Subject: Subscription to Newsletter
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 21:25:33 -0800
From: P.W. <address withheld>
To: ssimpson@netpci.com
I received your e-mail via Ed & Stef. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
A year ago I left my church(AOG) because of this counterfiet revival. I had been attending there for fourteen years, and it was very hard to leave, as it had been a part of my life for so long. I was the Children's Church Superintendent and loved teaching the children. For two years I sat on the fence watching the church that I loved becoming more and more, a circus act. I tried to accept the weird manifestations, listening to my Pastor telling us to get more, more, more. I started to feel pretty lonely at the church services, refusing to go to the front to get filled with more of the Spirit. Friends started to ask why I wasn't going out to the front, I just told them I did'nt feel I needed to. At that time I still wasn't sure wether what was happening was of God, or not. I felt like a second class Christian, a fraud, as I couldn't rejoice at what my friends where calling a great move of God. How could my spirit rejoice in services where the Word of God was hardly preached, when a woman runs away from the Pastor, on all fours, shouting no more, no more, and the pastor chasing her saying give her more Lord, give her more. Where people scream as if demon possessed, while others are clucking, and flapping like chickens, people standing in trances, for hours, not hearing one word preached, etc....
As Christians, in my experience, we are to accepting of what our Pastors/Leaders say. I lesson I had to learn the hard way. I forsook,the warnings of God, that He placed in His Word and listened to man instead.
We were told, by the Pastor, to just accept things, but the Word of God says we must test the spirits. There are so many contradictions of God's Word in this counterfiet revival. We as Christians have no excuse. God has given us His Word and His Holy Spirit, it is up to us to put on the full armor of God.
Just prior to leaving the church, friends of mine who had left their fellowship, because of the movement, showed my parents and my husband and I, a video which totally opened our eyes to this deception. That was when we decided to get off the fence and do something about it. We could not continue to live a lie.
Our Pastor was in the process of leaving our church to Pastor another church, so we decided to wait and speak to our New Pastor about what we felt.
My parents got to speak to him first. When dad told him that he did'nt believe this move was from God and the reason why he felt like this, the Pastor become extremely angry. He started personalizing his attack, saying what did my father ever do for the kingdom of God (this was from a Pastor who had known dad less than two weeks). (By the way dad was one of the people who established our local assembly, and who has led a lot of people to the Lord.)
He than, after some more nasty remarks, told dad & mum to leave the church. To go to a "dead" church, as he put it, and not to make contact with anyone from our Assembly. All this from a man who is suppose to nurture God's flock.
This in itself shows me there is no balance when it comes to this movement.
I had arrived at the tail end of all this, I could hear the shouting as I got out of my car. The Pastor's wife was coming out of the door, and I wondered what was going on. As the Pastor come out the door he saw me and come up to me and warned me not to listen to my father, as my father would lead me astray, he then walked off to his car.
Mum and dad never returned to the church, they started attending a Spirit filled Baptist church. Because my husband who was away at the time, asked me to stay till he came back, I stayed on another two weeks, than rang my husband saying that I could not stay till he got back as thing were just to far gone.
The sermons preached were just brainwashing. We were told not to watch or read anything that was against the Revival. We were told that God was cleaning out the church of people who had the "Goliath" spirit in them. We were told that even the people sitting next to us could be the enemy. That even the sweet lady who you've known for years and who'se been in ministry and everyone likes her. She could be an enemy of God. This type of brainwashing went on for the time I was there, and I know that this has continued since I have left the church.
We now attend the same church as my parents attend. The pastor there is against this counterfeit revival. Some of our brothers and sisters in Christ have also left the church. We are still witnessing to some in our old Assembly. Last month another family we have been feeding information to, left this counterfeit revival. Praise God.
So while the door is still open we will continue to feed information to people deceived. If there is a possibility of plucking even one more person, out of this deception it will be worth it.
Yours in Christ
P.W.
