Bible Punching

They see you coming from a mile. It is often really really hard to break loose once they have their grip. They are wolves in sheep's clothes.

Typically a university campus or large shopping center a city park or say at a fair or popular holiday destination a coffee tent. A very nice person young and attractive and friendly but you don't seem to fit in anywhere you're a loner and trusting nature. With little real life experience but that you don't realise, ignorant with so many opinions and judgements. You don't really know the Bible that well but you do know it is true.

Invited to a "Bible study" it sounds quite harmless and soon you have many new friends and soon with many complications and subjected to fervent Bible punching and blindly paralised finding yourself in their claws.

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Your family is not wealthy and they make big sacrifices for you to attend unversity and to earn a degree. These people have hopes and expectations and these studies are absolute priority. It's not a holiday a big party or circus or roller coaster. This at a time when you should be studying and preparing for exams not getting drunk or high or fight oppose and clash with authorities.

In reaction newfound freedom rebelious and antagonistic feelings to authority and establishments of society parents teachers one might even get into trouble with the police and at the same time you only longed for peer acceptance.

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It is sometimes hard to know what is church and truth and what is sect and deception. Indeed there is always a place for church and religion in society. There has to be as indespensable guidelines rules and morals keeping the fabric of family and community all together. The best is solid traditional established sober teaching and healthy creed and confession. Balanced evangelism   actually is part of your calling and responsibilities to the congregation.

Any mainstream traditional established church with respectable standing is a very positive part of  a safe and healthy neighborhood. Church and religion are a pillar of society and an anchor they are acceptable and in fact  indespensible. However, personally, to me it makes sense to rather consider chuch as part of life and not life as part of church or at least some kind of healthy balance.

The kids have a good time meet descent people and have good clean fun and learn tradtional community and family values. With all the joy and strength of youth enjoy realistic sensible outreach and service, balanced mission and sober evangelism.

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Especially inter-church functions and events are targeted, such as a holiday coffee tent and fundraising fun-run or community awareness programs. Even congregations themselves are deliberately infiltrated. Youngsters are lured by curiosity but mainly their new-found friends wins their  confidence.

In such a group there is typically excessive studying of Bible books such as Revelation and the prophets including personal "visions" accompanied by fear group hysteria and panic accompanied by incessant praying. All of this with quite unique honestly very personal weird and wonderful interpritations.

Many of the alleged supernatural happenings by their nature would be almost impossible to verify or to disprove, as one would expect. Very popular it seems is making funny noises and a very repetitive gurgling and gargling which they call "speaking in tongues" apparently mostly for personal enjoyment. Then of course there are things like tongues subsequently translated by someone else in good old English. In my personal opinion as a warning, you have now crossed the line.

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Individual prophecies to me sound the strangest admittedly I have not seen much of this I don't know what the story is. Supposedly fortelling the future I would magine. Probably. Other sports include spectacular exorcism and animated deliverence ceremonies, inherently practiced as of much repetition and commanding of evil spirits and such and it appears God is ordered around too. This all could partly be indoctrination as forms of brainwash.

There are other activities such as "faith healing", "laying of hands" and alledged success in these and other supernatural efforts would sometimes be very hard to confirm and indeed there will always be plausible excuses and explanations.

Baptism also is a thing of terrific importance in a variety of ceremonies and practiced irrespective of all previous baptisms. Apparently it is mandatory and as such it is Scripture. I've known some people who've been a number of times and then subsequintly all manner of interpritations of all the strange experiences.

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At this stage I would say you have lost contact with reality bordering on actual psychosis culminating in unacceptable behaviour and even criminal. Now the police and the Law enter the picture. Quite frequently forced psychiatric hospitalisation follows. It is well known that often some members do become seriously mentally ill. They are the real victims. Some don't recover.

Only making things worse the sect treatment is forms of faith healing and that being the actual root of the problem. Such as crying and sobbing and flushing one's pills down the toilet while the company wail and cheer and praying like crazy.

When things go badly wrong your newly found best friends finally all turn their back on you in consensus and abandon you as weak in faith or even evil and incurable and subsequently you find yourself stranded and forsaken. These of course are your more charismatic groups where there are many and such allsorts of these stories.

Such groups are known to exploit predisposed persons, somehow attracting already gullible people and it appears, those already showing unbalanced tendencies. When serious problems start the victim is then ignored and invariably abandoned.
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On the other end of the scale are the to the letter black and white rigid conservative fundamentalist fanatics where ultimately salvation is earned, only by the letter, by law and good works. As one might expect there is a strict hierarchy and the more senior leaders being more intollerant.

This kind of show is even more dangerous. Soon you believe you are in a hopeless situation and it seems incredibly hard to break free. It requires insight and total honesty and true to yourself. It takes a lot of courage.

Indeed it is an amusing and ironic strange humour that these divergent many groups of people all use the same Bible as the ultimate justification of their beliefs and conduct. The scripture is invariably read as completely litteral. Cult leaders have incredible energy and fanatic eyes fearfully intense and are clearly permanently totally dissociated. Robbed of sanity of sober judgement and reality, delusional and up to psychosis, well-meaning naive believers are the victims.

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However it might be of a kind of consulation that in every mainstream world religion there are in fact such sects and cults and very similar trouble of things such as these in their own ranks and practicing of their religion.

Tragically in such a sect most of the believers have over-stepped the line. It could even be and is often that cult leaders actually don't believe their own stories.  This sounds very dangerous. The motive must be money. Also of course it is just as well but probably more dangerous if the ring leaders do believe their story and appear by all measures to be mentally ill and psychotic. Or just a joy ride who knows.