JUST HAPPENED????” I was soooo confused. The thing is, I KNOW my Aunt, and I KNOW that she would never fake anything.

I don’t really know what my beliefs are on shouting and dancing, I don’t know if its of God, or if its a product of emotional frenzy, but either way, I know that my Aunt was not doing something fake just to appear ‘spiritual’. Whether what she was doing was of God or a product of something else, she truly believed it was of God and felt ‘something’ or she wouldn’t have been doing it.

Almost 20 years later, I still have no idea what to think about this particular instance. The lady with the broken foot never blamed my Aunt, said that she believed my Aunt was “in the spirit” and that its possible for something like this to happen due to ‘human imperfections’. I don’t know…

My other two memories involve (surprise surprise) my Mom. One thing that happened was in the same church. My Mom was “running the aisles” and she started grabbing people’s hands and pulling them out to run the aisles with her. One lady whose hand she grabbed got halfway around the church and then fell in the floor. People ignored her for quite awhile thinking she was “slain in the spirit”, and then someone noticed she was calling for help. I can’t remember exactly which bone it was, but a bone in her lower body had broke and she couldn’t stand up. Paramedics were called and she was taken to the hospital. The church was VERY angry with my Mom for pulling her out to run the aisles with her, even though this was a common practice.

It turned out that this lady had bone cancer, and she didn’t know it yet. After they patched this bone up, other bones kept breaking every time she walked and she died around a year later.

Another thing was several years later, at a different church, my Mom was again running the aisles and “dancing in the spirit”. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out to run and dance with her. I had no interest in this, but she had hold of my hand so tight I couldn’t easily let go. I tried to just move unobtrusively with her, but her dancing was so exuberant she was jerking me around all over the place. For about two weeks I had whiplash symptoms.

Most Pentecostal churches would censure anyone who tried to ‘force’ someone else to “dance in the spirit” or run the aisles, because they teach that this is a spontaneous reaction induced by the Holy Ghost alone. Being ‘forced’ to do it by someone else would basically be considered faking. But there are also some who not only condone this, but encourage it. I’ve seen this more among ultra-conservative Apostolics rather than UPC.

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An Atheist “Converts” People to God

Years back, I came across two videos on YouTube that show an atheist hypnotist in action, “converting” people to a belief in God based on what they feel and experience at his gathering. It is in two parts. If you watch, be sure to watch them in order.

The first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIGmAzCqFY

The second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm9cFrnrR7Q

I am sharing these as some food for thought. Many, especially those from Pentecostal type churches, have come to accept whatever happens in a church service as being from God. If it happens at church, it must be sanctioned and orchestrated by God. That simply is untrue. We are told to try the spirits and to use discernment.

These videos are a good example of how people can be manipulated (in this instance through hypnosis or the power of suggestion) and then believe what they experienced was from God, when in fact it was not. There’s a lot that happens in some church gatherings that is far from being of God, yet is readily accepted as such.

If Derren can do this, and it obviously isn’t God touching these people, then we need to take care in not blindly accepting anything that happens in a church gathering. Don’t allow experiences to become your focus and govern your spirituality. Experiences can and do mislead people, so be discerning.

For those that simply dismiss this thought, perhaps you would consider a real-life example that happened in a church from Washington state that had several satellite churches in the USA and abroad. Membership in part consisted of many professionals such as lawyers, dentists, chiropractors, businessmen, and doctors. Community Chapel was a type of Oneness Pentecostal church, but different from what the United Pentecostal Church and similar groups teach.

They appear to have started out well and had a Bible college. They began focusing on experiences, which the pastor, Donald Barnett, claimed would bring them closer to Jesus. Those became more and more extreme and eventually very harmful, causing a great many marriages to end in divorce and friendships to dissolve. People were disfellowshipped. There were suicides. One person who was there shared that many experienced “horrific emotional upheaval”.

They sang ‘in the Spirit’ and focused on demons and deliverance. They started dancing together. This eventually led to what was termed as ‘spiritual connections’ and gazing into each others’ eyes to see Jesus. That escalated into fornication and adultery. The church scandal made headlines, it split and eventually folded. What happened there was by no means sanctioned and orchestrated by God as it left devastation in its wake.

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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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Finding God in Spite of Men

My dad became the co-pastor of the church my grandfather pastored, and it was here that I spent the rest of my childhood. It is my understanding that they had the agreement all along that this would be the way that my dad would take over the church when my grandfather wanted to retire. This was to make sure there was no opening for the district to try to put in a pastor or influence the members.

It was during this time that I received the Holy Ghost, speaking in other tongues. I was eight years old, and had been “seeking” for a couple of years. The weekend before this happened, another little girl in the church had received the Holy Ghost, speaking in other tongues at a youth rally. I figured if she could do that, I could probably get it too. For me, there was nothing negative about this experience. It was wonderful in every way!

A few months before I had asked to be baptized, but my parents talked me out of it because they felt like I was just doing it because my friends were doing it. However, after that experience, I was allowed to be baptized. My grandfather baptized me in the name of Jesus. I know that I felt wonderful after being baptized!

However, even though we were little children, we were expected to pray for people in the altar, pray a full 30 minutes before church each service, and live “good holy lives.” It seems that before this point, I was not aware of the stipulations and rules about performance. After I received the Holy Ghost and was baptized, that burden begin to get heavier and heavier, as I slowly became aware of all the things “God expected” of me.

I remember one night during a very emotional service, my friend and I were falling out in the floor and rolling back-and-forth, because we had heard about the “old days” where people were “holy rollers.” Everyone was always “wanting to go back to the old paths in the old days.” I guess in our little minds we felt this was very spiritual. I remember one night during this time my dad “shouted”, which he rarely did, but when he was dancing, he turned over one of the pews on which a little boy was asleep. The child was not hurt, but did get dumped unceremoniously into the floor.

I remember one lady had difficulty giving up her cigarettes, even after being baptized and speaking in tongues. Several members of the church, including my parents, (which meant I was there too) stayed and prayed with her for hours, trying to help her “get the victory” over those cigarettes.

During those days, it was more common to have someone come to church who was “demon possessed“. When this would happen, and they would be trying to rebuke the devil out of this person, all of us children were sent into another room, presumably so the devil wouldn’t come out on us.

Very loud worship was encouraged, and if it was a really good service with a “real move of God,” people were usually dancing, having a “victory march”, “shouting”, or someone got the Holy Ghost. It happened a lot during that time.

I recall my dad getting frustrated with my grandmother, because during the long preaching, she would draw pictures for us on a tablet of paper and let us copy them. Once, my dad called her name out from the pulpit to rebuke her for drawing for us. It was not uncommon for him to call out certain children or teenagers who were not behaving during his preaching. Embarrassment seemed to be something he felt was effective for dealing with these kinds of problems.

As a shy child, I lived in fear of being called out in this way. It was very mortifying for me to have attention drawn to me negatively. I was very sensitive as a child, and a simple rebuke in private could bring me to tears. These public humiliations were a nightmare for me, and I did my best to avoid them at all costs.

Eventually my grandfather handed the church over to my father. He and my grandmother moved to another city to retire, and attended the church of my uncle, who was not United Pentecostal, but independent Oneness Pentecostal.

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UPC from a Child’s Perspective

My earliest memories were of my mom, dad, and maternal grandparents, who were apparently helping my father build a church in a town that did not have a United Pentecostal church. I can remember my preacher Grandpa working on the building and my grandmother taking me out to see him on the scaffolding. I recall my mother reading me Bible stories, and some visiting preacher teasing me about my imaginary friends. I often played in my dad’s workplace, as he could not provide for the family without working a secular job.

When I look back at the pictures of that time, I see a happy little girl with curly blond hair and the prettiest dresses. The pictures nor the memories of that time reveal anything to me other than being loved and cared for. I wonder if my parents were perhaps different then. I heard them tell stories of “winning a family to God” only to find out that the man was beating his wife, so my dad addressed that with him and he eventually stopped. These are the stories I was told.

Eventually, we left there and went to another town where my dad took the pastorate of a church. I was preschool age, but I do remember him telling my mother about going to the home of one of the parishioners uninvited, at an unexpected moment because he felt the man was being deceptive about his lifestyle. He “caught” the man watching TV, which was strictly prohibited by the UPC at that time, and he confronted the man about it. The man made up lie after lie as an excuse to hide this “sin”.

There was a woman in that church who suffered from bulimia. I remember the judgement and disgust with which she was discussed, with never any hint that this could be a serious illness. As a mental health provider, I now cringe at what she must have suffered in addition to the bulimia and its root causes. Religion without compassion can be very hard on people with mental health issues.

By that time I had an infant sibling. I remember church people getting mad at my parents for taking my sister out to spank her during church for things like fussing during church or other such age appropriate things. I remember being spanked with a “skinny belt” for asking one parent if I could go home with a friend and when that parent said no, asking the other parent.

My friends in the church had me over to their house one day in December and their mother said, in front of me, that there was no difference in a Christmas tree and the Christmas lights my mother had in our home. I was about five and I can still feel how sad I was when I told mom what these people had said, only to watch in horror as she took down all of the Christmas decorations in order not to “confuse and offend” church people who were being taught it was a “sin” to put up their Christmas trees.

My dad was often joking and fun during that time with us, and with his preacher friends. I often heard them sit around the table and argue about scriptures, and then in the next breath tell racial jokes that are appalling to me now.

During that time, I first became aware that I was “lost” because I didn’t have the Holy Ghost. I went down to the altar and cried, not understanding everything yet. I told my family I was now a Christian and had the Holy Ghost because I went to the altar and prayed. They explained to me that I had to “speak in another language” in order to get the Holy Ghost. My sister by this time was getting old enough to play church with me. We were strictly forbidden to ever play like we were “getting the Holy Ghost” by jabbering nonsense. Instead, we would close our mouths tight and jump around to show that we were “getting the Holy Ghost” in order to not play with sacred things. I have a distinct memory of a teen who was “seeking” the Holy Ghost and fell out on the floor with people all around her. I was fascinated by watching her mouth upside down as she was speaking in tongues.

I was constantly watching my baby sister with a stuffed animal in church and feeling so jealous because I wasn’t allowed to play. I would secretly pretend my Bible was a baby and I was it’s mother, but if I moved it around too much I’d get in trouble so I had to be careful.

Eventually there was some kind of church problems of which I’m still not clear on all the details, but my dad resigned that church and bought a trailer to evangelize. They were already homeschooling me, so they would continue to do so as we traveled around the United States. I’ve heard my parents recount often the story of how they “dusted their shoes off” out the window of the vehicle as they left that town. My dad says God showed him there would never be a thriving church in that town because of the rebellion in the hearts of those people.

I was just a little girl. I don’t know the ins and outs, or if the people were truly rebellious. I can only share what I remember and have heard from that time.

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