“…I ain’t just telling my story, cause my life ain’t worth nothing if it ain’t giving God glory…”-Trip Lee …Give Him Glory
Purpose
I was born and raised an Oneness Pentecostal; I attended several churches in my life of Oneness affiliation. I will share my testimony in an effort to show primarily the grace of God in opening my eyes to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was an outpouring of God’s grace which enabled me to hold fast to the faith once for all delivered to the saints in lieu of following cleverly crafted stories, my emotions, and feelings all of which were easily mislead and held no substance.
How to handle the Bible…
I was born and raised an Oneness Pentecostal, I spoke in tongues when I was 10 and subsequently was baptized in a cattle trough not too long after. I was a firm believer in the supremacy of the United Pentecostal church due to its peculiar doctrines which made it distinct from other churches and denominations. From an early age I understood the Bible to be the word of God and saw from the “men of God” how to handle the text. They handled it in a way that I never saw any other book handled…all other books you read from cover to cover and it followed some sort of story line. But not this book it was more of a proof text and it seemed I just was not godly enough to handle it and find the secret spiritual meaning like the men I sat under mesmerized by their “messages”! So it was always that the preacher a.k.a, the man of God or the anointed was the end all be all of the meaning of not just the Bible but anything! As a young man at a church we attended in Tulsa we were encouraged to participate in testimony service my best friend was the Pastors son and we would find all the “One God” verses in the Bible and highlight them and stand up and read them in church as part of our testimony. I remember one time I used Rev 4:2 and after reading it I said, “It says One was seated on the throne not three.” Years later to my chagrin this particular verse and how I handled it would play over in my mind.
Logistics
I remember having been troubled from around 13 years old with what I referred to as the question, “If God knows everything from the end to the beginning, and God does not want anyone to go to hell, why did God then make people He knew would go to hell?” The answer I got was always the same, “well, Johnny God gave us a free will and He is a gentleman and will not force Himself on anyone…does that help?” My answer was always the same, “If I am in hell and I just hit the millionth year and I know this is like a second compared to how much more time I will be here I will beg God please go back in time and violate my free will! Please my free will isn’t worth that much to me for me to be here!” I remember one time I was saying this and I could just feel only a small part of the anguish I would likely feel in hell and I began to weep uncontrollably.
Perfection and Scare Tactics
Having been taught a sort of perfectionism which went as follows, “once you ‘get it’ you quit sinning” I resolved in my early adolescence to attempt to fulfill this and stop sinning in thought, word, and deed. If you remember those years in your life you know I picked an awful time to attempt this goal! I would be up in the front of the church repenting and all the while thinking about the pretty girls just a few feet away…I couldn’t even maintain purity in repentance! I remember many a “scare tactic” sermon where the preacher would say, “There is a young man here that you know if you don’t come up here and repent you will not have many more chances.” So there I would go crawling on my hands and knees in a very theatric fashion to the front of the church. And while it made for dramatic church, it failed to make a changed heart. I heard all kinds of scare tactic messages one of my favorite was in Tulsa the preacher said, “there was a young man who did not heed the voice of the Lord to come to the altar in repentance and as he was leaving the church an unpiloted F-15 crash landed right on top of him killing him instantly.” I’ve heard how “God killed” a lady in town who opposed the local Oneness Pentecostal Church because the preacher prayed, “Lord save her or kill her.” I’ve heard the preacher call down cancer on people who were living in sin. As I look back all my dramatic reactions was my fear of eternal hell being leveraged against me. I have given up heirloom jewelry, “testified” publically about my sins over the P.A., and even broken my secular and Christian c.d.’s in front of a shouting congregation to get the “victory.” (That was an especially awkward moment for both I and the youth pastor who gave me the Christian c.d’s as an alternative to the worldly music I was listening to frequently.) So as I tired of all the back and forth repentance and worldliness then repenting and being the constant church spectacle, I resolved to just give up on church and have some fun. My thought went like this, “well, I’m going to hell anyways I might as well go out with a bang!” And I nearly did on several occasions, from accidental overdoses to near alcohol poisoning, to several nearly fatal drunken mistakes; I was having the time of my life! Not at all! My life was in shambles so I started going to other churches representing other denominations but I had drilled into my mind so often that the other churches were, “dead, dull, dry, and boring” that I never fully gave them a listen.
T-R-O-U-B-L-E
The further I quaked in terror of God it took more and more chemicals for me to offset the horror, it was not long before my hedonism caught up with me and I found myself in serious trouble. To my astonishment the Oneness Pastor interceded for me and got me a major reprieve and I came back to the church and of course there was the dramatic reappearance which had the church shouting and pulling for me. They really were displaying kindness and mercy to me I was indebted to their graciousness! I do feel personally as if the pastor really demonstrated the love of Christ to me during those times and also in times after that as well. If you sir are reading this I hope the best for you and your family and I am truly thankful for all you did for me and my family… Subsequently I immersed myself in Christianity the only type of Christianity I knew about…Oneness Pentecostalism.
Trouble of a different sort…
I decided on a lark of zealous enthusiasm to “discover why I believed what I believed.” So I got my mom’s copy of “The Oneness of God” by David K. Bernard and I began to devour it, but when I got to the section about his answering the troubling passages and particularly John 17:5 I was astonished at his answer. So astonished and horrified was I that I felt as if I was suddenly holding a dread serpent by the tail and I threw the book across the room in a heap. It lay crumpled against the wall for quite some time before I ventured to pick it up again. The comment that caused the reaction was “In John 17:5 Jesus prayed, “O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” Again, Jesus spoke of the glory He had as God in the beginning and the glory the Son had in the plan and mind of God. It could not mean that Jesus pre-existed with glory as the Son. Jesus was praying, so He must have been speaking as a man and not as God. We know the humanity did not pre-exist the Incarnation, so Jesus was talking about the glory the Son had in the plan of God from the beginning.”-David K. Bernard the Oneness Of God Chapter 8 The preexistence of Jesus
Jesus was just a plan?! This was like the rug being pulled out from under me I was disgusted, absolutely nauseous. So I noticed a lot of the passages that Mr. Bernard had to explain (away) were in the gospel of John so I began to read through the gospel of John and I was quickly running head-long into a different God then I had ever been taught about and this God was much more awesome and amazing. This God has a Son whom he sent from heaven and the Son was going to send the Spirit who seemed from the text to be a person in His own right, not some force that compelled us to behave erratically. This was a much fuller and complex and grandiose God then I ever cared to dwell on in my mind. I began to tell my Oneness family members, “There is something to Jesus being the Son of God!” So much so did I dwell on this that I was told I was losing my mind, and another thing that troubled me was how often Jesus was referred to as the Son of God in the Bible and how we never called him the Son of God! I began to notice even an affinity for trying not to refer to him as the Son of God, I began to see things such as quickly reading through passages in the pulpit that had reference to the Son of God or even misquoting the texts. For instance I heard by more than Oneness teacher this jewel, “For God so loved the world that he came down himself…”
I began to be convinced that we were not in keeping with the Scriptures so I went and told the Pastor that I was having trouble calling Jesus the Father and that to me he was the Son of God not the Father or the Holy Spirit. This sparked an impromptu sermon on the Oneness and as I was listening I was checking what was being said with the text of Scripture and suddenly the preacher tapped on my Bible and said into the microphone, “Put that up and listen to me.” From that point on I was having trouble with the Oneness and it was not long after that point that another problem arose.
The “P” word
Another trouble began to brew this was an older problem resurfacing remember when I was talking about the question? “If God knows everything from the end to the beginning, and God does not want anyone to go to hell, why did God then make people He knew would go to hell?” Well Romans chapter 9 happened. And much like the incident with the Oneness of God book; the Bible went flying across the room when I understood the Bibles explanation to my question. The Bibles answer was that God predestined those whom he chose to save before the foundation of the world and the rest he left to harden in their sins to their damnation. In this instance I came crawling in a flood of tears in repentance back to the Bible because after all there is no arguing with God isn’t that part of the revelation in Romans chapter 9?
(To Be Continued)
Growing in grace
Feeling obligated to stay at the church I was at due to many circumstances not least of which was the way the Pastor helped and was helping me at the time, I made it my goal to grow in Christ and be a benefit where I could. I had at this point made up in my mind that Oneness theology had most likely misunderstood Trinitarian theology and vice versa. In my mind at the time as long as you called Jesus ‘God’ you are probably okay. And besides I was at this time still convinced of the so called ‘plan of salvation.’ I now know this as the “water and spirit plan of salvation.” I was convinced a person still had to speak with tongues and I was growing to accept the charismatics as achieving this in spite of their “easy believeism” soteriology. And I began to believe if the “wrong” things were spoke over you in baptism that God was not going to send you to hell for it. Also I began to think of the standards as mostly mans opinions and not necessary to get salvation or to keep salvation but to live in gratitude because of salvation. But for the most part I just kept the good parts of the sermon and chucked the questionable stuff and was content to get the bulk of my spiritual nourishment from reading the Bible.
The Book
If there ever was a book that caused more problems than the Bible I have yet to hear of its existence! The Bible can divide families, churches, and friends. The Bible as the old famous saying goes is an anvil that has worn out many hammers. I brought my hammer to its pages in the unsanctimonious act of making one verse trump another verse, something in which the ultimate author of course never intended! It all started with my mishandling the Bible in a way I have seen done growing up that is to highlight only the passages you like or that speaks to a certain of your pet doctrines. I got out the highlighter and began finding all the passages in the Bible that spoke of the following topics: one God, baptism, Holy Spirit, and Salvation in general. It was going through the gold mine of Romans when I got to chapter 10 where Paul writes, “8But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; 9That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.” Romans 10:8-10 KJV
I said in my heart, “I will make this verse subservient to Acts 2:38.” And I wrote in the margin as follows, “Remember who these letters are written to not sinners but those who are saved by the apostles doctrine.(Acts 2:38)” And before the ink dried I felt the most awful dread feeling come over me because I knew better and I knew I had violated Gods majestic word. So I got the white out and covered that over and wrote, “This is a vital key to salvation, a part of the apostles doctrine (Acts 2:42) v. 8 says, this is the word which we preach.” Now this may not seem like much to you but to me it was a moment of truth to see whether or not the Scriptures would be regarded highly or put below my agenda. I can only be grateful to God for the path He by His Spirit lead me down as opposed to the trail I had blazed for myself.
This however was a profound moment the Scriptures ceased being a disconnected set of proof texts and became a connected story line beginning with the beginning and progressing through Gods story. I found the Bible was full of arguments, and rationalizations of the truth of God and His workings amongst sinful men. The Bible became a fascinating source of life…I wanted to put one in everyone’s hands and ask them, “Have you read this thing?”
Preaching Dreams
The Pastor began to preach his dreams, not his visions he acquired in his sleep but rather his goals and ambitions for the church. Now this had happened in the past on occasion but the direction it was heading suddenly got more and more focused on obtaining a 1200 member auditorium and increasingly the Sunday evening services were devoted to the services where there was no message only Pentecostal calistinics around the altar. As I grew in the Bible and it grew in me I found the normal Pentecostal behaviors and emphasis as an exercise in missing the point. It seemed as if we had purposefully and deliberately preached and portrayed the anti-gospel! With every additional sermon pep-rally, and distraction from the text of Scripture I felt as if I was dying spiritually.
As providence would have it I was confronted by the Pastor and he asked me if I believed that the United Pentecostal way was the only way to be saved, I said no. Then he asked me if I was still a United Pentecostal and I said again, no. He asked me to write up how I differed from the U.P.C.I (United Pentecostal Church International), after much deliberation and council I determined not to do that but to write up my faith statement*. Upon review it was clear to all involved I was no longer a United Pentecostal.
*Faith statement as written except for the original disclaimer and references to whom it was written is included at the conclusion of this document.
Refuge
I found my refuge in Christ and though it cost me dearly and painfully I had and have Christ as my shelter. Currently my wife and I attend Springs of Grace Bible Church in Tulsa, Ok. There we have found refuge in the Bible as taught verse by verse book by book I have seen a great result in both of our lives. As we grow in grace in fellowship in the Lord Jesus Christ I challenge you to reflect on this witness as prompting you to seek your refuge in Christ and not in the comfort of the familiar, whatever apart from the true Jesus Christ of Scripture that may entail.
Summary
Jesus Christ the Son of God is the Shepherd of our souls and he was sent from heaven, not to do his own will but the will of him who sent him. And that will is to save those whom the Father gave him to save, and he will save to the uttermost his sheep no matter what false shepherd he finds them following. He found me trying to save myself and he saved me and is saving me, where will he find you? I pray that he does not have to reach as low to find you as he did for me but if he does that is more glory for his great names sake!
Thanksgiving
For practical purposes I could not tell you the whole story but I would be remiss and a fool if I did not thank the following people for their part in my story. If you find that I did not share your part of the story please understand that I very much would have loved to but there is circumstances preventing me from doing that great honor. God bless you for understanding.
Thank you to first, always first to Jesus Christ for doing your Fathers will and for giving me the Holy Spirit! Thank you to my wife whom I love; my rib, my treasure whom I sadly don’t treasure as I ought, I thank God for how kind and loving you have been to me! Thank you to my Mom for praying and demonstrating a Bible loving God centered life as a fragrant offering to the Lord. Thank you to my Father for making me go to church and be honest with me about life and God. Thank you to my Brother for loving me at my worst times and calling for people to pray for me at my lowest times. I know we will meet again; I will bow with you before the King. Thank you to my Mother-In-Law for the late night talks, for putting up with me even to this day, and for being so honest it is sos refreshing to be around! Thank you to my Father-In-Law for all the kindnesses you have bestowed on me through the years in helping me fix nearly everything that breaks and for giving me your beloved and beautiful daughter. Thank yout ot my Brother-In-Law for all the ways you have helped me and have made yourself available through out the years. Thank you to my grandparents and grandparents-in-law uncles and aunts and cousins for all your prayers and love and devotion. I must say I have been always impressed by the child like faith I have seen exhibited by my grandparents! Thank you Gary Mahan and family for befriending me and being better friends then I deserve! Thank you Mike Fisher for being a ground and a help for me during all of this!
Thank you to Jack Voss and family for all you have done for my family and me, I will never forget and am always grateful. Thank you to David O’Dowd and family and Barry Noll and family and the Duncan’s and all my friends and family in Christ at Christ Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I am so grateful for your showing a young man people who really love Christ and live out your faith despite the warnings I received to the contrary. Thank you to Joe Blankenship and Andrew Moss for preaching the word in season and out of season, and giving my family a refuge in Christ. Thank you to Springs Of Grace Bible Church in Tulsa, Ok for being a veritable spring of grace!
Thank you to the countless Christian host who I have benefited from and been given so much from your books and sermons and examples! I truly cannot wait for to see the great cloud of witnesses and bow together before He who sits on the throne and the Lamb.
Disclaimer for this document {not original disclaimer],
Why have your own written faith statements? How presumptuous! Don’t you know greater and more learned and spiritual men have written far better?
Why?- The first faith statement I wrote was out of necessity to the situation, the others are to clarify to myself my own articulation of the Truth of God’s Word, lest there again arises a specific circumstance warranting such an endeavor.
How presumptuous indeed if I reject the most awesome and wonderful Creeds and Confessions which undoubtedly great men of God have produced, I do not. Nor do I in any sense place my pathetic scribblings on par with those formative writings such as, The Apostles Creed, The Solas, The Nicene Creed, The Athanasian Creed, The Council of Chalcedon, The Westminster Confession and Catechisms, The Belgic Confession, The Heidelberg Catechism, The Helevetica Confession, The Canons of Dort, The Council of Orange, and some more contemporary ones such as This we Believe, The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, and The Cambridge Declaration just to name a few. This by no means is an incorporation of every written creed eclectically and purposelessly; very serious discretion has been used to choose those that I best see Scripture agreeing with as a whole.
Again, this is for my personal growth and edification to enable me to clarify to myself to be able to clarify to others the Gospel more clearly and humbly. This disclaimer is written for if in the outside chance you, whoever you may be, are reading this or for my own self when I become too senile to remember what I did and why I did it!
In Christ,
John Thulin
10/10/03
Note the following is the first statement of faith I had ever written it was done instead of a contrasting differentiating statement of faith opposed to the views of the United Pentecostal Church International of which I was born and raised and was once a member. The details of why this is written means a great deal as to the raison d’être of the document, but in this setting suffice to say there is a disclaimer that originally goes before it and it is not essential in this setting to have it shown. Nothing has been changed, except for the removal of the disclaimer and to whom it was primarily addressed.
My first ever written faith statement lacking only the original Disclaimer which explains why it was written particular to a somber and serious situation.
*I believe in One GOD, who is GOD the Father, and the Son of GOD the Lord
Jesus Christ, and without exception the Holy Spirit, whose Deity is
unquestionable. I believe in the economic and essential work of the
Godhead in Sovereignty, Omni potency, as well as in creation,
redemption, and glory.
I believe that this GOD is Almighty over all,
inexplicably Sovereign, whose master plan is neither thwarted nor
dependent upon anyone or circumstances other then GOD. It is this
Sovereignty that predetermines all things from end to beginning, not
leaving things to run a “free” course apart from His boundaries and
limits, but all events happen just as He in His Sovereign decree
declared.
In thus believing also this GOD is assuredly Omnipresent
in cognition as well as in presence. He is also Omniscient so much so
that He does not just know all things but is all truth, which in turn is
absolute reality. He being these is undoubtedly the Omnificent source of
all things, asides from His essential self who is the Uncreated yet
Self-Sustaining One. Thus His Omnificent excellence has revealed Him as
the true and genuine center of not only true religion but also each and
every incidental happening He allows and permisses to His own glory.
This GOD has never nor never will subjugate Himself to anyone being less
then Himself, therefore it is GOD’s perfect and Sovereign will of which
He decreed before the onset of any beginning that shall be performed and
final. In touching His Sovereign predetermined council, all that has
ever happened, all that ever will happen and all that is currently
happening is GOD permissed and ordained, some authored however some not,
such as GOD made Satan to and knowing that he shall sin but not
authoring the sin.
I believe in GOD who created not because He was lonely,
nor for any type of experimentation. He created the whole of created
order primarily to bring Him alone every form of glory through every
end-all things pointing to the various attributes of His perfect
character. Whether they be Fatherhood, love, mercy, grace, kindness, and
tolerance: or even Ultimate Judge, justice, wrath, anger, and
retribution-these attributes and many other displayed in perfection all
reveal His glorious Holy Self.
I believe in the total depravity of man, which came upon
all men due to one mans sin and willful disobedience in the Garden of
Eden under GOD’s conditional probation. Adam, the reason for our sinful
nature was the representative of all men, thus not only did his
sinfulness become ours but also his punishment was passed as we became
spiritually dead and in his likeness and in a dualistic affront to GOD.
Therefore as Scripture attests to, sinfulness and guilt is proven in a
person’s first sin, rather then sin and a sinful nature developing and
becoming actualized with a person’s first sin. Thus man is born guilty
and in need of a cure and a hope from birth with no inherit innocence or
righteousness nor a capacity to cultivate any type of righteous works
that would please GOD. Man is born spiritually dead and unreceptive to
GOD’s word, will, or invitation, in and of himself. To the natural man
the things and invitation of GOD through Christ is foolishness and
despised, therefore without a first cause of conviction from the Holy
Spirit all men would lead themselves into eternal damnation, utterly
rejecting GOD and not seeking Him in His only established way, Jesus
Christ. Thus it is the Holy Spirit’s role in our hard hearted lives to
open our eyes to Scripture which opens our eyes to Christ for the Holy
Spirit will not promote Himself, but Jesus Christ.
Therefore it is entirely of GOD who calls according to
His purpose, selecting those who He foreknew before the world’s
foundation in foreknowledge, to predestine them to conform to the image
of His Son, and those that He called before in a foreknowing predestined
fashion He called them out in their sinfulness to accept the gospel and
receive justification only through the meritorious {redemptive},
vicarious {propitiating}, substitution {reconciliation}, gracious and
only acceptable sacrifice which was the atoning death of Jesus Christ on
the Cross of Calvary. This everlasting justification is promised as such
by GOD’s guarantee to glorify those He called, and those He called come
to Christ and those that come to Christ He will in no wise cast them
out. This justification is by GOD’s grace, through the blood of Christ
and received by faith alone.
A person who admittingly has nothing to cling to or to
present to GOD as righteousness, one who is truly lost can find
themselves looking at the worst horror facing a Just GOD. Thus the
message of Jesus Christ is truly good news because facing the most grim
and horrible reality of no hope, a great relief and transformation
occurs when Christ is plainly placed before them as absolute hope and an
unbelievably tangible salvation. Thus they receive not their rewards
which would be eternal death, but grace which is eternal life when they
call on the name of Jesus Christ, which in so doing not merely a title
nor a formula nor a magical incantation is called on but the real and
living Son of GOD who only can save them and in whom our hope is to be.
This is not to institute an easy believe-ism or a no Lordship faith in
Christ. For when Christ is truly trusted to be our only salvation and
righteousness before GOD, then the works that GOD set apart for the
believer before the foundation of the world are to be administered
stemming from a love from GOD and for GOD and to man. As James proves in
His epistle that a faith without works is dead to the admonition of
those who declared they had the faith and had not to show or do good
works James refutes this as declaring to them to show them their faith
without works and James would show them his faith with works! Therefore
the surface appearance of contradiction between Romans 3:28 and James
2:24 is not James attacking the theology that Paul taught but two
inspired men supporting a living productive trust in Christ admonishing
two vastly different wrong views of salvation. Scripture affirms that
mere uncommitted lip service to GOD doesn’t save- neither does any works
of righteousness or obedience we do, faith in Christ in Him resolutely
and totally and solely is our chief end of imputed righteousness. Thus
those who truly trust Christ, who were truly called out and elected to
be saved will do the works of righteousness that GOD has foreordained,
but not as being their salvation but only mildly proving their saving
faith in Christ. This is the chief end of the sinner to see and always
believe that he cannot save Himself in any way-He merely accepts the
gift of faith in Christ given by GOD: all works of salvation worked by
GOD, therefore we are resolutely able to concur that we are justified by
GOD’s grace, through the blood of Jesus Christ, and received by faith
alone.
Thus the Holy Spirit
works within the life of the believer a sanctifying life that is a life
lived in total and complete surrender and repentance and sole reliance
on Jesus Christ for salvation. Thus sanctification is a continual and
imperfect work else no more true believers would be capable of sin, this
is demonstratively a practical long work of grace that the Holy Spirit
works in the life of the believer, graciously the Sinless and
sin-despising Spirit of GOD stays with the believer and lives in them
despite their sin and leads them and teaches them further into a walk
with Jesus.
I believe in a day of judgment in which they that trust
in Christ will be tried by “fire” [whether literal or Christ's
scrutinous evaluation] to see if the works they affixed to the
foundation of Christ will be rewarded or destroyed on the basis of
motive, attitude, and obedience. However this is not to imply the Roman
Catholic lie of purgatory, nor a judgment for the maintenance or loss of
salvation, but to among other things persuade ourselves in the
admonition and the fear of the Lord. Those in this category are
unequivocally saved and shall have everlasting life as described by
Christ and the Holy Scriptures.
I believe also in the Day of Judgment for those who
scorned the Cross of Christ and placed all their trust in themselves and
anything less then Jesus Christ and Him crucified. These shall have the
books opened and see the impugnance of their works that they had hoped
in and with closed mouths shall agree that GOD who judges them is Just,
Right and True. They shall see that they themselves sent themselves to =
eternal punishment for their lack of righteousness, and primarily lest
all should meet this fate for their rejection of Jesus Christ. In thus
believing it is necessary to declare that Christ alone is the final
judge being in and of Himself men’s judge before they died based on
their relationship with Him. Therefore even should any of these stated
things lack from any life such as doctrine it is not adherence to
doctrine that saves but only Christ saves and brings all into a full
knowledge of their King and Priest.
Christ My Only Hope Feed
