Quote
SalehSaleh
And then when I got into the letters/ group it was like Timothy was standing in-between me and Jesus, I couldn't go around Timothy, or over him, or under him, but I had to go through him and I felt like he was blocking me from getting to Jesus(not intentionally, but metaphorically), and my relationship with Jesus became one of fear and withdrawal and I became dependent on Timothy to hear from God since I wasn't worthy enough to approach Him since I couldn't keep all the Holy Days and Sabbaths the right way. I felt very disconnected and panicky like a chicken running around with my head cut off.

(((hugs))) to both you and LLG! I have the deepest respect for both of you and how far you have come in your recovery. I feel as if i'm in a recovery myself. I can identity with much of what you both are expressing although i've never been under the control of timothy and amy via "letters". I have been affected and somewhat indoctrinated so i find much of what you say pertains to how i am feeling thinking and what i'm going through.

i think that the way cult leaders control stand in the way of Jesus and turn the real voice of Jesus off so the only thing you can hear is the cult leader's voice is RELIGIOUS ABUSE!!! it cuts off our only way to life to hope to love to faith to anything of God that's real and not of the cult. This is what angers me to no end and no on i mean no one has any right to cut off anyone's god given right to freedom of choice and that's exactly what cult leaders do all in the name of god. for so long a cult member hears god's voice as the cult leaders voice and it's always a voice of fear, condemnation, control, death, destruction, the worst of the worst. always the old testament and law. always legalism legalism legalism to the max and punishment and judgement. it's taken me years to go the place of grace with the Lord and by god if anyone's going to take that away from me. i could feel myself slipping back into that off and on early on when i first was introduced to this group and it took alot of prayer from myself and others and alot of counseling to purge purge that stuff out of my head.

i will say that the more that i learned and focused on truth love grace new testament the more that i was able to reject the law legalism judgement and see it for what it is but that took a long time to get there with lots of help and recovery. i hate this spiritual abuse!!!!!!

@SalehSaleh your inbox if full and i'm trying to send you a message! :)

@ Gracevslaw
I didn't know it was automatic writing. I guess I just always imagined it was mostly like oral scribing since some of the letters are very long.

@ Frogla
I am glad you are doing well, I will be praying for your healing. I have been laying most of my fears and anxieties at the feet of Jesus, confessing my wrongs, asking for forgiveness and to forgive others. I have been trying to keep my focus more on God and my relationship with Him than on myself and my own sufferings and bring more power and praise to God than trying to work things out on my own attempt. Since I have learned the hard way that I can't do anything without Him and my only strength and life source comes from Him. I am just really trying to work on my relationship with God and just asking Him to guide me and spending more time with Him and disciplining myself to drop everything else and come to Him when He calls me. Instead of being distracted or blocking it out thinking it's just in my head. Because I know if I put Him first and come to Him when He calls, He will reward me with much needed comfort. I know that though I have many failures and many setbacks and much unholiness that I can approach God because I know that He loves me and that Paul struggled with the same things as me, fighting against the flesh vs the spiritual. And I do not believe God told Paul he wasn't good enough to approach God because of his unwilling sins. I have been trusting that the blood of Christ allows me to come to God even with my filthy rags, and I am not afraid anymore. I have to come like a child and a child does not try to cover it's nakedness with fig leaves before it approaches God. I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. (Genesis 3:10) I have to call on God in my vulnerable darkest hour, otherwise I will fail. And I refuse to let my flesh block my spiritual progress. I know that my relationship with God is a personal intimate one and I know that God has not abandoned me because I can feel his presence and I feel like I can never get as much as I want. I do not believe that Christ has divorced me, since we have a marriage covenant. And I am very thankful for His patience with me. I realize He was never silent, I just had too much gunk in my ears to hear.

I had a very intense dream earlier this year that I believe was from Christ. I know He loves me and I know He knew me before I was born. It was enough to give me the strength to endure through the obstacles that I faced at the time. But I know I must continue to grow and I must yield to HIS timing while He continues to mold me.

Everything else is just up in the air frozen in time. Trying to figure things out is counter productive until I get my relationship with God where it's suppose to be. I just need more God, and less everything else. I entered this world individually, and though it's painful to not have fellowship, God is all I need, for only He knows my inner parts and only He can purify my heart and make me like a child again. I must decrease and Christ must increase. All glory and honor be to God, Creator of the universe!

@SalehSaleh your inbox is full again

Amen!! SelahSelah, thank you for posting that. It is very much needed inspiration, and I'm grateful you shared it with us :-)

I need to decrease too, I want my life to shine through Christ. I read a story to my kids the other night, and it was about how shepards used to find orphans a mother to take care of them. They would take a dead baby sheep and skin them and put the skin on the orhpans so that the mothers of the dead lambs would accept the orphans. Its such a beautiful picture of our acceptance with God solely on the fact that we are covered with Christ (the dead lamb's skin). God sees us as Christ and accepts us because of our "covering of Christ". The orphan lamb didn't do anything to make the mother love them as thier own, it was all because of the dead lamb's skin so the mother thought it was her child.

Yes that is a very good analogy of Christ! I know I have felt like the orphan and have been guilty of trying to earn God's love and acceptance for me in the past, and I never felt like I could ever say or demand 'Ok now it's your turn God.' But, I have confidence that God has defeated Satan who like a roaring lion seeks to devour us (1 Peter 5:8), and the closer we draw to God, the harder Satan tries to sift us. His goal is to ultimately destroy our faith and make us curse God. I know that I have no wisdom and if it is the Lord's will that I be left behind to be tested during the tribulation so be it then, there is nothing I can do to make Him change His mind. Hopefully I will be able to bring Him glory whether I live or die and come out of the fire like gold, if that is what it takes. All that I can do is pray, pray, and pray some more for His mercy and grace, and that I am able and worthy to endure it for His glorification, not mine. But until then, I will continue to put my trust and faith in Jesus Christ because I know that my salvation depends upon Him, for salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

@LLG that is a beautiful picture of Christ and his love and acceptance of us. Thanks for sharing that! @SalehSaleh in Philippians 2:13 13for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. The Bible tells us that God works in us to give us both the will and ability to perform what He desires. It is God who removes the old want to’s and gives us new ones. And He even gives us the power to carry them out! @LLG & @SalehSaleh in Deuteronomy 28:10 10Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. Because you are also called by the name of the Lord, wherever you go, you are a blessing. Romans 8:2626Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And you can be confident that when you ask anything according to the will of God, He hears you. And if you know that He hears you, whatever you ask, you know that you have the petitions that you have asked of Him! (1 John 5:14–15)

I love this verse in Ephesians 1:7 7In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace

God, who is the only one who can fully appreciate the full value of His Son’s blood and who is completely satisfied by His Son’s sacrifice, is at rest in His heart today concerning our sins! That is why He is not against us even when you fail. Neither is He out to punish us when you sin. No, He still loves us, is for is and wants to help us overcome that sin.

In the Old Testament, the blood of bulls and goats could only “cover” sins and not take them away. (Hebrews 10:4) But the blood of Jesus is not like the blood of animals! For by one sacrifice, the eternal blood of the Son of God has forever removed your sins (Psalm 103:12) and cleansed you of all unrighteousness! (1 John 1:9) In fact, God is so satisfied with His Son’s perfect work that He says to you today, “Your sins and lawless deeds I will by no means remember!” (Hebrews 10:17) And if God does not remember them, why would He punish you for them?

We have “redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace”. Because Jesus’ work is complete, all our sins have been completely forgiven. And complete forgiveness means that the penalties for your sins can no longer fall on you because they had already fallen on Jesus at the cross. (Isaiah 53:5)

So don’t think for one moment that God is punishing us for some sin just because something bad happened to us. Look to the cross and know that all your sins have already been punished fully in the body of Christ. God is for us not against us!

wow! all good stuff!

@SalehSaleh your inbox is full again!

SelahSelah:

At this point it you have gone off topic.

This is not a message board to announce your beliefs, compare theology etc.

The topic of this thread is the "Trumpet Call of God" and its leader Speed Rathbun or Tim Rathbun.

If you wish to discuss religious beliefs perhaps you should try another board or go to a local church of your choice and speak with a pastor there.

See [forum.culteducation.com]

"The purpose of this message board is not to promote a specific religious and/or political viewpoint. Don't use it to preach or proselytize."

There are some excellent books written by Christian ministers and scholars about spiritual abuse and destructive churches and groups. Such abuse often occurs through legalism and generally attempting to make people feel that they can never be good enough. In this way the victim often becomes more dependent upon the group or leader as the way to learn how be good enough. This can be seen as a manipulative technique of control.

See [www.culteducation.com]

You might read some books about this.

Note the following:

Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris

Churches that Abuse by Ronald Enroth

The Drift Into Deception - The Eight Characteristics of Abusive Christianity by Agnes C. Lawless with John W. Lawless

Exposing Spiritual Abuse: How to Rediscover God's Love When the Church Has Let You Down by Mike Fehlauer

The Grace Awakening Cby harles Swindoll

Healing Spiritual Abuse : How to Break Free from Bad Church Experiences by Ken Blue

Letters to a Devastated Christian by Gene Edwards

More Jesus, Less Religion: Moving from rules to relationship by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton

Spiritual Abuse Recovery: Dynamic Research on Finding a Place of WholenessBarbara M. Orlowski (Wipf & Stock Publishers January 2010)Order

The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse - Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority within the Church by David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen

I have been reading through this forum concerning this cult for the last week or so. I wanted to start from the beginning and read all the way through to the end of it all before deciding to comment or not. As you can see I decided to comment...

I was 19 at the time that my experiences happened with this "cult." I was in a relationship with one of the Trumpet Call of God's cult member's daughter. My ex-girlfriend's mother is married to Timothy's brother in-law. I have met "Timothy" on several occasions in the past. It was about the time that this guy was first starting this whole cult.

I can say from first hand experience that he does pray on the biblically ignorant, and weaker minded people as his main "recruits." My ex's mother and step-father had little to no christian regilious background. Their marriage was about to end also, because of issues of alochol and cheating. I seen it that Timothy pretty much told these two he could save there marriage, and make everything else in their lives better if they followed him and these letters.

As soon as these people I knew started to get involved with Timothy and follow his so called teachings you could see a major difference in the way these people acted and lived there lives. As I seen it they given up the control of their lives to this man. Whenever they had a problem in their lives they would ask Timothy, and he would deliver a "letter from God" which would show them the solution. This was very hard to watch.

Life really got hard on my realtionship with my ex-girlfriend when they decided it was our time to join the "group." I tried to shield my ex-girlfriend (lets call her Susan) from all of this not stop bombardment. Her step-father(lets call him Jim) and mother(lets call her Tina) became very unkind and sometimes down right mean to Susan becuase she would not fold to there beliefs. I became a target as well, but that only lasted shortly once they figured out I wasn't going to fall for it. Timothy had written a letter directly to Susan a few months into her mother and step-father trying to push these beliefs onto her. I wish I could show you what was in it. This was these most guilt stricken, mean, a spitful letter I had ever written. Simply put it stated that Susan did not love her family, or God if she didn't follow her families' wishes and join the group.

Sadly, my realtionship with Susan ended in large part to this cult and among other reasons. After we went our seperate ways she was drug down into this cult as far as one could be. It was on of the hardest things in my life to see this happen. I felt and still feel responsible for it. I believe I was Susan's anchor to keep her from being lost in that craziness, and once I was no longer there that nothing was to stop it from happening. It's still something I have a hard time deal with the guilt from it all. Susan has since married and had a child, as to which her husband is apart of this group now too.

I also want to add something about the times I had been around Timothy. Timothy would come to some of the family events that Susan's family would have, and just the way he acted was strange. He was always keeping himself seperate from the whole group of people. Most generally he seemed to think he was more superior to the others. I guess there is so much that I have bottled up about this Timothy and his followers that I felt like I needed to get out... I'm sorry if this post is kinda all over the place, like it feels...

What I seen in the 2 years I was with Susan and being affected by this Timothy and his group really scares me... I just stumbled onto this page and I didn't realize how big it had become. I was also wondering if some of these people commenting on here being affected by this group are from central Nebraska area... or is it more wide spread internet based? It's just sad what Timothy has done to these people, and that what these people do to there realtionships with their friends and families if their not believers...

I guess I just wanted to leave you all with a God Bless and stay strong with your faith in God and do not fall for this guy...