Hi everyone.

I have shown two translations of one of GGs key verses whereby he tried to convince us that we are to work out our salvation by going the way of the cross. It made me feel like anything I wanted was evil and I had to only want what I thought God wanted whatever that was. This left me open to the wolves who ran the Assembly system to tell us what God wanted for our lives was subjection to what they said was important to God.

I hope we can have some discussion to explain how verses like this were misused to control us and how to properly view them now that we are out.

I don't have a clear understanding of what is really meant but I can still remember the Assembly take. It would help me and possibly others to see this verse in its proper application.

Hugh

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Matthew 16:24
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.  

The King James Version (Authorized)
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Then Jesus said to the disciples, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me.  

The New Living Translation

Hugh,

Basing his question on verses like Matthew 10:38 and 16:24 GG used to confront me with this:

"Brother Tom, are you willing to be nothing?"  

How could I say anything but yes?  "No, I want to be something." violated my whole deeper life/way of the cross  idea of spirituality.  So, I had to "submit" and "follow wise counsel" and so on.

In other words, I had to let GG control me.

Then, finally one day, I figured out the correct answer.  It wasn't, as I had believed, "Yes".

It was, "Are you?"

Thomas Maddux

Tom

Again you are right, the New Living Bible "translation" of the passage is closer to a paraphrase. Unfortunately some will read this VERSION and use it as their only Bible. I included it because of the wording that so lends itself to the Assembly way of thinking.

It has happened in Ottawa that a brother would preach on a word that they saw in numerous verses. Their whole message hinged on the meaning they put on this word. Unfortunately sometimes that particular use of that word was only present in that translation and may not even be correctly translated from the original language in the first place.

We were so much into Chapter Summary and Devotional Style preaching that we ran the risk of not using the Word in context so often. Just an open bible on your knees is all you need brothers. God will reveal it to you. Well now I see my need to do more to "Study to show myself approved".

Hugh

Hugh, you have here, in a few words encapsulated what was wrong with assembly teaching:  It laid a foundation of the appearance of sound truth, then built upon it subtle error (doctrine that could pass as true, yet lead to enslavement).

For example, to "only want what God wants" is an admirable desire.  This was hammered at the saints, and it sounded right-- who could fault it?  But then, when a saint would ask "What exactly does God want?" the reply was subtly worded, but boiled down to, "Oh, we'll explain that for you."

The bottom line was that we were told what to study and how to study it, and if we learned things that were not approved of by the leadership, we were publicly castigated for our errors.


Here, again, the basics seemed solid:  We all had a week to study the same chapter.  The goal was to determine the passage's "spiritual teaching" (an outline of what the chapter says, the "spiritual meaning" (a recognition of how the "teaching" relates to practical living for me today), and the "spiritual application" (how I intend to henceforth employ what I have learned here in my everyday life).

I have been able to utilize this technique, in a general way, in practical situations throughout my adult life.  It can be a useful way to break things down to understandability.  But under Geftakysism, "spiritual" translated to "assembly-leadership-approved."

As for devotions (personal morning and evening "times with the Lord"), we were instructed to get on our knees, open the Bible, and expect God to speak to us.  That's what George did, and God always spoke to him!  But for us to tell what God had "shown" us was to walk on eggshells, because if George didn't approve what we had "learned," we were deceived, carnal-minded, had allowed sin to reign in us...  It was almost as bad as to admit that we had heard nothing at all from the Lord.

There were certain aids to study allowed (to some), but they were only those that George approved, e.g. Darby, or Coneybeare and Howson.  But even then, it was unsafe to glean something from these sources that didn't fit the assembly mold.


The wonderful thing about this bulletin board is the very nature of the give-and-take discussions here, the like of which could never take place under assembly rule.  The assembly pattern is a theocracy, in which a designated "priesthood" speaks on behalf of God to the people, telling them what God wants them to do, and if the individual wants to act upon his own, he must subject his will to the approval of the priesthood.  Verses such as 2Peter1:20 were wielded like clubs to beat down any notion that a saint might act, or even think, independently of the leadership.

The great challenge today to those who were (or are) in the assemblies is to filter out the heavy-handed assembly teachings that ride like leeches upon the words of scripture and, as barnacles defile a ship, make the Bible appear ugly and undesirable to those who have been denied its true nurture for so long.

Thank God that He is able to deliver us from such bondage, having made to us exceeding great and precious promises to continue in us the great work of redemption that He has begun, until the day of His triumphant eternal reign.  Hallelujah, what a Savior!

In Christ,
al

Al

It's what you learn after you know it all that really counts eh! We were taught what they wanted us to learn and discouraged from "healthy critical thinking like Paul said was good of the Bereans".

Merry Christmas to everyone.

Hugh

This is commonly known as the inductive method of Bible study and need not be overly subjective. What the passage says and means has nothig to do with feelings per se. It naturally follows that once one understands what the passage is saying as well as its meaning, one should then consider how it may be personally applied. Like so many other things, this also became perverted in the assembly environment.




That the cross is an instrument for dealing with the self-life of the Chrisitian
is I believe entirely  Scriptural. In the assemblies the teaching was used strictly as a means of manipulation.
The believer is nonetheless expected to deny in himself, every sinful tendency to which he is naturally subject, and this is in fact a very personal, conscious, and daily excercise in the pursuit of holiness.

And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.   Luke 9:23
   

And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple
Luke 14:27


And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
Galatians 5:24

This work can be accomplished only through the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit and is not a matter of excersice of will only.  Its application under assembly style teaching was a recipe for complete disaster and doomed to failure...the evidence speaks for itself.

Verne

What made it subjective is that we did not always ask "What does it mean?"  Rather, we asked "What does it mean to me?"

That's so true: "What does it mean to ME?" And with all of the stuff we were already DOING to try to please God and be overcomers, the "What am I going to DO about it" portion of the Chapter summary was the coup  de etat--add a few more "works" onto the already burgeoning schedule. "I'm going to pray more" or "I'm going to spend more time in the Word" or "I'm going to preach more", etc. etc. It makes me tired just thinking about it

--Joe