Hi IFellaway

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Ifellaway

Would any member openly say that they had depression for instance? Let's be clear...anything mental is surely "demonic" in nature, if you subscribe to smc learning..

I imagine a lot of SMC folk - like other evangelicals - particularly pentecostals, have a copy of Rick Warrens mega-best selling book "Purpose Driven Life". Pentecostals and in particular SMC are only too happy to wheel out their testimonies of such and such a person who was down on his luck, living a miserable life - be it alcoholism , drug addiction, gambling, depression or some other mental illness. Particularly if what turned turned them around ( more often than not - temporarily ) was "getting saved and being filled with the holy ghost".

But once "saved" things like depression still happen. And the fact that even a fine, kind, god-fearing son of mr Evangelical hero - Rick Warren - can still end up committing suicide on account of depression, it shows what an almighty sham the whole "god always answers your filled-with-the-holy-spirit-prayers" nonsense is. Was Rick Warrens son - after all the prayers were said, hands laid - still so possessed by the devil he couldn't resist those demons ? If so it just makes mockery of the claims christians make for their "Holy Spirit Baptising" god. Not to mention standard evangelical doctrine !

But - hey - "pentecostal god" works in mysterious ways. Time to go to another tent-revival meeting and forget about all these epic failures of prayer.

The pulpit loudly shouts out one thing. And life after the altar-call shouts quite another.

Pentecostal preachers like to loudly blare out their "God and the Holy Spirit will make your life better" - "turn it around". But they omit the small-print.

And we all know - there is pages and pages of evangelical-pentecostal excuse-making "small-print". The kind of thing said extremely quickly at the end of any kind of USA advert - where the seller could get potentially sued. Oh boy - if only pentecostal faith healer types COULD get sued for their sheer nonsense. Sheesh !

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Ifellaway
I Incidentally I have never come across this kind of thing among any ministers Pentecostal or other, though I do not deny that it happens. "

I think its more likely to be happening in the pentecostal churches in the African communities over here ( and in Africa itself ) where the worst kind of pentecostalism and blind faith in their wacky leaders is going on.

The only other recent examples of congregants being told specifically not to take any medication or medical care after prayer, to my knowledge - has occurred in a particular pentecostal sect or denomination based - I recall - in Oregon in the USA - where parents have been imprisoned for effectively causing the death of their own children because they refused medical treatment for their child. They literally left their lives in the hands of god.

But here's the thing. There is nothing inherently non-biblical about this. What could demonstrate more faith than obeying your religious leaders command to get out of the boat and walk on water ?. It is an act of faith that in the ordinary world would potentially kill you !.

Dont recall any example of Jesus telling someone to stop taking medical care. But If jesus had declared "you are healed" only for the leper to have gone back to his doctor afterwards one more time for medication,
how would that have looked in the scriptures ? as a fine example of faith by the leper ? Dont think so.



Edited 12 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2013 01:25AM by Clive.

Ok maybe I am missing something here but over 70 pages and nearly two years of messages are missing for me. I s this the same for anyone else? The last message I can access is on page 32 on September 3rd 2011

It appears that two years of the message board records may have been lost due to errors made by the system administrator at the ISP.

Hi Moderator

I want to say that the fact that we have been able to have this discussion on this forum has been a very positive and important thing for many of those involved and we appreciate he fact that the RickRoss organisation has enabled that to happen

2 years of the message board records on the discussion about Struthers Memorial Church is 800 posts by about 30 different people. As you know it has been a busy thread.

Could you please clarify the situation a little more.

Is it they "may have been lost" or is that definite? Please could you provide a little more information. I think it was fair to say we may have all assumed a more rigorous backup policy than seems to have been in place. . I also notice that all the private posts prior to 2011 have vanished. I think many of the contributors are likely to be surprised that this could happen.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2013 07:11PM by Chesterk55.

This is not a solution and hopefully the RickRoss people will come up with that.

There is however a website called the Wayback Engine which is trying to archive the whole web

Fortunately for us it archived this Struthers discussion thread in January 2013 at 82 pages and 816 posts.

Not getting us back to where we were at 1100 posts but it does mean people can still read online all the contributions made up to that point.

the link is

[web.archive.org]

The system administrator at the current ISP hosting this site failed to check the backup system in place regarding this message board. The backup system was not working and this board was not backed up properly. That failure caused the problem, which occurred during the transition from culteducation.com to culteducation.com

This was a very serious mistake and the current Web development team that is now working on a new design structure for The Cult Education Institute is doing everything possible to somehow retrieve and restore the lost data.But given the profound nature of the backup failure this seems unlikely. The net result will likely be the loss of two years of posts, membership approvals and messages at this message board.

Anyone that became a member within the last two years will have to reapply and join again in order to post here.

Anyone give pre-approved status without moderation in the past two years will have to be pre-approved again.

Please feel free to retrieve and post whatever you can to reconstruct a thread that interests you.

Very sorry.

Got to say I am very disappointed here. Perhaps members who are able to retrieve posts can post them elsewhere with a more relaible system. Perhaps anyone involved with the Latigo site could see about setting up a forum there. At least we would know any future posts would be safe and two years of work would not be undone overnight

I am deeply sorry;. But the ISP/system admin. let us all down.

They failed to backup the message board properly during the transition.

We have lost some great content.

Whatever help anyone can offer to restore that material will be much appreciated.

Hi Folks

Yesterday's news was pretty devastating to me and probably a lot of other posters. Last night I had posted my idea that 2 years of work had been undone overnight. However, I think I was wrong about this. I know that I have been helped tremendously from both posting on this forum and reading the posts of others. I know that others have been helped also and there are probably numerous others who have also benefitted from the posts on this forum. This forum was probably the major catalyst to the complaint to the Scottish Charity regulator and that is still ongoing, so all is not lost.

This has not changed! This has not been undone! People have still been helped over the years and I'm sure others will continue to be helped in the future. Yeah it is disappointing that so many posts have been lost, but this still doesn't change the fact that people have been helped toovercome the ordeals they have faced and even received the courage to leave and either contiinued to serve God in another church or decided not to go to another church but had a happier life, free from the constant negative condemnation and being told God is angry with them.

Earlier this week I saw pictures and read reports of Egyptian Chrisitans gathering to pray in their burned out church. The situaution we find ourselves in kind of pails into insignificance when we consider the plight of these Egyptian Christians. Whether we are believers in God or not, I think this is a moving and inspiring image. I think that most of the posters believe in a common cause. To help those who have been hurt by Struthers and to prevent others being hurt. If these Egyptians can keep their hope and carry on, I'm sure we can.

The funny thing is I am fully expecting Struthers leaders to proclaim that this is the "vindication of the Lord." I took a look at the Struthers site this morning and read the latest "Thought for the week" by Diana and amazingly I found encouragement there regarding this situation. She posted the following verse from Hebrews

'God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. Hebrews 6:10


It's funnny how encouragement comes fromt he most unexpected places isn't it? I think ths is an encouragement for Rick Ross and the moderators on this site. People are human, mistakes are made and computer systems fail us. The fact is, they have taken responsibility for what has happened and have done their best to put things right. That is all anyone can ask. As I'm sure we all know, if Struthers leaders had acted in the same way, much of the hurt and pain could have been avoided.

At this point I would like to thank Rick Ross and the moderators for all their hard work and encourage them to carry on. God is most definitely not unjust and he most certainly will not forget the work that all of you have done for him and the many lives you have helped and continue to help. As for this forum thread regarding Struthers Memorial Church, I am convinced that it was God that started this and he will be faithful to carry it on until it has accomplished all it has set out to do.


CovLass

I collated some highlights - the most moving stories from various posters on this thread a while back. I could maybe post some of them on here in a few very large posts - just so they are there - if people want.

As for the backup error. We all make mistakes.

After all - we ARE all human ;)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2013 11:42AM by Clive.