Quote
hurting mother
I tired to post once before
I am not wanting to debate theology. My son, who was once loving and friendly, involved in Christian ministry and church is now critical, mistrusting and depressed. I believe that his problems began when he started feeding on the Thieme tapes and became isolated and seeing people in churches, except Thieme churches, as wrong and not saved if they had "repented, felt sorry for their sin, walked and isle, etc." He has even told my husband and I that we are probably not saved or in "reversionism" because we do not agree with some of the Theime doctrines. I do believe that he has been brain washed, though he chose to listen to the tapes, and he in some way equates believing God and believing everything Thieme says as one in the same. If that is not mind control, I don't know what is. We love our son and want to help him. After eight long years of seeing this affect his life, I am looking for someone who has either left on their own or with help. He is a wonderful young man with so much God-given potential, but is stuck in an intake mode of "Bible doctrine" and seeing any kind of socializing, service or ministry as self-serving. Please, I do not want to hear from anyone who wants to argue theology. I have read Joe Wall's dissertation so I know this teahching has affected other individuals and families adversely.
To Hurting Mother:
Nearly everyone here has left Thieme, either on his or her own or with help. In the end, only God can reach in and touch the damaged soul injured by false teaching. Your love and prayer can make a real difference in your son's life, but you should be prepared for a long, hard struggle to remain patient and to strive to keep the doors of communication open between you and your son.
In my case, it was ALL GOD and ONLY GOD who rescued me. Nobody around me even knew I was in trouble from this teaching. I did not know it myself. I was totally sold to the teaching of Thieme as Bible Doctrine. After many years of this I was completely exhausted as a human being and stopped functioning in life. I was absolutely depressed and paralyzed. This went on for a long time and I am sure that others looking on from outside had no idea what was really going on. At least you have the advantage of knowing the heart of the problem and can pray intelligently.
When God knew the right time had come, He sent some of His other servants my way with truth that began to set me free. I was AFRAID to leave, AFRAID to read books by others than Thieme, but CLASSIC CHRISTIANITY by Bob George was the first one God used in my life to begin untangling me from the lethal legalistic teachings I had been a slave to. Might I suggest that you obtain this book and read it as a background to a great deal more learning you will need to do to help extract your son from the snare with which he has been entrapped?
You mention that you don't want to discuss theology. Sooner or later you will have to do this with your son and begin to be able to refute what Thieme has drummed into his head. He has been taught that he cannot read the Bible for himself to get truth from God and that only Thieme can do that: that is, feed him truth because of his "expertise" in the languages of Scripture etc. Your son has been taught to despise the lazy stupid other pastors out there, and that God will KILL HIM IF HE LEAVES BIBLE DOCTRINE. He must get that DAILY TAPE in to keep God from imposing the sin unto death upon him. It is an endless maze of threats and promises, none of which really pan out in life and they all center on the mixed truth and error ministry of R.B.Thieme Jr.
God loves you and your son and wants you both to know His Love and Grace provided for you at the Cross of Jesus Christ. But Thieme has taught your son that God is a very impersonal Being whose demands are intricate and ever changing. The more your son listens to Thieme tapes, the more the demands develop into a Rube Goldberg device to keep him terribly busy with "Bible Doctrine" and to distract him from the Savior Himself.
Jesus warned the Pharisees that they had missed the living God standing before them while being completely sold out to the "Words of God" that they knew in the Old Testament. There is a reason God values His Words, and that reason is to reveal the One True and Living God in the Person of Jesus Christ. Thieme's studies purport to allow the believer to "know" Christ but what the studies really do is to focus entirely on the words of Thieme from the pulpit and gradually the lessons slip in "breakthroughs" Thieme has "discovered in the original languages" from time to time and these TAKE OVER the benefit that might be had otherwise from his ministry.
What your son will actually be hungering for is JESUS. What he is getting right now from Thieme is THIEME'S WORDS, with an enormous invented non biblical vocabulary which distracts from the actual contents of the Words of God given in the entire Bible. In order to help your son to see the differences between what Thieme says and what his Bible actually says you will have to patiently ask him to show you of his own knowledge in his Bible, his English Bible, Thieme's teachings, which you think are wrong and he thinks are right. The enormous time spent listening to Thieme is almost totallly wasted because it has deprived your son of his ability to come to his own conclusions from reading what the pages of Scripture actually say IN CONTEXT.
The first independent thought I had apart from Thieme when God began to woo me away was something like this:
"WHAT ABOUT ALL THESE WORDS AND DEFINITIONS THIEME USES THAT ARE NOT IN THE BIBLE? I WONDER IF THAT IS THE SAME THING AS TEACHING THINGS THAT ARE NOT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?"
ANSWER, from God: YES.
Somewhere along the line, your son will have to see SOMETHING that Thieme has said IS NOT TRUE ACCORDING TO THE PLAIN TEACHING OF THE BIBLE. For me, the crack in the Thieme dike was over the issue of FORGIVENESS, which was won for us at the cross of Christ, TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY retiring all our sin debt at one time forever. Thieme teaches that all our presalvation sins were forgiven when we are saved, but not our post salvation sins. He divides forgiveness into two categories not recognized by the Words of God and this is a device used TO CONTROL PEOPLE WITH FALSE FEAR AND FALSE GUILT. Your son spends his time "rebounding" constantly to hope he is "in fellowship" so God won't clobber him for failing to confess immediately any sin of thought word or deed, of commission or omission, and this is frankly IMPOSSIBLE TO DO and live a normal life, Christian or otherwise. It keeps the mind on sin, and this empowers the flesh to take over the life unrecognized and uncontrolled by the Spirit. There is a lot of heat and noise in the Thieme way of life, but NO POWER.
So my advice to you is CHALLENGE EVERYTHING BY THE WORDS OF GOD. Pick your battles and don't try to disprove everything at once. CONTEXT is key to meaning and understanding. God does not command us to submit to "experts in languages" as our final authority despite what Thieme teaches. He does not command us to learn Hebrew and Greek to get truth. We already have what we really need, the Words of God translated faithfully into our native language English. For me this is the King James Bible. Thieme says the NASB is the best, but HE CORRECTS THIS WITH HIS OWN PERSONAL "TRANSLATIONS" from his pulpit. He also slips in his personal breakthroughs which the Holy Spirit left out of Scripture till now.
I finally had to ask: HOW DID GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT MANAGE TILL THIEME CAME UPON THE SCENE? How did the saints of old maintain their testimonies and preserve the Words of God without Thieme to teach them or anyone like him as "experts in Hebrew and Greek"? So Thieme is not the answer or by any means the best or only Bible teacher in this generation to give the truth to the people of God. Far from it.
Please let us know how things are going with you. This is a long, and lonely fight you are engaged in. Read the whole thread here on Thieme. it is huge and some of it is hard to take, but there are invaluable testimonies of those who have been there before you, personal testimonies of those who lived for years and attended Berachah itself, "face to face" and know from the horses mouth the truth about Thieme and his ministry.
Listen to them all. Ask God what is for you to use to encourage your son to see that Thieme IS WRONG ABOUT A LOT. He is not the final authority much less the best.
PRAY PRAY PRAY for the Lord to reveal to you what He wants you to deal with and don't be surprised if He deals with YOU FIRST, THEN WITH YOUR SON.
Lovingly,
Sistersoap
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2008 01:26AM by sistersoap.