A new honor from Bob Gray Sr

Walt said:
Well, you could show some compassion on people. It's easy to take this stance, but, knowing several people who got involved in abusive (cult-like) churches, it's not quite so easy. Many of the people involved are good, decent people, and the church is busy, doing good things... it is great to see people regularly coming to Christ and getting baptized. Who would want to be against that. It kind of just sucks one in, and you don't realize how unscriptural it is unless you receive some kind of "wake-up".
Click to expand...
Sorry, but I’ve known far too many IFB people who are into the blame shifting game. Everything bad that happens in life somehow ends up getting blamed on a church that they voluntarily chose to attend and financially support. I’ve been guilty of this mindset myself in the past, but I was a kid who didn’t have a choice in where I attended church.
 
Ransom said:
Apparently my word processor of choice (LibreOffice) will still import Works files. Which is more than you can say of an actual Microsoft product these days. Score one for open standards.
Click to expand...
I use LibreOffice from time to time. Love it!
 
DrHuk&Duck said:
Sorry, but I’ve known far too many IFB people who are into the blame shifting game. Everything bad that happens in life somehow ends up getting blamed on a church that they voluntarily chose to attend and financially support. I’ve been guilty of this mindset myself in the past, but I was a kid who didn’t have a choice in where I attended church.
Click to expand...

Well, the church is wrong to be cult-like, so it is the church and the leadership that is it fault.

But I agree that it is not exclusively the church's fault. All members should be judging what occurs by the Scriptures, not be a leader with a charismatic personality, or be "success".

I know several people who were awakened to the cult-like nature of their church... it just didn't register until God allowed some event that awakened them to the true state of things. Thinking over the people I know, most of them saw the issue when it hit their children. A few noticed the (encouraged) cult-like behavior and left.
 
Ekklesian said:
:ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:
Then, cynicism set in. I had the suspicion that no one in authority was really reading the notebooks anyway. So I started doing silly things with my notebook. Instead of writing my own thoughts from the scripture, I would write down word for word the sermon notes from Sunday. Or sometimes I would just copy a scripture into the blanks. Sometimes the thought and the application were one and the same, I would just word them differently. I even got real inventive and started doing strange alliterations using the first letter of each word to spell something. Sometimes, I even wrote things like, 'You guys really aren't reading this are you?'​
:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:

I think he and I could have been friends.
Click to expand...
Another word about their journals.

I can understand why someone might want to require that their students keep journals. They want them to develop the discipline of reading and musing on the Scriptures. It's a good habit to be into. But there is this thinking among Evangelicals, and especially among Pentecostals, that if one is guided by something other than his own thoughts and feelings, then he isn't being guided by the Spirit, and that's just bunk, and it leads to a lot of other foolish thinking.

As soon as hear someone say, "I asked the Lord what He wanted me to preach today..." it just turns me off. No, you don't have a hotline God, and no, this doesn't lend any more authority to your sermon than the accurate exposition of the Scriptures would. And yet these same folks allow the liturgy of the Roman church to suggest their subject matters at Christmas and Easter, and they welcome the suggestions of secular society to determine their topics on Mothers' Day, Fathers' Day, and Thanksgiving.

I remember a during a particular trying time years ago, that I discovered The Book of Common Prayer. The church had divided the Psalms into small, manageable segments of morning and evening prayers. Followed through with, one prays the entire book of Psalms every thirty days.

What a help that was to me! I discovered that the Psalms are actually the prayers of the Spirit of Christ offered up on my behalf. Where the Psalmist appeals to his own righteousness, that is Christ invoking his righteousness on my behalf. Where the Psalmist mourns his own sins, that is Christ taking and owning mine. There is no aspect of the human experience that is not touched upon in the Psalms.

Anyway, the point is that I've found that the church has a rich tradition from which we may freely draw, and it is very much a help to us in every way, and very much an operation of the Spirit. A liturgy is not a bad thing. I think something like requiring, or strongly suggesting, Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, or even better...the Psalter as divided in The Book of Common Prayer, would have been a better and more manageable help to an overworked student, and would have done more to develop true spirituality than the requirement of those infernal journals. I think his response, even if not in the right spirit, was the deserved one.
 
Bob Jones VI said:
After a 2 year hiatus from the FFF, what brought you back, brother?
Click to expand...

I hadn't realized it had been that long.

It's a good question; it's a fair question -- after thinking about it for a few minutes, I think there were two things.

First, a couple of years ago when I was on here regularly, there was little discussions of value: some people kept dropping in to say how great and wonderful someone (Justin Cooper?) was (and he never answered my questions of why he was great), and many of the discussions just started name-calling. This kind of led me to not feel it was worth checking here regularly... and I have many other interests that ate up my time.

Second, a little background: God has been good to, opening my eyes to the cult-like world of Hyles, Gray, Sr, and others of that ilk that my family was involved in. It was not just me; the wife & kids were unhappy as well, and we eventually left. We found a church where the people had genuine love for each other and an excellent preacher; he didn't brow-beat people: he taught truths from the Scriptures that the Holy Spirit used to work on me (and I assume on all the people). We have all slowly recovered from our time in the IFBx world. (So much for the background)

A few weeks ago, we went to a conference that brought those memories back afresh... one of the speakers used his pulpit time to castigate the people and churches there for not having the great numbers of "souls saved" as did the "great " Jack Hyles and Carl Hatch. One of his preaching sessions was, I think, ripped from "Let's Go Soul-Winning" by Hyles, and another message was all about how a Christian's ONLY fruit was another Christian, and if you weren't seeing people saved, there is something wrong with you. While I know that these teachings are fake, it did trigger memories, including the help I found here.

So I think that is why I came back.


Speaking of numbers, a friend of mine told me about a missionary his church supports. Last year, he reported over 30,000 people "saved", but his attendance changed by 5-10 people. This is not Biblical salvation. When the Holy Spirit counted the people saved at Pentecost (not men!), there were 3,000 saved, 3,000 baptized, and 3,000 that "continued steadfastly". Such "missionaries" are doing terrible harm trying to reassure 30,000 that they are saved without seeing of any change from the new birth occurs. So, yes, the crazy numbers racket is still going on.
 
Walt said:
I hadn't realized it had been that long.

It's a good question; it's a fair question -- after thinking about it for a few minutes, I think there were two things.

First, a couple of years ago when I was on here regularly, there was little discussions of value: some people kept dropping in to say how great and wonderful someone (Justin Cooper?) was (and he never answered my questions of why he was great), and many of the discussions just started name-calling. This kind of led me to not feel it was worth checking here regularly... and I have many other interests that ate up my time.

Second, a little background: God has been good to, opening my eyes to the cult-like world of Hyles, Gray, Sr, and others of that ilk that my family was involved in. It was not just me; the wife & kids were unhappy as well, and we eventually left. We found a church where the people had genuine love for each other and an excellent preacher; he didn't brow-beat people: he taught truths from the Scriptures that the Holy Spirit used to work on me (and I assume on all the people). We have all slowly recovered from our time in the IFBx world. (So much for the background)

A few weeks ago, we went to a conference that brought those memories back afresh... one of the speakers used his pulpit time to castigate the people and churches there for not having the great numbers of "souls saved" as did the "great " Jack Hyles and Carl Hatch. One of his preaching sessions was, I think, ripped from "Let's Go Soul-Winning" by Hyles, and another message was all about how a Christian's ONLY fruit was another Christian, and if you weren't seeing people saved, there is something wrong with you. While I know that these teachings are fake, it did trigger memories, including the help I found here.

So I think that is why I came back.


Speaking of numbers, a friend of mine told me about a missionary his church supports. Last year, he reported over 30,000 people "saved", but his attendance changed by 5-10 people. This is not Biblical salvation. When the Holy Spirit counted the people saved at Pentecost (not men!), there were 3,000 saved, 3,000 baptized, and 3,000 that "continued steadfastly". Such "missionaries" are doing terrible harm trying to reassure 30,000 that they are saved without seeing of any change from the new birth occurs. So, yes, the crazy numbers racket is still going on.
Click to expand...

Brother I left IFBX 30 years ago. I left IFB 25 years ago. I still carry baggage. I was talking to my ThM Thesis Supervisor the other day and we were comparing our backgrounds and how it is hard to shake that dust off your feet, even after 25 years.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top