QuoteCovLass Lets take a look at Jesus answer to this assumption. This is found in Matthew 7:22-23 "Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’" So it appears that according to Jesus, one ca
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Its worth noting that Camping is an Annihilationist. I wonder if SMC has moved to that position too. Maybe some do - even some leaders. I dont know. Anyone else care to shed some light ?
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Just been on another cult awareness website. Watchman Fellowship. As an evangelical and conservative organisation it has the statement of faith declaration shown below. I wonder if this statement and it alone are considered necessary for salvation in the eyes of SMC: Statement of Faith Watchman Fellowship endorses a biblically based, conservative, evangelical position, proclaiming that all
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Clive, Thankfully there are many churches like the one I attend, where one can worship, free of such wanton misuse of scripture and pastoral authority. To pray in the name of Jesus is to specifically claim authority from God for something. It is stating that Jesus himself has put the “rubber stamp” on ones request. Pentecostal pastors and faith healers who continually use the Name Of
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pentecostal, I’d like to thank you for adding your thoughts here. You makes some good points and we certainly do need to be balanced and not just “preach to the choir”. "Them that sin, rebuke before all that others may also fear.” This would be fine if the sin in question was one which was clearly observable by - preferably more than one witness, but when such rebuke is being ca
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Rensil said: " When you asked about this, you were told the leader didn't feel a draw to you and didn't have anything for you. How does this make people feel?" I think this kind of talk actually highlights a much bigger issue with the ethos behind the SMC - namely the unhealthy focus on persons or leaders. I've heard so much talk from SMC members that referred
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QuoteRensil I think we should be careful not to dismiss every pentecostal-type church as being unhealthy just because some are. ... We mustn't throw the baby out with the bath-water, in other words. Agreed, however it is interesting to note that at least one person here mentioned cases where some person went for healing via a leader - and when it didn't happen - was blamed for
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One can only hope that the manipulative and dangerous practices and techniques will be exposed by brave people such as Derren Brown has done for greedy and dishonest faith healers, mediums, pseudoscience phonies, exorcisms and the like. See the recent program "Miracles For Sale" Here". I've personally witnessed at close quarters many of the "healing" trick
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Quotesusie You seem to be under the impression that the anointing at SMC is the real thing. susie Hi susie, No, that would be to read me wrong. Since I have not met all the people in the above list how on earth could i make such a judgement one way or the other ?, and in any case my anointment detector is broken, and my "how to detect an anointed leader" manual got mislaid. The
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Could it be that these issues are only prevalent in some but not all of these sects ? There seem to be many offshoots now, which I list here ( i may have missed some ). Seems unfair to tar all leaders with the same brush. Maybe some are actually anointed but others are not. Anyone know what criteria an person should use in deciding whether a leader is anointed or not ?. Is there some test ?.
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QuoteRensil. I've wondered if there was a hypnotic effect at times. If not, it certainly worked as a method of control and drew you deeper in to the Struthers ways and contributed to your desire to obey that leader whatever she said or preached. Heres two other factors often found in SMC that could be seen as highly emotionally manipulative: 1) Whenever embarking on a public pr
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Covlass: so I guess my love of slingbacks makes me a "femme" ?... :D susie: As the scriptures state clearly: "A new commandment I give unto you, That you continue to seek deep experiences of my presence and above all put your faith in what you feel to the exclusion of everything else." "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, that you cont
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QuoteRensilSeekingsusan, I'm sorry if I gave a wrong impression that I was a child in SMC and grew up in it with parents. No, my fault - I just assumed wrong :) QuoteRensil So it must have been and still be hard for a child in this situation with no other background memories to link in to. Maybe one reason that the most likely people to stay loyal to the SMC and never leave, are the
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Hi Cov, So would it be fair to say that in some part, you ended up in the position of being accused by the Struthers leader of being a lesbian because you chose to dress or wear your hair differently ??. Did you have ( "perish the thought" :0 ) ....... piercings ?.
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QuoteRensil I never saw anything on a TV for years. I didn't know what certain people in the Government or in the News looked like! Did this affect how you got on with other kids at school ?. Did it for example make it harder to make friends and be accepted ?. Or were you discouraged from making friends with "outsiders" anyway ?. I think this is particularly damagi
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Hi Out Of It, I'll speak on my behalf alone, although i think everyone here will agree with this too. I mean you no harm, and I hope nothing i have written was for some reason taken to be "ganging up" on you. Nothing i wrote was about you, but about lovealways, and I really believe she meant you no ill either. All of us really appreciate you joining this forum, So dry a
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Quoteseekingsusan LoveAlways, actually the last post by "out of it" was by the woman in question herself. oops, facepalm and my mistake, re-reading your last post shows you clearly knew that.
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LoveAlways, actually the last post by "out of it" was by the woman in question herself. I think where your previous posts were merely reporting what the pastor said, and even what you visually observed, these things can be disputed but are not likely to cause hurt or require that you put things right with this woman. However once anyone here starts going into assessments, perso
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I feel its worthwhile to reiterate the critera the moderator of this forum - rrmoderator has listed as criteria for signs of a "potentially unsafe group". 1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability. 2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry. 3. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financi
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Just to be absolutely clear, following on from a private message, I would like to make it clear that I was not suggesting Lorna was one of those having any misgivings about SMC. I think she was unhappy with being included in the list above, even if that list was merely of POSTERS, not detractors. SeekingSusan
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In that there are 17 posters of which at my guess around 14 have misgivings about SMC : Ohio clive CovLass ThePetitor seekingsusan anon201062 Treetop Chesterk55 rrmoderator CrazyMixedUpKid Archbishop Laud anonymousfornow Uncertain Rensil lorna lovealways susie this can mostly be explained by these posters checking out the website around 8 times each day, or less - if there
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Quoteseekingsusan Some churches, and even today if one includes the Taliban Oops! clearly a blooper !. replace that with - “Some churches, and in the muslim world - even some Afghan Taliban leadership” Susan
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QuoteThePetitorOne other thing I have been meaning to raise for a while. Does anyone know how many people with experiences of other churches stay in Struthers or leave Struthers? Leaders aside, it seems from my experience that almost everyone who has any teenage/ adult experience of life in another church ends up leaving Struthers and almost everyone who has no experience of other churches en
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QuoteArchbishop Laud I would beg to maintain, however, that the definition of a cult must centrally include doctrine. It cannot be a matter of group dynamics alone. If not, you will not be able to distinguish between an excessively controlling church, such as Struthers Memorial Church or the Close Brethren, and, say, the Mormons. The word "Heresy" is more appropriate to what you ar
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ThePetitor, Please accept my apologies, I may have been a little harsh and out of order with my earlier posts. As you suggest yourself, I guess i was attempting to think pragmatically but not really meaning to get at you specifically . It is certainly not my place to -nor, unlike Struthers, would i want to - suppress the very sort of thing that Struthers is accused of suppressing, namely ope
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Guys, It seems to me this is just turning into "preaching to the choir" - pointless "radio chatter" to little avail ( I include myself in this ). Unless new posters come out here, on either side, this is all going to go nowhere. Might I suggest that those stiill in contact with Struthers "dissenters" , try to gently persuade them to come aboard - anonymous
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QuoteThePetitor OK, let's accept that. The question is, how WOULD you know if the leaders were wrong? What is the process you go through after hearing a sermon to decide whether it is another example of the leaders being right or if this might be the first time ever that they are wrong? To be fair to anon201062, I suspect that by "I have never known the leaders to be wrong” h
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RE" Did you accuse Covlass of hiding serious sin on the basis of no evidence of its existence other than your discernment alone?" This point by Chesterk55 illustrates what i consider a real moral issue that illustrates the harmful and selfish behaviour at play behind an awful lot of "propheetic word/ discernment" that goes in in charismatic groups. Here is the issue
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Quoteanon201062 I would ask if this is a cult then why are people delivered, healed and saved in the name of Jesus Christ the son of god whilst attending this church? There are plenty of cults AND churches that exhibit cult-like behaviour whose members and leaders claim repeatedly that healings occur and that people are saved in the name of Jesus Christ. Just because S.M espouses roughly the
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QuoteCovLass The so called 'discernment' is a big one for me too and the fact that they wont or cant tell you what it is they actually discern. I mean why would God show them and them not tell you or give you the help you need. See this is how I see true discernment working. (snip) However the struthers way is to say to people ' I discern something really bad about you .. that
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