Being right

[guest]

I'm perplexed at the extent people go to when they think they are right.
Why are people in Christian Fellowship willing to sacrifice everything such as: relationship with family, friends, happiness, finances, independent thought, experiencing beauty, career, and anything else normal people see as important, all because they think their doctrine is right.
Its not difficult to disprove any doctrine from CF all you need to do is hold up any passage from scripture and it comes tumbling down. But there is such an arrogance that their's is the complete and only source of truth.

Here's some food for thought if the end of the world is upon us don't you think your time would be better spent sharing the good news rather than building all these decadent buildings that will just be destroyed in the next decade anyway?
Or humor me do a thought experiment and just consider what if Vic is wrong? (Shock Horror).

Surprise surprise arrogance is not a fruit of the spirit. And in fact the wider human race do not think we'll of arrogance. There is so much to experience if you can only open yourself to the possibility that you don't have all the answers.
So my warning is this. Christian Fellowship will fall just like every other cult and you will be broken. Maybe you should start investing in relationship again because when you realise you have wasted your life, resources and money serving a deluded mad man I guarantee you you will fall into a very very dark place

[Faith Hopegood]

Dear Guest,

Thankyou for your post. I too was thinking of this in the past weeks. This type of thinking, attitude, position that you describe of the Christian Fellowship, can pop up, and does pop up in any church or organisation (politics comes to mind).

Looking at it with spiritual eyes, I think the situation can summarised as follows:
1. a spirit of Pride
2. a Religious spirit
3. a spirit of Legalism.

As soon as any church group starts saying “we have the word”, “we have a superior word”, “we have a special revealed word that is only revealed to us” etc they have immediately fallen into 1 and 2 above. They have walked away from humility and humbleness. And then when they start enforcing their word/way on others and rolling out the punitive punishments, threats and repercussions for those who dare to disagree or take a step back to look at the wider picture, the spirit of Legalism is then present.

Remember the words in Ephesians 6 where Christians are urged to daily put on the armour of God

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood [contending only with physical opponents], but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this [present] darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) places.”
‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭6‬:‭12‬ ‭AMP‬‬

These three types of negative spiritual behaviour are evident when any group (particularly the Christian Fellowship, Exclusive Brethren, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons etc) starts negatively talking about other Christians with the purpose of elevating or justifying themselves. Even a person who is very nice to your face but is condescending, looks down on others, puts other Christians down with their words or elevates themselves, has fallen into this trap. There are many “nice” people in the ranks of the Christian Fellowship but they will just as quickly tell you that you will “lose your salvation” or “your salvation is in doubt” or as Vic Hall said last week “your sanctification is not current” if you leave the CF and go else where.

Anyway, to summarise, always use that scripture in Ephesians to sit back and evaluate what is being said by those in positions of power within a group to see what “spirit” is at work within the group. As soon as you see the following three underlying actions present, you know it is not from God - domination, intimidation, manipulation. If the words of a leader is trying to dominate, intimidate or manipulate you, then that leader is not Godly.

In a negative case, it will be legalism, pride and religious. Even a “non-denomination” “we are just Christians” can be religious! How many times do I think back on how “nice” people in the CF used to speak with such pride and conceit about how good they were and how good their present word was and how much better they were compared to those other poor “un-illuminated” christians who just read the bible in those other churches who have a lesser light.

[guest]

Long, rambling post warning!!

I agree that this kind of superiority complex exists on a sliding scale across many churches. After all, people decide to go to one church and not another for a reason. If we are to display the fruit of the spirit, we will be humble in our disposition, always reflecting on our actions and attitudes and striving to be more Christ-like. This journey of humility is one we all share as fellow believers, regardless of whether you’re at xCF or some other denomination.

In the case of CF, I think there’s an extra element (or maybe a few) that cloud the true gospel message. Over the past 10-20 years, there has increasingly been an unhealthy focus on worshipping the messenger rather than God. Or, it’s implied (at a minimum, culturally) that if you worship the messenger, you worship God. You only have to go through the lyrics of the CF songs to realise how much the focus is on “receiving the word of the messenger”. Our worship is worship to God, and within CF teaching material, songs and general conversation, there is an unhealthy focus on the messenger. I believe this focus is robbing the gospel of its power.

As Christians, we need to receive the messenger’s word. Absolutely. 1 Thess 2:13 speaks about Paul’s praise for the Thessalonians, who received the words of men as the word of God. But we must be careful about what we take from this verse. It CANNOT mean that every leader, or person who leads, has the word of God because they say so or because they have a particular charisma — church history tells us this! But the CF message constantly dances around this theme, sometimes saying it directly and sometimes alluding to it.

It’s also important to understand the setting of 1 Thess 2:13. It is part of a letter from a specific person to a particular group of people about a specific set of issues at a specific time and cultural setting. We don’t know all the details and background of that letter. While the focus in CF seems to be the messenger, we know for sure that the primary focus of 1 Thess is about the message, not the messenger!

An unhealthy focus on the messenger is robbing the gospel message of its power. Want to know why CF is shrinking? Because the true gospel is so clouded by the ‘messenger message’ that the gospel is hardly recognisable and rarely shared.

But rather than just pointing fingers at others, I should take a good look at myself. Since leaving CF, I’ve had to go back and ensure I know the gospel. I prayed about it earnestly, and God answered. How did God respond? Over the past few months, God has put people right in front of me who directly asked me what it means to be a Jesus follower. There’s nothing like on-the-job training. Thank you Jesus! Did God want me to take them to an agape meal? No. Did God want me first to understand the seven volumes of the “Steps of Salvation”? PLEASE NO!

Jesus wanted me to learn how to gently and humbly tell these people about God’s love for them. Despite our sins and fallen nature, we are made right with God ONLY because of what Jesus did for us. He wanted me to explain what verses like Jn 3:16, Rom 10:9-10, Eph 2:8-9, Acts 4:12, Titus 3:5, 2 Cor 5:17 (and many more) mean for us here today. I also know that I can only show love to people because He first loved me. Praise God, I’ve seen four people give their life to Jesus! It has been pivotal for me because I had never seen that once in 20+ years of BCF attendance. When you see people believe, and their lives completely change instantly, that’s the gospel!

When I look back at my time at BCF, I can only conclude that the ‘messenger’ doctrine has robbed the gospel of its power. And as the OP has pointed out, the gospel has been replaced with ‘Being Right’.

To the OP, thank you for the ‘food for thought’, and sorry for such a long, rambling post…

[Boundary Rider]

Reposted from

Well spotted Demelza.

I have been monitoring the descent of "Restoring my Soul" over the past months into blatant proseletyzing of Vic's latest twists of truth by the brown-nosing accolytes who write it down for him.

What is now evident is that they have gone back to an earlier and more malicious form of "Unto Perfection" (aka as Sinless Perfection) **** by saying that nothing in your life is good enough for Jesus unless it conformswith the "Word of the Messengers" from the MESSENGER IN CHIEF, GOD'S APOSTLE, VICTOR JOHN HALL.

What we now have is blatant heresy from the first Capital letter to the last full stop of these so-called " daily devotional" messages

**** "Unto Perfection" of the 1990s was put to the flames by Vic two or so years ago. I have a copy of everything written before Vic's version of Hitler's 'burning of the books (1933)"

It would be useful to have a look at this Streetcar post of May 2017 to get a sense of the changes over the last 7 years.

Here it is : --- http://www.streetcar.org.au/viewtopic.php?t=63

BR