Amazing

Born

Thoughts

BORN AGAIN - AND AGAIN

by Doyle Duke

The Return

I had forgotten most of my knowledge of the Bible other than the basic stories, but there was one teaching I did remember that troubled me; the fear of being seduced into an apostate church--a false church, one deceived and controlled by Satan. Whether that is truly scriptural isn't the question here, the fact is, many Christian denominations believe Satan is an active, deceiving, force in this world. Their reasoning is that if God is real and His word is true, then there has to be a real Satan.

I, along with my family, attended a number of different churches of various denominations, before finally joining The Original Church of God. They claimed to be the first Church of God with minutes dating back to their founding in 1886. I have to classify them as moderate Holiness. They believe in three works of grace (saved, sanctified, and the infilling of the Holy Spirit); the baptism of the Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues; living a perfect, sinless, life; and they placed great emphasis on ultra conservative dress. On the other hand, they would visit a doctor if necessary and refrained from handling snakes.

At first, because I felt no spiritual change, I had to struggle with the idea that my rededication was a fraud, but the changes in my life were the proof. I came off the Valium, quit drinking and most of my bad habits (I couldn't stop smoking). In no time my depression disappeared, my ulcer healed, and my entire outlook on life was one of joy. I developed an over-powering desire to know everything about the Bible. Pleads to understand God's will in my life were always foremost in my prayers. To further that end, I studied. Much outside material such as religious history, philosophy, and commentaries were viewed as corrupted, so, most of my studies were confined to the Bible and and a Hebrew/Greek concordance. For the next few years I was driven by the desire to learn. I carried a Bible with me almost everywhere I went and would talk to anyone who would listen. Studying God's Word was like opening the pedals of a flower, one by one, and gasping at the beauty that was revealed. Many times I would pray for understanding on a certain topic, and then have, what I perceived to be, the answer revealed in a sermon or casual conversation. Or perhaps re-read a passage I thought I understood only to have a clearer, truer, meaning open to me.

I mentioned the founding of the Original Church of God earlier because it has bearing. In it's beginning, the church was only a group of neighbors gathering to hear a traveling Bible salesman preach when he passed through the area; but eventually, they asked him to accept the position as their minister. As I remember the story, the fellow was in doubt, so he went up onto a hill and prayed for guidance. According to him, the Lord told him to accept the position and He, God, would show him how to build the church on the very principals under which the apostolic church was established. Meaning, the church would have all the correct understandings of God's will--all truth. Such was the teachings conveyed to me. Ridiculous you may say, maybe, but no more so than the Catholics’ belief in apostolic succession.

Such belief led me to another conclusion. If the Bible was free of error and without contradiction, then somewhere within all the many different denominations, and amidst the confusion of conflicting teachings, there had to be one true church. I believed the Original Church of God was that church.

The problem was that eventually all my studying began to raise doubts in some of the teachings I was learning. At first I was able to just push them to the back of my mind by condescending to the knowledge of my elders. Remember, I had been taught that these religious leaders possessed the truly divine revelation of God's Word.

I suppose one of the first things that troubled me concerned the accepted method of seeking the Holy Spirit. The idea is for the supplicant to put aside all worldly habits or temptations and present himself fully surrendered unto God. Their teaching is that the believer's body is the temple of God in which the Holy Spirit dwells. But scripture states that the Spirit of God will not dwell in an unclean place, therefore the recipient must present himself as a clean vessel--sinless.

So as each member grows in strength and character, he or she seeks the indwelling of the Holy Spirit by prayer, fasting, and supplication. It isn't unusual for a member to plead and pray for years, while surrendering one suspect habit or privilege after another.

At church services the altar is always open to anyone who feels led to seek communion with God. Quite often scheduled services will be placed on hold while someone pleads for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I have seen men and women, even children, pray, cry, and beg for hours, often with up-raised hands, beseeching a merciful God to at least show them what they yet lacked--what they should do to be worthy. And I was among those ranks on numerous occasions.

I never felt worthy. There was always some worldly habit I couldn't over-come, some wicked thought that would tempt me. Therefore, I was never surprised when I didn't receive the blessing. Some would say my lack of faith was my stumbling block--perhaps so. At any rate, as I watched some of the most devout brothers and sisters plead and beg I couldn't repress some rising questions. Why, I wondered, were they forced to grovel and beg? Was it not recorded in Matthew, "...what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?" How could God be any less kind? I could understand that they might not be perfected in His sight, and therefore not worth of the Spirit, but I could not understand why they, or I, were not shown what we must yet do.

At one time, while attending a convention, I spent most of one evening at the altar, seeking the Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit. After the services, one very respected minister's wife claimed she heard me speaking in tongues. Things became very suspect then because I knew very definitely that I had not. Mainly because my mood had been one of disgust and disappointment, and I was wishing I could retire gracefully from the altar long before the opportunity arose.

Finally an event occurred that forced me to accept the fact that all the troubling doubts and questions might have more substance than just my imagination. There was one lady in the congregation who'd been earnestly seeking the spirit for years. While I couldn't know her heart, I knew she was a very honest and devout woman, humble and sincere in her love for God. The service was almost over and she'd spent another futile evening literally begging God to show her why she couldn't receive the Spirit. Then she started begging us to help her. Asking, why couldn't she receive the Spirit? Or if anyone knew of anything in her life she'd missed or over-looked, would they please tell her. Hers was a passionate, tearful, plea--yet no one said a word. It was then I knew--I knew that if anyone there had the Spirit of God she did, and I wanted to stand up and assure her of that fact--but I couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to oppose church doctrine. I didn't trust my own conclusion.

Another subject that gave me reason to question was that of the Sabbath. Was Sunday or Saturday the Bible Sabbath? Many times I'd heard our pastor say that sometimes God revealed things to him in the pulpit. He called it, preaching himself into a corner, and said when that happened he just had to reverse his stance and follow God. Then, as if by divine decree, our pastor preached on the subject of the Sabbath. He was explaining how Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath when he preached himself into one of those corners. He said the Jews kept the Saturday Sabbath after the crucifixion--and so did the early church. In fact, he continued, the Jews still kept it and it had never really been changed. Maybe we should still observe it…

For me, this was clearly a revelation. So I, very naively, sat there waiting, truly expecting him to say something like, "…so, next week we'll met at 10:00 o'clock Saturday morning." But instead, he concluded that we didn't keep the Sabbath anymore because we observed the Lord's Day on Sunday.

It was sometime later, our pastor had died and we had a new one, when the conclusion finally came. I was teaching a young people's Sunday school class and had reached the point were I just didn't believe some of the things I was teaching. What troubled me most were their teachings of speaking in tongues. My stepmother had come out of a tongues church, and had written a small tract telling of her experiences, and claimed it was all demonic--a deception of Satan. I did some further research and discovered that speaking in tongues had been witnessed in other religious and pagan rituals, including voodoo and witchcraft, for centuries; but that it wasn't practiced by latter-day Christians until the year 1900. At that time it had a rather questionable resurgence in Los Angles that turned into something of a sideshow.

By then, I was almost positive my newfound knowledge was true, but there were just some subjects you didn't question in the Church of God. Speaking in tongues was one of them. If I'd gone to an elder of the church and said, "I'm not so sure I believe in speaking in tongues," it would have been tantamount to questioning the existence of Jesus. Also, to unsheathe the knowledge I had would have been like drawing a sword and I couldn't bring myself to voice the harsh accusations that would have been necessary. And, in the end, none would have accepted my beliefs. I loved those people. They were more than my friends, they were my spiritual brothers and sister, honest, decent, men and women. The last thing I wanted was to cause discord. So, I did the cowardly thing, I took the Sabbath issue to our new pastor. I sat down in his home with him and his wife. It took me only a few minutes to realize they knew absolutely nothing about the deeper purpose behind the fifth commandment. They probably never suspected that Roman Catholicism had changed it. In the end, I informed them I couldn't continue teaching Sunday school, and would be leaving the church.

It was a very hard and traumatic decision for me. I had very little confidence in my own judgment, and though I had avoided a confrontation I was still pitting my understanding against all the elders of the church--my mentors; men and women with years and years of experience, supposedly possessed of the Holy Spirit. To say I was frightened would be an understatement. The next few days were very unsettling. I couldn't help but believe I was still in error. While my intellectual reasoning told me my deductions were right and that I couldn't maintain the relationship with my church brothers and sisters; another part of me hoped someone would step forward, or God would give me a revelation, to refute my new found knowledge and allow me to sink back into the comfort of my old beliefs. But once the genie of truth is freed there's no forcing him back into his bottle.

After a week or so, the daughter of our deceased pastor sent word that she and her husband were concerned and would like to talk with me. We were all friends and neighbors, our kids often played together; so my wife and I made arrangements to visit. However, when we arrived the lady told us her husband had to work and would be late. The children were playing in a back bedroom, so for a while we talked and visited. Then the lady (I'll call her Mary) wanted to know why I left the church.

You should understand that Mary was very active in the church, very emotional, very spiritual, given to much shouting and speaking in tongues. I knew Mary was one of the last persons who would even begin to consider what I believed. Anything I said would shock and offend her, so I tried to be evasive. I wasn't ready to admit, even to myself, that the questions plaguing me were true; because to deny speaking in tongues might be construed as denying the Holy Spirit, which was considered an unpardonable sin.

So I dodged and fended her questions. She asked: "You do believe in the Holy Spirit?" To which I answered, "Yes". We dueled for a few minutes, then suddenly the Spirit possessed her and she jabbered a couple of short, unintelligible, phrases. Just as quickly her reasoning was back and, after raising her hand and praising the Lord, we continued in our conversation which went something like this:

"Do you believe in speaking in tongues?" she asked.

"What do you mean? You just heard me speak in tongues. Do you believe that was of God?"

One point from my stepmother's tract had really impressed me. She had stated that tongues was not an unknown language, but the interpretation of languages, and pointed out that each time it was mentioned in the New Testament, someone understood.

So, backed into a corner, I felt compelled to respond: "Did you understand what you said?"

"Then I don't believe it was of God."

From her reactions one would have thought she was the wicked witch of the west who'd just been doused with water. She cried out, jumped up, and began jabbering in tongues. The kids came running from the bedroom and we all just stared. An eerie feeling filled the house. She continued babbling, while jerking and waving her hands over her head, for two or three minutes; then slowly she began to speak softly. The incoherent babble turned to moaning ooh's, then with tear-filled eyes she spoke to me.

"Ooh, Doyle, I'm so afraid! I'm afraid you've blasphemed the Holy Ghost. I pray God you haven't, but I'm just afraid you've gone too far."

I was scared. My wife and all the kids were scared. By the time we returned home, I was terrified. People say they're afraid of going to hell and burning forever. They might ever shudder with fear as they try to imagine the agony and torment, but until it becomes a very likely possibility, they've no idea what terror is.

When we reached home, I grabbed my Bible and ran upstairs to my study, threw myself down on the floor and began praying like I'd never prayed before. I prayed for mercy. I prayed for forgiveness. And as I studied the subject of unknown tongues again and again, I prayed for understanding. With prayer and supplications, I tried to find peace, but to no avail. Sometime after midnight, I crawled into bed exhausted and fell asleep. Around three o'clock, I awoke terrified and gasping for breath. The thought and fear of being irretrievably lost can not be imagined, nor relayed in words.

Things didn't get any better over the next few days. I kept waking early in the mornings, jarred awake by fear. My nerves were frayed, my stomach constantly filled with acid, and everything I ate jammed at the base of my esophagus. Within a week I was physically sick and going through the motions of life like a zombie. Then, one day a guy named Ken Browder that I worked with and knew only casually, invited me to lunch. I tried to decline, but when he got ready to leave he just came by and got me.

By then, my stomach was so upset I could hardly eat anything, so I ordered a salad and milk. He had noticed me acting strange and asked if I was all right. I told him what had happened. While I talked, he just kept on eating, taking time out only to ask an occasional question. When I finish, he said: "Well, I can tell you now you haven't committed an unpardonable sin. What sin have you committed?"

I'd never reached the point where I felt I was perfect, so I started casting about in my mind, thinking of all my shortcomings and sins. He must have known what I was thinking.

"Which commandment did you break?" he asked. "God has given us a set of rules to live by, the Ten Commandments. Which one did you break?"

I was stunned. Of course I was familiar with the commandments, but they were under the old law; my teachings were filled with thousands of ways to sin. Sin was everywhere, some brazenly obvious, others sneaky and hard to discern. My friend went on to explain that God had given us good, sound, instructions for living. The Ten Commandments covered everything sinful. There might be many ways to sin, but each one came under one of the commandments.

I'm not sure what else we talked about, but he was there when I needed him and he'll always have a special place in my heart. With his help, I was able to accept the fact that the Original Church of God was not the divine mouthpiece of God. They were wrong, not me. From that time on I was confident enough to follow my own beliefs. It was a very trying experience and though I had come through it a stronger person, my family would never be the same.