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Tag: Evangelicalism

Was Jesus Anxious?

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who is the real jesus

Have you seen the He Gets Us TV ads and video clips? Funded and produced by The Signatry, the $100,000,000 He Gets Us campaign is meant to globally reach skeptics and unbelievers with the message of Jesus.

Ministry Watch had this to say about The Signatry and their He Gets Us campaign:

A $100 million media campaign is attempting to attract people who are skeptical about Christianity but may relate to Jesus by highlighting his upbringing as a homeless, bullied son of a teenage mother.

The “He Gets Us” campaign, which launched in mid-March, is an initiative of The Signatry, a Christian foundation based in Kansas that is channeling more than $100 million in funding from what it describes as “like-minded families who desire to see the Jesus of the Bible represented in today’s culture with the same relevance and impact He had 2000 years ago.” 

The Signatry has bought time for its advertisements on broadcasts of the NCAA’s popular March Madness basketball tournament as part of a blitz on TV, radio, billboard and social media.

Jason Vanderground, president of Haven, a creative hub based in Michigan that is working with The Signatry on the project, said the initiative is based on broad research.

“We talked to thousands of people who, while of course they have heard of Jesus, they don’t know the full extent of His ministry,” he said in a statement to Religion News Service. “We see a light go on for them when they begin to recognize that Jesus was fully human — and that carries them forward in being able to take in and understand that He was fully God, too.”

In a 15-second spot called “Anxiety,” black-and-white photos show people in despair, hands to their heads, before the words “Jesus suffered anxiety, too” appear on the screen. On YouTube, viewers are told in the video’s memo field: “Yet, despite this total failure to quell his anxiety, Jesus found the strength to face his accusers and submit to them willingly and without violence — knowing that his death would only further spread his message of radical love.”

The campaign’s website, offering alternatives to an “increasingly divisive and mean-spirited world,” gives visitors the option to chat online, to text to ask for a volunteer to “pray encouragement for you” or access a seven-day Bible reading plan. Gloo, the Colorado-based technology partner for the campaign, is training the volunteers who connect with those seeking to chat or receive prayer.

The Signatry, also known as Servant Foundation, defines itself as existing “to inspire and facilitate revolutionary, biblical generosity.” It reported gross receipts of more than $658 million on a 2020 tax form. In 2018, it reported having more than $1 billion in contributions.

Partners who have joined the initiative include the Luis Palau Association, the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today magazine.

I have seen numerous He Gets Us advertisements. The objective appears to be to present the humanity of Jesus in a non-threatening way. In doing so, they seem to ignore the obvious theological contradictions in their approach. Take the ad that states “Jesus suffered anxiety, too.”

Video Link

Did Jesus really experience anxiety? One could make the case from Jesus’ travail in the Garden of Gethsemane over his impending crucifixion that he experienced anxiety. That’s assuming, of course, the Gethsemane events even happened.

Elsewhere in the Bible, particularly in the writings of Paul, Christians are commanded to not be anxious; that “worry” is a sin that reflects a lack of trust and dependence in God. Thus, if Jesus was anxious (worrying) over his impending death, doesn’t that mean he was sinning? Shouldn’t Jesus have put his complete, absolute trust and dependence in his Father and his perfect sovereign will? The Bible says that Jesus was a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. This means Jesus, who is God, knew exactly what would happen at his crucifixion. He knew the exact date, time, and place these events would take place. Why would Jesus be anxious over things he had known for thousands of years would happen at an appointed date, time, and place?

Now, if Jesus were fully human, and not divine, then, yes, I can understand why he might be anxious. But, as the God-Man? If the writings of the Apostle Paul are true, then Jesus sinned against God (himself — weird, right?) if he had any anxiety whatsoever over his impending death. (Please see I Wish Christians Would be Honest About Jesus’ Three Day Weekend.)

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Black Collar Crime: Evangelical Pastor Gregory Adams Accused of Multiple Sex Crimes

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pastor gregory adams

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

Gregory Adams, pastor and prophet of Life Song Ministries in Citronelle, Alabama, stands charged with two counts of rape in the first degree, two counts of rape in the second degree, three counts of sodomy in the first degree, and two counts of sexual abuse. 

WDHN reports:

A Citronelle pastor was indicted on nine charges of sex abuse, with some of the alleged victims being as young as 12 years old. 

Gregory Renee Adams was indicted on five counts of rape, two counts of sodomy and two counts of sexual abuse by force. The sexual abuse spanned decades and state lines, according to court testimony. 

Investigators with Mobile Police believed Adams used his position as a pastor to meet his victims and force them into sex. Investigators said Adams would frequently travel to churches in Citronelle, Ala. and Waynesboro, Miss. There, he would meet his victims, according to investigators.

Four people came forward claiming that Adams sexually assaulted them. Two of the victims said the abuse started when they were 12 years old. 

Adams told his victims that he would decide if they went to heaven or hell and used “holy oil” as a lubricant to sexually abuse some of his victims, according to court testimony.  

WKRG adds:

The sexual abuse and assault would allegedly take place in his home as well as in the victim’s home.

Another one of his possible victims, who was also 12, said she was staying the night at Adams house before a missionary trip to Arkansas when the first sexual assault occurred.

A third possible victim alleges she was a parishioner at Adams church and met him during her adult years. She claims Adams is the father of her child and had unwanted sexual intercourse with him.

A fourth possible victim alleges she was friend’s with Adam’s children and was raped at his home.

The investigator testified that Adams used his power as a pastor to make his victims fear him.

According to testimony, Adams told one of his victims if she didn’t have sex with him, God would strike her down with lightning.

Adams allegedly told his victims he chooses who goes to heaven or hell.

Testimony alleged Adams used “holy oil” as lubricant to sexually assault some of his victims.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Songs of Sacrilege: Hymn 43 by Jethro Tull

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jethro tull

This is the latest installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.

Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Songs of Sacrilege: Hymn 43 by Jethro Tull.

Video Link

Lyrics

Oh, father high in heaven
Smile down upon your son
Whose busy with his money games
His women and his gun

Oh, Jesus, save me!

And the unsung Western hero
He killed an Indian or three
And then he made his name in Hollywood
To set the white man free

Oh, Jesus, save me!

If Jesus saves, well, He’d better save Himself
From the gory glory seekers who use His name in death

Oh, Jesus, save me!

If Jesus saves, well, He’d better save Himself
From the gory glory seekers who use His name in death

Oh, Jesus, save me!

Well, I saw him in the city
And on the mountains of the moon
His cross was rather bloody
He could hardly roll His stone

Oh, Jesus, save me!

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Songs of Sacrilege: I Hope I’m Stoned When Jesus Takes Me Home by Charlie Worsham

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charlie worsham

This is the latest installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.

Today’s Song of Sacrilege is I Hope I’m Stoned When Jesus Takes Me Home by Charlie Worsham.

Video Link

Lyrics

I hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home
Flying high through those clouds
Knowing I don’t have to ever come down
I’m rolling up a J
Just in case today’s the day
I hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home

I believe he put it down here for all of us to use
A little piece of heaven to take away your blues
I know I’m far from perfect and I’ll call a sin a sin
But I feel closer to the Lord every time I breathe it in

Hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home
Flying high up through them clouds
Knowing I don’t have to ever come down
I’m rolling up a J
Just in case today’s the day
I hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home

I can’t wait to talk to Moses ’bout the Red Sea and the plagues
Bend Jonah’s ear to hear about livin’ in a whale three whole days
Get ol’ St. Pete to show me the pearly gates and the golden streets
Well, you can bet I’ll be good and ready to sit down at the feast

I hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home
Flying high up through them clouds
Knowing I don’t have to ever come down
I’m rolling up a J
Just in case today’s the day
I hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home

I bet Bob Marley’s mansion has a garden in the back
And he’s growin’ somethin’ special, some celestial homemade hash
We’ll sit down on his porch, we’ll listen to the angel band
‘Til then, I’ll sing “I’ll Fly Away” with a fat one in my hand

I hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home
Flying high through those clouds
Knowing I don’t have to ever come down
I’m rolling up a J
Just in case today’s the day
I hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home

Yeah, let’s roll ourselves a J
Just in case today’s the day
I hope I’m stoned when Jesus takes me home

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Kent Hovind Says Evangelical-Turned-Atheist Bruce Gerencser is Still a Christian!

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kent hovind

Thrice-divorced young earth creationist and convicted felon Kent Hovind and I attended the same Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) college in the 1970s. Students at Midwestern Baptist College were taught that once people are saved (born again), they can never lose their salvation (fall from grace). No matter what people do after getting saved, they can never, ever lose their salvation. Salvation is God’s to give, and once he gives you the gift of eternal life, he will never take it away. Think, for a moment, of all the evil humans can possibly commit. If they were saved when they committed their heinous acts, they are still saved. Nothing, according to Hovind, can separate them from the love of Christ. Of course, this theology works well for Hovind, a man with a sordid, criminal past. No matter what Dr. Dino does, he’s still saved and will go to Heaven after he dies.

If you are unfamiliar with Kent Hovind, please check out the following video by McKinnon Mitchell. I make a minor appearance in the documentary.

Video Link

Hovind recently put out two videos on the subject of once-saved always-saved.

Video Link

Video Link

Hovind reiterates the same soteriological beliefs he and I were taught almost fifty years ago. In fact, outside of changing his eschatological beliefs, Hovind believes the same things today that he was taught at Midwestern decades ago. His young earth creationist/theological presentations reveal a man who knows what he knows — what he was taught at Midwestern — but hasn’t learned a damn thing since. In other words, he is intellectually stilted.

As I listened to Hovind’s videos on the once-saved always-saved doctrine, it was a reminder of the fact that preachers like him are forced to admit that the preacher-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser is still a Christian. There’s no question about my salvation; that I was gloriously saved at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio at the age of fifteen; that I spent the subsequent thirty-five years devotedly following Jesus: building churches, preaching the gospel, winning souls, and teaching church members the Word of God. There’s no question, in my mind and that of countless Christian family members, former parishioners, and colleagues in the ministry, that I was a Christian. Yet, today I am an unrepentant, outspoken atheist; an enemy of God; an apostate; a reprobate. I am, according to Hovind, a saved atheist. Al praise be to Loki!

Hovind does talk about in his videos how God chastises disobedient Christians. Of course, the alleged domestic abuser Hovind uses violent language to describe God’s chastisement: he’s lurking around the corner with a hammer, ready to beat you for your disobedience. Even here it could be argued that my health problems are Jesus, the Prince of Peace, hitting me with a hammer trying to get my attention and bring me to repentance. And if the hammer beatings fail? According to Hovind, God will kill me. As regular readers know, I am seriously ill. I am on the sort side of life. I don’t expect to die today, tomorrow, or next week. But, a reading of the tea leaves of my life reveals that the battery in the Big Ben clock by my bedside is slowly losing power. Someday, it will tick, tick, tick, and stop. When I eventually die, Evangelical apologists, zealots, and critics will point to my death as God settling the score with me.

this was your life

According to Hovind, after I die I will face the judgment of God: a Jack Chick tract, This Was Your Life, accounting of my life. On that day, Jesus will say to me, ” Not bad, Bruce, not bad. Say three hail Christopher Hitchens and then enter into the joy of the Lord. And with that, I will move into the mansion next door to the shack Jesus built for Hovind.

Let me say thanks to Kent Hovind for encouraging me in my faith. 🙂 See you soon in Heaven, Kent! 🙂

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Why Have Evangelicals Changed Their Minds About the Separation of Church and State?

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wall of separation of church and state

My slogan’s “Jesus, guns, and babies.”

Jesus because that’s our First Amendment right. It’s the right to worship Jesus Christ freely. It’s why we have a country. Don’t talk to me about separation of church and state. Church and state was written because the state has no business in our church. But we are the church. We are the church, and we run the state, and Georgia’s sovereign, and we’re running the state with Jesus Christ first.

— Kandiss Taylor, a Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate

I was part of the Evangelical church for fifty years, primarily as an Independent Baptist and later as a non-denominational Christian. While my theology evolved and changed over the years, one belief stayed with me from childhood to today: the separation of church and state; that there is a wall between religion and government, a wall that must never, ever be breached. As a young preacher, my pastors and professors taught me the importance of this wall. I carried this belief into the ministry. I strongly believed that church and state were two separate spheres, both ordained by God. As a pastor, I stayed out of the government’s business, and I expected the government to do the same with the churches I pastored. When the government tried to stick its nose in our business, I forcefully pushed back. I thought it important to not only defend the wall of separation between church and state, but also to make sure it was maintained and, if need be, repaired. And here’s the thing, every one of my ministerial colleagues believed the same. We believed that societal transformation came from winning souls. Most preachers maintained a strict separation between their personal politics and their theology. While I would preach on social issues, I always did so from a theological perspective. While most of the people I pastored were Republicans (if they voted at all), some of them were Democrats or Independents (especially in churches with union members). Did I ever cross the line and politick from the pulpit? Yes, but as a rule, I kept my partisan politics out of my preaching. (I was a staunch Republican for twenty-five years. In 2000, I left the Republican Party, voting Democrat for the first time.)

Here we are fifty years later . . . many Evangelical preachers no longer believe in a strict separation of church and state. Some even say that there is no such thing as the separation of church and state; that Christians have a duty to reclaim America for Jesus and establish the Bible as the law of the land — a Christian form of sharia law. What changed?

Over time, Evangelicals learned that just saving souls wasn’t going to effect the moral and political changes they wanted. So they turned to raw political power to achieve their goals, and in doing they sold their souls for bowls of pottage. Starting with the Moral Majority in the 1980s and moving to the plethora of theocratic parachurch organizations today, Evangelicals are using the power of the state to force people to conform to their religious beliefs. Since 2015, Evangelicals have abandoned all pretense, sacrificing ethics and morality on the altar of political expediency and power. (Just look at their unapologetic support of pathological liars Donald Trump and Herschel Walker.) Left to their own devices, Evangelicals will use any means necessary, including violence and bloodshed, to establish their corrupt version of the Kingdom of God on earth. One needs to only look at the January 6, 2021 Insurrection to see this played out in real time. Numerically, Evangelicalism is dying, but they now control the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, and for this reason, we must see them as an existential threat to our democracy. Make a list of your top ten bat-shit crazy Republicans. What do they all have in common? All of them are Christians. Most are Evangelicals, and the rest are conservative Catholics. At every level of government, Evangelicals now have control. The wall of separation of church and state, in their minds, is a misunderstood relic from the eighteenth century; a relic that has no relevance today.

So what do we do? Is it too late? Have Democrats/liberals/progressives ceded ground that they cannot regain? Can we vote our way out of this mess? Is Civil War waiting in the wings? Are we watching the decline and destruction of American democracy?

I see the problem. I see how we got here. I am not sure, however, we can reclaim what has been lost. Has cancer been spreading for decades in our society, and now it is so far advanced that it is untreatable? Is there anything we can do to turn back the fascists at the gate? Or will none of this matter because Joe Biden and his fellow warmongers, Republican and Democrat alike, have brought war to our shores?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce, is There Anything Positive You Can Say About the IFB Church Movement?

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ifb

Recently, a reader asked me two questions about the IFB church movement. My answers are below.

Would you say that the vast majority of the IFB church members, pastors, and the evangelists are nice and friendly people?

Generally, human beings are nice and friendly. My MAGA neighbors are decent people. When I see them in public, we politely speak to one another. We might even chit-chat for a bit at a basketball or football game or at the grocery store or a local restaurant. I am, by nature, winsome and polite, even towards people with whom I have political, theological, and philosophical disagreements. Humans are social beings, so it generally serves our best interests to get along with one another.

The problem, of course, comes in the public space where competing worldviews are vying for preeminence. The key, for me at least, is to challenge bad beliefs and practices while still having a modicum of respect for those I disagree with. This is not easy; sometimes, it is impossible.

The IFB church movement is a dangerous cult, one that caused untold heartache and harm. While there are certainly degrees of harm within the movement, the fact remains that IFB beliefs and practices cause psychological harm, and, at times, physical harm. Thus, it will be a good day when the IFB church movement draws its last breath and dies (the same can be said for all Fundamentalist religions).

As I mentioned in a previous post, there is something about IFB beliefs that breeds hatred, arrogance, and nastiness. I have received countless emails, social media messages, and blog comments from IFB adherents over the past fifteen years. Rare is the person who can play well with others. Rare is the person who treats me decently or shows me a modicum of respect. What should I make of this fact? There are too many such people for them to be outliers, so there must be something about IFB beliefs and practices that turn out people like this.

Throughout your time in the IFB church movement, is there anything positive you can say about the IFB movement?

Generally speaking, I enjoyed my time as an IFB pastor. I appreciated my commonality and closeness with fellow IFB church members and colleagues in the ministry. The vast majority of the people I pastored were good people, But, again, I also pastored a number of people who were narrow-minded bigots and haters of anyone and everything different. I was one such person, for a time. I pastored more than a few people who were narcissists and sociopaths; humans who were, in every way, bad people. The question I still have is, what part IFB beliefs and practices played in making these people into who they became? Are there IFB theological and social beliefs that drive aberrant behavior? Absolutely. Unfortunately, changing these behaviors requires abandoning fiercely held beliefs. And knowing the IFB church movement as I do, that ain’t going to happen.

Remember, the IFB church movement is a cult. I’ve interacted with many IFB adherents over the years; people who deeply love God, but viewed their churches in an increasingly negative light. I encourage such people to seek out gentler, kinder expressions of faith; places where their humanity will be affirmed and they will be genuinely loved. Sadly, the IFB church movement is hard to get away from, both physically and psychologically. The former requires will, and the latter often requires professional counseling. I applaud anyone who successfully breaks free.

As I answered these questions, I wondered if there were unstated statements/questions lurking behind them. Unfortunately, this person used a fake email address to contact me. Jesus, am I really that “scary”?

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

How I Know Victor Justice is a Calvinist and Other Sundry Thoughts

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six point calvinist

An Evangelical man using the pseudonym Victor Justice continues to leave comments on this site and send me emails. If you are not familiar with Justice, please read Victor Justice: The Cancer Spreading in Evangelical Christianity. Over the weekend, Justice sent me the following email (all spelling and grammar in the original):

Little Bruce,

You are truly a pathetic, lazy slob with a reprobate mind. When I read the vulgar things that you write here, I have no doubt that you never loved GOD Almighty…never experienced regeneration through the precious blood of the LORD Jesus Christ!

Preaching was the easiest way for you to get the attention you craved. You pastored exclusively in “one pastor rule” settings that fed your oversized ego. You should have (if you were actually saved) been in churches that had a plurality of Elder rule. This biblical form of church governance is far more likely to smoke-out heretics, lunatics, and craven, egomaniacal termites like yourself.

It’s quite obvious that you’re OCPD and your piss-poor attitude have destroyed your satanic blog. Little Bruce has to be in CONTROL, Little Bruce has to prescreen every comment, Little Bruce can only allow the most retrograde, degenerates, sycophants, haters, and trolls to make comments! So now you have an echo chamber of maladjusted riff raft conversing with one another, instead of a robust forum of ideas and opinions. Does this sound familiar to you, boy?

You’ve ruined EVERYTHING that you ever touched, every church you’ve ever pastored, every normal relationship that you’ve ever been involved in. My humble advice is for you to just sit down and shut up for once in your miserable existence! Everything that you touch—wilt’s away and dies.

Most sincerely,

I have heard from a plethora of Victor Justices over the past fifteen years. Along with Justice, I am currently getting emails, social media messages, and blog comments from men such as Revival Fires, Daniel Kluver, and Dr. David Tee (who mainly writes blog posts about me). While these so-called Christians are my latest hemorrhoids, they are not the only ones I have dealt with over the years. Such people come with the territory.

By far, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) adherents are the most hateful, nastiest people I deal with. Not all of them, of course, but enough of them to conclude that the IFB church movement has an outsized number of people who aren’t good people. Another group that seems to produce meanspirited followers is the Evangelical Calvinist movement. Victor Justice is one such person.

While Justice never claims the Calvinist moniker, his writing reveals his Calvinistic theology. Note the Calvinist buzzwords Justice uses: reprobate, regeneration, plurality of elders rule. Ding! Ding! Ding! One of John Calvin’s boys is in the house. I can spot Calvinists from a mile away, much as I can IFB adherents. This information about Justice goes a long way in explaining why he is so hateful and nasty. In his mind, I am a reprobate — someone whom God has turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Justice views my life through this paradigm, thus he sees no need to treat me kindly or with respect. I am just a “dead” human being waiting in the anteroom of Hell, awaiting final judgment and eternal punishment.

I have long believed that many of my critics put me in a special category of unbelievers: those undeserving of respect, kindness, and decency. Justice extends this ill-treatment to my wife, Polly, and our family. Evidently, if I am a reprobate everyone in my family is a reprobate. Justice even extends this further to the readers of this blog — even though many of them are Christians. It is safe to conclude, then, that there is some sort of rot in Justice’s mind that has robbed him of the ability to be a decent human being to anyone except people who believe as he does.

Let me conclude by correcting several of Justice’s errant opinions about me.

First, two of the churches I pastored had a plurality of elders. Evidently, even after allegedly reading most of my blog, Justice missed the fact that I was the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas. Community, a Calvinistic Baptist congregation, had a plurality of elders. That said, having a plurality of elders cures nothing. Even when a church has multiple elders, one man typically is the elder who runs the show. One need only look at John MacArthur’s church to see how this plays out in real life. (The reasons for this are many, but I don’t intend to address them today.)

Second, I loved the Lord with all my heart, soul, and might for most of my life. This fact is incontrovertible. Only those who are hellbent on trying to discredit or marginalize me say the things Justice does in his emails. Further, my lived life proved the truth of my claims. Just ask Polly, our six children, friends, or former parishioners. You will find a few people with an axe to grind, but everyone else will admit that I was a devoted follower of Jesus Christ; that I dedicated my life to building churches, winning souls, preaching the gospel, and teaching God’s people. These people may grudgingly admit this, knowing it raises theological problems for them, but if they are honest, they will say, “Bruce Gerencser was a Christian.” As a Christian family member once said upon hearing of my loss of faith, “if Butch (a family nickname) is not a Christian, nobody is.” I had my frailties and faults. I “sinned,” but the bend of my life was towards holiness.

Third, I am not sure what Justice means when he says I “have destroyed my Satanic blog.” In what way? Thousands of people read my blog. This site will yet again pass one million page views this year. I have given numerous interviews this year, with more planned in the coming months. So, by every metric, my “Satanic” blog is doing just fine. All praise be to Lucifer. 🙂

Fourth, Justice decries that I won’t let him say whatever he wants on this site. Tough shit. Justice could have played by the rules as countless Evangelicals have done, but he chose not to. That’s on him, not me.

Justice will eventually slither into his hole never to be heard from again. But others will pick up where he left off. In doing so, they remind the readers of the blog why they are glad they left Evangelical Christianity.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Why Victor Justice, Derrick Thiessen, Daniel Kluver, and Revival Fires Don’t Really Believe and Practice the Bible

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bible

God says (according to Evangelicals):

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. (Matthew 17:16-20)

But the fruit of the Spirit is [present tense] love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. (Ephesians 4:29)

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. (Colossians 3:12)

Based on these Scriptures and others I can easily provide, Victor Justice, Revival Fires, Derrick Thiessen (also known as Dr. David Tee), and Daniel Kluver don’t really believe and practice the Bible. In fact, it can be argued that they are not Christians, at all.

Remember, God said it, I didn’t. 🙂

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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