Free@Last, the message might be, "you are walking through a minefield, make sure you avoid the cult education forum mine"

I guess it will not be "we are in a process of change, expect to go through the sort of process everyone goes through".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2024 05:51PM by ThePetitor.

Interesting to see the link to the Cumbernauld branch morning service. I clicked on it but I couldn’t bring myself to watch. I am grateful that I am one of the lucky ones. I didn’t leave on good terms. I went through a horrific amount of trauma whilst there and later processing what had happened. But I am alive, well and free.

I have questioned myself over why I have chosen to share my story. It does seem to be giving me some closure. I’ve shared everything I feel able to. And I have taken comfort in reading others posts.

I don’t believe Struthers Memorial Church will be shut down. I don’t expect many of the congregation will choose to leave after reading all these recent posts. In a way I don’t blame them. By choosing to be part of struthers church you give up your life. This means that if you do leave, you will have nothing.

What I do hope, is that all of the experiences that have been shared on here will be read. I hope that members of struthers will consider their actions and going forwards will make smarter and kinder choices. I pray that the leadership consider their treatment of children and their church members. Personally, I would never choose to go back. I am grateful to be free. I think it’s wonderful that we have been able to come on here and share our experiences, realise we are absolutely not alone and hopefully help other individuals that are struggling.

ThePetitor Wrote:
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Quote
ThePetitor

Is it however any wonder that most who leave have a traumatic experience and suffer PTSD-like symptoms?
I mean, you can understand why people who have
been in wars suffer from PTSD. They may have seen
friends mutilated and killed, and may have been in
a situation where they did not know if they would
be alive the next day. It is no surprise that can
lead to trauma, but why would being in Struthers
do the same?

I think this may be because of the war mindset
they encourage. You are told that you are
effectively walking through a minefield, with the
possibility of stepping on a mine at any point.
They of course have a hot line to someone who
knows where all the mines are and will tell you
where to walk – three paces to the right, forward
ten paces, stop, turn left, go forward five paces,
now turn to the right. They even add stories of
other people who did not listen to them and as a
result stepped on a mine, resulting in a ruined
life. And remember, it is even worse than a mine,
because it is not just this life you are losing,
it is your calling and your eternal life.

(Oh, and if folk have not already been told this,
they will soon be told of a devastating new type of mine that the bad guys have invented, one that
is so cunning, it activates if you just look at
it. It is called the “Cult Education Forum”. It
is a particularly nasty device as it is full of
people telling the truth - which as we know is a
really dangerous thing.)

Oh, and if you do step on an invisible mine, you
will not be aware of it, but the leaders will, so
you better watch out.

Apart from being very far from what is taught in
the Bible, one of the many practical problems with
this model for how life works is that there is of
course no evidence of these invisible mines or of
their impact. There is instead clear evidence from this forum that the invisible mines spotted by the leaders are not real, and that people who
decide not to follow the leaders instructions do
not end up stepping on mines, but manage to escape
from the minefield.

Is it however any wonder that most who leave have
a traumatic experience and suffer PTSD-like
symptoms?
Is it however any wonder that most who leave have a traumatic experience and suffer PTSD-like symptoms?




I dont think in all the years I have struggled to come to terms with what happens and what folk go through in SMC anyone has never discrided it more clearer than this Thanks

Hi everyone
As usual I have greatly enjoyed reading all of your posts. I too have now been contacted by the BBC journalist and will be arranging to speak with them shortly.
I don’t think anything will be said in meetings about the BBC investigation, not yet anyway. When Alison Speirs left, not much was said in meetings but the preaching at the time covered Bible quotes such as, The Lord is my Defender. God will fight for you and defend you from attack. God will defeat the enemy in the midst. And of course, the frequently used quote about the dangers inherent in touching the Lord’s anointed. Your minefield analogy is a good one, Petitor! I’m sure the leaders will spiritualise everything and view the investigation as an attack from the devil against God’s work.

Rainbow, yes, I do remember the Radical Alternative singing group. I think it was named by Hugh Black as he saw the songs and music as a radical alternative to other Christian music and song in all other churches. Only Struthers had true, godly singing which glorified God: that was the view perpetrated by the Struthers leaders. I didn’t know, until I watched his funeral on YouTube last year, that Ian Lundie had actually set up and trained Radical Alternative. He always stood in the background playing his guitar almost unnoticed. Humble. He was formerly a singer with the Fisher Folk music-group in Millport before getting involved with Struthers, after meeting Alison Speirs when she was living in Millport and holding house-meetings there.

Rainbow, I also remember the dancing in the spirit and that only Elaine and Rhian were allowed to engage in it at the front, under the instruction of Mary Black. Rhian was seen as special because of her fine, soprano singing voice. I do remember also when SMC tried to copy the Pensacola revival meetings hoping that this would bring revival to Scotland. They had Rhian up singing solo the same song in the same way as the Pensacola girl, Charity, sang, as people were called out to get prayer for salvation or healing. Of course, it didn’t work in SMC. Why copy another church and try to engineer your own revival? They’re supposed to believe that the Holy Spirit should be free to move as God wishes.

Daisy69, I’m not sure I agree with you that the translation/interpretation of tongues was rehearsed. I believe it’s a genuine gift of the Spirit as outlined in 1st Corinthians chapter 14. However, what I didn’t like in Struthers was that the operation of the gift was very controlled by the leaders and if they didn’t want someone to speak out, or if it wasn’t who they had in mind to speak out, they would try to curtail it by starting to sing a song or increasing the volume of the tongues in the meeting, so that the person’s voice was drowned out.
In addition, the interpreted messages often sounded similar and had similar content and similar words in them, in much the same way as The Petitor and others were discussing the “prayer voice” of folk in Struthers. How nearly everyone sounds the same, prays in a similar way and has that “special” tone of voice. I have never heard anything like that in any other church that I’ve been to. People in other churches pray using their own unique voice.
Maybe that’s why it sounds to you as if it’s rehearsed, Daisy69. It’s a bit creepy that they all sound the same. Something not right about it.

Thanks Rensil,

As always, you bring a lot of insight and wisdom to these pages.

I was particularly interested in the debate about speaking in tongues, because that is of course motioned in the Bible. On the surface, that makes it seems like what Struthers does is ok but, as you point out, it is not that simple, because how they use that practice is far from Biblical.

One note I should add here. I have said this before, but it is perhaps worth mentioning again. When I quote the Bible or what other churches do, I am not trying to convince everyone the Christianity is correct. The reason I quote the Bible is not because of what I believe, it is because that is what THEY say they believe, so that is the standard to which they should be holding themselves.

(For the more theologically-minded, it will not come as a surprise they even this technique is endorsed in the Bible. The book of Jude quotes two books that are not in the Scriptures – the book of Enoch and the Apocryphon of Jannes and Jambres. Why does Jude do this? He knows they are not in the cannon of scripture. The answer is that he does it because these were the texts the recipients were using to justify some dodgy behaviour. So, he uses their own texts against them, holding them to account against the standards THEY claim are authoritative.)

That is what I try to do, to hold them to account against the standards they claim are authoritative.

So, to get back to the topic in hand:

Is speaking in tongues mention in the Bible? Yes it is.
Is “deliverance” mentioned in the Bible? Yes it is.
Is holiness mentioned in the Bible? Yes it is.
Is obeying authority mentioned in the Bible? Yes it is.

Does the way Struthers practice these things relate to what the Bible says about them? No, nowhere near.

And that is the problem. They take something that is mentioned in the Bible and say, “look, it says it in the Bible, what we do must be right”.

They do not however examine their own practice to see if it is Biblical, and they quash all debate about theology and practice, not allowing others to point out any flaws, all because they are ”anointed” (oops – another word that they use in ways it is never used in Scripture).

In an earlier post, I noted a few ways in which Struthers practice differed from what the Bible says about deliverance. In the post above, Rensil points out a number of problems with the way they practice speaking in tongues. There have been many posts on the forum about how Stuthers pushes people into a totally un-Biblical lifestyle they call holiness, but is far from the holiness described in the bible.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Just because some word or concept is mentioned in the Bible, and Struthers use the same word that does NOT mean they are the same thing. A ball is used in table-tennis, tennis, rugby, football and other sports. That does not mean they are the same thing. You cannot just bring a rugby ball and play tennis with it, you have to make sure the ball meets the specs.

The same is true of all the ideas mentioned above. To be Biblical practice it er… bit of a leap here… has to comply with what the Bible says. Is that really a surprise?

So, when Struthers say there is a deliverance ministry, that is using the same word as the Bible uses, but that is about as far as it goes. There really is very little in common between the biblical approach and the Stuthers approach.

Just one further bit of analysis in passing – how many people in Struthers have received deliverance ministry – 20%, 50%, 80%? Let’s take the lowest of these - 20%. Now it may be that Struthers people are somehow worse than other folks, so there are twice as many of them that need deliverance than the people not in Struthers. Even with these conservative estimates, it looks like 10% of the general population- that is 800,000,000 people on this planet, are in need of deliverance worldwide.

So 800 million people need this ministry, God has given it to the leaders of Struthers so they can... what? Deliver the same people over and over again? resulting in...?

I will not go on further, but it is the same when they talk about holiness or obeying authority or anointing. They are simply not using the word or concept the way the Bible does.

What folks in Stuthers should be doing at this time is responding in line with verses like:

Quote
Acts 17v11
Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

Most members are probably not there as they are just entering the disbelief and anger part of the change curve. Different people react at different speeds though, so some will be getting there already, and others will follow later.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2024 05:06PM by ThePetitor.

If you're deluded enough to believe that you are 'anointed' and that your job is tell others how to live their lives then a little bit of BBC intrusion is unlikely to cause much in the way of alarm. Why? Because the delusion protects your mind from facing the reality of it. These people are at best delusional and at worst, deliberately manipulating people.

The 'dancing in the spirit' stuff is hilarious. I wonder if they cringe at that looking back.

Rensil - there's a YT video of HB preaching. Someone has added music to increase the intensity. But when you actually stop and listen to the voice with crystal clear clarity, it's apparent, noone speaks in this way. Noone apparent from preachers that are trying to influence and manipulate the listener. I would argue that this then is elevating the speaking above the subject matter.

I have massive hypocrisy issues with HB but I've always said he was a brilliant orator. It's easy to understand why so many were sucked in by and hung on every word he said.

Bizarrely, they're now left with noone who has any such speaking talent. It's decidedly mediocre / poor. I'm baffled why people listen to that week in week out.

Saddened to hear Ian Lundie has passed. I agree. He was a very humble and kind man. I hope his family are doing ok.

Blackwatch. I think you are right. I very briefly clicked on the link to the Cumbernauld branches Sunday morning service. I found it very disturbing. As I have said before I do find the leader of that branch very disturbing and her manner on the Instagram session was (in my opinion) very creepy. As I have said I only watched it very briefly so I do not know how the session progressed.

It’s very concerning that these leaders do what they do to younger people in their church, but as well as that, so many of them have professions working with children. It’s disturbing.

Talking about Struthers voices and the way Struthers people all pray in a similar way publicly, does anyone remember hearing about mantles being passed on after a leader passes away?

The concept derives from the Old Testament account of Elisha receiving Elijah’s mantle after his passing. It’s not a teaching that’s unique to Struthers. Other charismatic and Pentecostal groups believe in mantles of leadership being passed on. It doesn’t occur in the New Testament though.

I just remember some discussion about Miss Taylor’s mantle being passed on to someone else in leadership after her death. And the same with Hugh Black’s mantle being passed on to someone in leadership. I’m not sure who got their mantles but I think I remember talk that Diana Rutherford had received Miss Taylor’s mantle.

Anyone remember hearing about mantles?

Hugh Black's 'mantle' got passed straight to his daughter.

The list of stuff that they make up as they go along is endless.

Ok been quiet a wee while . But thought I would give you all a laugh .I read the post On here and as thick as I am I'm not the most cleverest person but when I read about a mantle well all I thought was why the pass down a mantle to someone when they die.All I could picture was this mantle being passed on but me being me pictures a old mantle from a fire place being passed.down to someone.But knew I was wrong thinking this asked a few friends who are not as thick as me what's a mantle.Well I think my picture in my head is more likely than there story what's sort of saying Miss Black Spirt entered into Diana so that's Diane being possessed who shouldn't she be needing the demon outcast or is it ok for her to be passed but no one else. And by the way she Diana is very like Miss Black one evil women ss they might be right the mantle was passed on..Give me your thoughts please