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List of Issues with the Message: Difference between revisions
→What is the motivation for this website?
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We left the message church we had attended for 37 years after it turned out that the pastor of the church had covered up the sexual abuse of a minor. The majority of the congregation also left within a month after our leaving and a new church started up. It did not differ doctrinally from the church we left, yet the pastor believed all those who left were apostate. The most problematic issue was the fact that not a single message minister stood up publicly against the egregious sin of our former pastor. | We left the message church we had attended for 37 years after it turned out that the pastor of the church had covered up the sexual abuse of a minor. The majority of the congregation also left within a month after our leaving and a new church started up. It did not differ doctrinally from the church we left, yet the pastor believed all those who left were apostate. The most problematic issue was the fact that not a single message minister stood up publicly against the egregious sin of our former pastor. | ||
How could this be? Wasn't the purpose of the message to create a pure bride that could stand above sin and the world? We began to think that the message had somehow been perverted by the ministers of the message. To determine whether this was the case, we went to the very foundation of our faith and started examining what we believed. | How could this be? '''Wasn't the purpose of the message to create a pure bride that could stand above sin and the world?''' We began to think that the message had somehow been perverted by the ministers of the message. To determine whether this was the case, we went to the very foundation of our faith and started examining what we believed. We asked ourselves these two questions: | ||
Because the message was basically a "King James Version Only" denomination (and, yes, we believe the message is a "denomination" as that word is commonly defined), we started examining the Bible and which versions we could consider as trustworthy. Through our research, it became | #Had ministers of the message perverted William Branham's teaching? OR | ||
#Was there a fundamental problem with the message itself? | |||
===Could we trust the Bible?=== | |||
Because the message was basically a "King James Version Only" denomination (and, yes, we believe the message is a "denomination" as that word is commonly defined), we started examining the Bible and which versions we could consider as trustworthy. Through our research over a period of about 9 months, '''it became clear that the Bible was very trustworthy,''' although our understanding was changed somewhat as we clearly understood how the New Testament had been passed down to us today. | |||
===Could we trust the message?=== | |||
We then started to research the message. Our sole purpose was to prove the message to be true so that we could determine how it had been perverted by the message ministers who refused to stand up against sin in the pulpit. | We then started to research the message. Our sole purpose was to prove the message to be true so that we could determine how it had been perverted by the message ministers who refused to stand up against sin in the pulpit. | ||