I got back from Trout Lake on Saturday at 5 p.m. and had a full day on Sunday with church meetings and visiting friends. So here I am, just getting my computer set back up in my office and taking care of emails, business duties, and of course this web site.
Saturday’s post was incomplete and I will be working on it and will have it done by the end of the day. I will be writing an article to post for today on a “Challenge Response Email Spam Filtering Solution” and that should be done by 6 p.m.
There are a number of articles I have a burden to write and here are a few of the titles. I am not sure when these will all get done, but you should expect to see a number of them shortly. As the articles are written I will link the titles listed below to the article so you click through and view them.
1. Spiritual Fruit — Listing all the different Fruits of the Spirit (Mat 5:3-9, 1Cor 13:4-7, 2Cor 7:11, Gal 5:22-23, Eph 4:2-3, Eph 5:9, Phil 4:8, Col 3:12-15, 1Tim 6:11-12, 2Tim 2:22, 2Pet 1:5-7) and giving a short definition for each one.
2. Meditation — I am planning to take the paragraph on Meditation from my How To Be More Christ Like and expand on it and add some pictures from the book on “The Passion”.
3. Godly Sorrow vs. Worldly Sorrow — The difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.
4. Obedience — A look at the spirit of disobedience that works in the children of disobedience.
5. Holy Spirit or Your Minister — I will be going over the practice of the COGR ministry where they tell their members that they need to get their guidance from the ministry and not from the Holy Spirit. They hold that God speaks through them to the members, not directly to the members. I am working on getting a number of testimonies from ex-GOGR people that have been told this by difference COGR ministers to verify this position. To me this explains the practice of their ministers and members being loose with the truth. To some degree the ministers replace the Holy Spirit in the member’s lives and hence if the ministry says it is okay then it must be okay.
6. The COGR Package — This will be a list of things that prospective members should be aware of that is part of the package of becoming part of the Restoration. Among the long list of things people are buying into are the following:
- You will be required to accept all doctrines that the COGR currently teach and any new teachings that they come up with in the future (getting married to the church is 2008’s most amazing new teaching)
- You will need to be willing to, at some point in the future, stop taking all medicine – even if it causes you to die (they give new members some time to come around on this one, but if you don’t accept it you will be sidelined and considered unspiritual and could be put out)
- If at any point you opt to leave the Restoration, they will consider you unsaved and they will try to keep your spouse and children (when I was put out for objecting to unscriptural practices my wife won’t take part in family devotions and I was promptly told by my wife that I was not saved)
And so on…
7. Children’s Conduct in the Home — This article will be points for children and young people that are living for the Lord. It deals with issues like not being an offense towards your siblings; not arguing with your parents when they are correcting you; doing to our siblings like we would want them to do to us; not striving with your siblings; preferring one another; and a list of other things.
8. Correction — Dealing with not bringing up the person’s faults that is correcting you and also not correcting others based on something you have been told.
–Part one has been completed: Points on Giving Correction.
–Part two has been completed: Points on Receiving Correction.
9. OTVC — I plan on rewriting the One True Visible Church (OTVC) Teaching article so that it is more complete.
10. Godly Sorrow and Repentance — Some people hold that godly sorrow and repentance are not necessary to be converted, but all you have to do is believe. This is an unbiblical teaching that is referred to as Easy-Believism.
11. True Faith Produces Works — More to do with Easy-Believism and the Sin-You-Must teaching.
12. Our Desire For The Word of God — Addresses the lack of desire for the Word of God in believers’ lives.
13. Books You Need To Have in Your Library — A list of study books that you should have.
14. How to Study The Bible — A number of different methods of studying your Bible.
15. List of Good Devotional Books — Just like it says, a list of good devotional books.
16. Accountability — The importance of being a part of a congregation and being accountable to spiritual Christians. Also I will deal with the benefit of the Shame Factor of being a part of a congregation.
17. Praise the Church, Your Minister, or God — Examines the practice of members praising the GOGR movement and their ministers for being saved. They do this both in meeting testimonies and written testimonies in the Gospel Trumpet and the children’s Shinning Light paper.
18. Your Words — Addresses the practice of kidding, exaggerating, and being loose with the truth.
19. Movement Dating — I will be writing an article on the Restoration’s position – that the Bible predicts in the book of Daniel and Revelation that the church of God would be restored in 1880 and that the Restoration movement is that restored one true visible church (OTVC). View the section I wrote in Wikipedia on the Church of God (Restoration) Dated in Prophecy and my comments in Wikipedia Talk on this subject for an idea of where I will be going with this article.
20. OTVC Survival — Sad to say, most people don’t survive leaving a OTVC sect in one piece. I have been posting on the Church of God in Christ Mennonite Ex-members Forum as Qwerty for over a year, have been monitoring the Church of God Restoration Ex-members Forum since it started and a number of other OTVC forums (JW and 2×2) intermittently. Very few people get out of an OTVC in one piece. People that are put out or leave are most of the time bitter and disillusioned. Some cast off their faith, and others don’t even believe in God anymore.
I will be drawing from my own personal experience of how I got out in one piece without any harm and will provide tips and information on how to survive being put out of an OTVC. I am also considering posting Marc Villeneuve’s testimony of his experience with the Holdeman group (Marc got out in one piece and I know him well enough that I feel like he would provide a fair testimony of what really happened).
Note: The content from both forums I provided links to above should be taken with a grain of salt. In my view much of the information on the COGR Forum is exaggerated and twisted and on the COGCM Forum I feel like – in at least a number of cases – the Holdeman group is not portrayed fairly.
21. Spiritual Death — Looking at what spiritual death is and what causes it.
22. Promise of the Holy Spirit — What the promise of the Holy Spirit is and the change it will make in the Christians life.
–Part one shows that the Promise of the Holy Spirit is for Christians today.
–Part two shows What the Promise of the Holy Spirit Does.
23. Unconditional Eternal Security — I will be doing a series of articles on this subject. Each article will take a different vein of Biblical truth that stands against this error.
–Part one has been completed: Considering Eternal Security & the if Scriptures
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