The Church Without a Name, (Out of Print)
First Edition published in 1990; Revised 2nd Edition published in 2004
By Kathleen (Munn) Lewis (First Edition by David Stone, a pseudonym of Kathleen Lewis)
Why I Wrote My Book
My husband and I were born and raised in professing homes. My family has been professing for 5 generations. When our two oldest children were teens, we noticed that the workers were not teaching the Bible. They were manipulating people with the Bible. We became concerned that the drinking and moral problems we saw in some other professing families were going to affect our own children unless the workers taught the need to obey God’s Word. I asked the workers about some kind of teaching session for the teens but instead the worker said, “Knowledge of scripture isn’t necessary. What they need is revelation. Knowledge is bad, wisdom is good. If you are a good example, your children will obey.” I knew that some of the most serious minded professing parents had the worst kids in town. I knew there was more to serving God than just being a good example. After my suggestion the workers began preaching at my husband and me in every gospel and fellowship meeting. They would come to our house warning me about the evils of knowledge. It became funny. They wouldn’t preach good morality to the teens but they would teach the adults to beware of scriptural knowledge. Hello??? All of a sudden my antenna went up. There was a hidden agenda. But we didn’t what it was or why it was there.
The Bible is clear that knowledge of the Bible is important. God said “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” 2 Peter 1:5 says to “add to your virtue, knowledge, and to knowledge, self control.” Self control grows out of scriptural knowledge through the power of the Holy Spirit. Faith comes by hearing and understanding the Word of God. Jesus said if we continue to study the Word that we were His disciples indeed. First and Second Timothy and other epistles continually stress the importance of knowing God’s true Word and true gospel and pure doctrine. Peter, John and Paul said that believers must guard the message with their lives and spread the message even if it meant their own death. Knowledge of scriptures has first priority in a believer’s life. But the workers mock people who know the scripture, calling them “the wise and prudent.” The workers want professing people to stay scripturally ignorant and childlike.
For five years, I worked hard to figure out why the workers talked about the Bible, appeared to be so interested in what it said, yet they didn’t do the practical things that it teaches. There was no outside information about the workers’ system. Libraries and bookstores are full of books on every other belief system in the world but nothing about the workers. At that time, we didn’t know about the book The Secret Sect. It was published in Australia. People in the US and Canada had no way of finding it unless by chance they knew someone who had a copy or happened to see the tiny ad put in a few newspapers across the country.
I am the curious type, a reader and a mom on a quest to protect her children. I began teaching the kids about God and His Word at home. In the process, Don and I and our three children found God and were born again. It took five whole years to unlearn all the unbiblical things that the workers had taught us. And that process was filled with fear, frustration, emotional pain, tears and rejection from our professing families and friends.
There is a huge difference between what the Bible teaches and what the workers teach. William Irvine was a Mason for over fifty years. What he taught was warped Masonry and a bit of Roman Catholicism disguised as Christianity. He didn’t even want to be called a Christian. He taught his followers to say they were “professing.” He and other workers preached against Christian doctrines, Christian faith in the Blood of Christ and even against the God of the bible. They conditioned us all to believe the exact opposite of what Christians believe. If someone asked a professing person if he was a Christian, he would say, “I try to be.” Any Christian knows that answer is a dead give away that the person has NOT been born again and he isn’t a Christian. No one can “try” to be a Christian.
Irvine redefined the most important words of the Bible to mean something else, just slightly different from the real meaning, sometimes the total opposite of its meaning. His followers have continued to believe the wrong definitions and have taught a few more of their own. The world system of the workers is the same pretty much everywhere, yet the people in it believe all kinds of different things. It is a rare thing to find Biblical beliefs among them.
The Bible says that the entire world will be judged by God’s Law. Humans are under a curse due to the sin of Adam which entered the human race when Eve and Adam disobeyed God. We are all under the wrath of God. The abbreviated form of God’s Law is the 10 Commandments, handed down to Moses in a supernatural act of God. God said that He wrote His law in the hearts of man, but they disobeyed those laws.
Jesus explained the Law by saying that we must obey these laws externally and internally as well. God demands total purity, inwardly and outwardly. We all know that we are guilty. That guilt is depressing. It causes us to worry and fear death and God. But do the workers teach people those laws or that concept of original sin? No. The early workers mocked the Ten Commandments, acting as if they were too easy or things that only Catholics respected and taught. That was the Old Law which they put aside. Instead, they preached what they called the “Standards of the Kingdom,” the unwritten laws and prejudices of Irvine’s and his followers. These changed from one time and place to another and were different depending on who was in charge. It took new professing people a long time to figure out what the rules were. Only people born into the group really knew all the strange attitudes and rules.
Thou shalt not meet in buildings. Thou shalt not have a name. Thou shalt not listen to preachers unless they are homeless and go two by two and follow us. Thou shalt not have radios or televisions. Thou shalt not dance. Women shall not wear pants, nail polish, cosmetics, jewelry or cut their hair. Thou shalt not read Christian books. Thou shalt not become educated. Thou shalt not have Christian friends. Thou shalt not attend movies. Thou shalt not do anything unless we give you permission, etc. All you need to do is attend all the meetings, support the workers, obey their rules, ignore any discrepancies, and give your testimonies twice a week.
The Bible says that every human being will be sent to eternal hell for breaking God’s Law. But do the workers ever talk about sin or hell? No. I asked several workers why they rarely talked about sin or hell and they said they didn’t like to talk about negative things. They said the workers tried it once but it didn’t work. People kept right on sinning. Yes, professing people and the workers keep right on sinning; sinning against God and His Law and His Son. As for positive things, they don’t preach positive things either. And they don’t preach about heaven. They preach fables, unscriptural parables and allegories.
The Bible says unless we are born again, we will never enter heaven. But do the workers tell you how to be born again and how to have eternal life? No, instead they talk about “dying to self.” They say that you must be willing for meetings and for all their unwritten rules and to obey all the workers all the time. God had the decency to write down His Law but the workers refuse to publish their laws.
The Bible says that God is triune: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Do the workers teach this? No! The workers say that only the Father is God. They say that “Jesus is just a man who could have sinned” and “the Holy Spirit is an energy or force from God.” They say that Jesus came to teach us how to die to self as he did, so that we can be saved. They believe that Jesus came to start another religion and be the example preacher. They say that he was just an ignorant, uneducated man and all his followers were ignorant men, so we are to be ignorant also. The workers say that the Holy Spirit is weak and fearful and if we go to loud places around worldly people, the Holy Spirit will flee and leave us. If we don’t get to every meeting the Holy Spirit will leave us.
They do not worship God or praise His Holy Name. They do not worship Jesus or praise Him. They do not honor God for creating the universe because that was just a natural thing. They are only interested in spiritual things. They do not honor Jesus or the Holy Spirit, therefore they do not honor the Father either. They are idolatrous, having created a god in their own image, one that they can understand. They honor men instead of God.
The Bible says we can know if we have eternal life. The Bible says that eternal life is eternal, not temporary or fleeting. But the workers say we can’t know that we are saved until we die. They do not believe eternal life begins before death. What they offer is temporary and can be lost at any time if a worker decides that a person is unworthy or if a person asks too many questions. If the workers say so, you have lost out.
The Bible says that we must repent from sin and believe in Jesus and verbalize our faith in Jesus Christ to others. The Bible says that we must trust in His Blood sacrifice to pay for our sins. If we try to atone for our sins in any other way or disrespect His sacrifice by trying to pay for them with self effort we will die in our sins.
The workers say that people must repent of their former Christian faith and follow them instead. They say that we must give God our best; we must try our hardest, submit to the workers, deny ourselves, deny our humanity and personalities. The workers say our carnal personalities lead us to sin. They think that following the right example is what saves us. That is why there is so much pressure put on people to be good examples. They don’t worry about sin, they are more concerned with warning people against Christianity.
God said that we must worship Him in spirit and truth. But the workers say that reality is divided into two parts: the natural which is bad and the spiritual which is good. This is a Gnostic philosophy. They say God isn’t interested in our natural lives. But this isn’t true. We sin with our natural bodies because of the spiritual darkness within us. We cannot divide reality into two parts. God created it all, natural and spiritual. Truth affects natural and spiritual reality. We are in a spiritual warfare with spiritual enemies that are unseen. Jesus had to live a natural human life and die a natural human death in order to experience the natural wrath of God against us. Jesus took our punishment and gave us His righteousness. He paid the price so we could live in fellowship with a Holy God.
The Bible says that every believer is supposed to be willing to give all they are and have to God, or even to die in order to follow Jesus but the workers say that only the workers have to give up all. The Bible says that all Christians are supposed to share the gospel with others and lead them to Christ. But the workers say that only the workers can lead others to faith or impart the Spirit. The Bible says that all Christians are supposed to glorify God by doing good works of charity to the needy and helpless, to help widows and orphans. But the workers claim that they themselves are the real poor to whom all charity is to be given. They mock Christian charity by saying they don’t want a “loaves and fishes ministry.” But, Jesus, Paul, James and the other apostles and disciples taught the importance of meeting the natural needs of people.
Christ said that those who follow him should be willing to tell the world what they believe. If they are ashamed to tell others, then He will be ashamed of them. But the workers teach their followers to be secretive. They don’t want the public to know what they believe. In fact, professing people don’t even know what they believe and avoid the topic even when asked by their closest friends, relatives or neighbors. The workers don’t want the public to know where their meetings are. They hold their “gospel” meetings in the most unsavory places, Masonic halls, Oddfellows halls, Grange halls, funeral homes, Bingo halls, school gymnasiums. They are so proud to hold their Sunday morning meetings in the home. Houses are buildings. There is nothing intrinsically sacred about a house. Irvine just didn’t want to waste money on real estate that he could use for his own travel expenses and selfish needs. He didn’t want to be accountable or responsible for anything. So, he came up with the idea of home meetings.
The Bible didn’t give any commands one way or another about where to meet. Scripture shows that apostles and believers met in synagogues, the temple courtyard, on the seashore, in homes, in boats, out in the fields, on the mountains and hills. The workers move from place to place. They are often not in their fields when professing people need them for emergencies, death or counsel. They do not want their phone numbers or addresses given to very many people. The addresses given on the lists are often very far from where the workers actually are. Some workers are out of their field most of the year, traveling, resting or avoiding people. They don’t want the names or addresses of their followers to be published or given to different fields. Christians, on the other hand, will die for their faith. They open their doors to everyone, unbelievers and believers. Christian churches give their members church directories with all their addresses, phone numbers, pictures and pastor’s phone numbers. At this moment, around the world, Christians are dying in many countries every day because they openly proclaim their faith and their doctrines in the Name of Jesus. But the friends and workers hide their beliefs.
The workers preach false doctrines, a false gospel and a false God, a false Christ and a false Spirit. Professing people cannot be saved unless they know, believe and obey God’s Word through faith in Jesus Christ. They can’t be saved unless they know the Who God is, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The workers have confused people so badly that the friends and workers have all kinds of ideas about spiritual reality. The workers can’t agree on doctrines so they sometimes disfellowship people who ask too many questions. This is why they preach against knowledge of the Bible. They don’t want anyone to know anything. They don’t want anyone to talk about doctrine. Knowledge of doctrine would empty the meetings. Knowledge of doctrine would pose problems every time they stayed in someone’s home. When I was young, the workers mocked Christian doctrines openly. They would often require newly professing people to renounce their former faith or religious beliefs. They finally stopped doing that because it caused too many problems. Now they simply condition those beliefs out of everyone.
Our parents and most siblings are still professing. When we left meetings we tried to explain to them that what the workers teach is not true, but they wouldn’t listen. The workers confiscated every piece of information we gave them which explained our decision. I made up my mind that I would do everything I could to spread all the information I could that would force the workers to admit their history and what they really believe. If you really believe something, why hide it, unless it is something to be ashamed of? People shouldn’t have to waste as many years as we did, following blind leaders, false teachers and deceitful workers. Someone asked me if I would write a book that documented the workers’ doctrines. I tried to find someone else to write it, preferably a man. I felt it would be better if a man wrote such a book, or an exworker. But none of the men we knew at the time were interested in such a project.
When I wrote the book it was a challenge to the workers that if they disagreed with what I wrote, then they should publish what they believed was true. That was about 1989 and 1990. To this day, the workers have never come forward to admit what they believe. They know they can’t do it. They have had several meetings to decide what to do and they decided to say and do nothing. They recently held large workers conventions in which they pumped up everyone’s egos, stroked their aching backs and then sent them back to their fields as empty and ignorant as ever.
About the time we were planning to leave meetings, Grace Luxon loaned me the book, The Secret Sect. I had been told and assumed that it was full of lies. But to my amazement it documented everything that was so obviously true. It confirmed the same things I had heard in meetings and personal conversations with relatives and workers. I was disappointed because it didn’t really address the doctrinal, biblical errors taught by the workers. Mary Ann Schoeff, of Threshing Floor Ministries in Cheney, WA went to Enniskillen, Ireland in June, 1981 and brought back about 60 newspaper articles from the Impartial Reporter and Farmer’s Journal which documented the origin of Irvine’s secret society. In 1988, she gave them to me and I xeroxed them and put them in a spiral ring notebook so that people could read the originals for themselves. Presently those articles can be seen on the Telling the Truth website. Mary Ann had also collected many boxes of letters and notes written by workers from all over the world. At that time she was the all time expert on the workers’ secret society. And Fred and Ruth Miller of Kennewick, WA were the people who had imported The Secret Sect books and were distributing them via mail order, advertising with classified ads. Information was rare and it seemed that the main sources were only in the state of Washington. That is why it has taken so long for the facts to be made known to the rest of the world.
About a year after my first book was published the Luxons published their book Has the Truth Set You Free? And the Daniels published several books, Reflections, Reflected Truth, Reinventing the Truth. Lloyd Fortt wrote A Search for Truth. Research Information Services is headquartered in Bend, Oregon. Cherie Kropp of Oklahoma began collecting as much historical documentation as possible and put it all out there on the internet for the world to see. She has several unpublished books in waiting. Lynn Cooper wrote a great booklet titled The Church With No Name. Others waged an information campaign, distributing historical and doctrinal material to friends and workers. Still others started websites that helped many people find freedom in Christ. Every bit of work we have done has been of great value to other people. And each person in turn has helped countless others. The trickle has become a great flood. We receive letters, emails and phone calls from all over the world telling us horrendous stories of spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, sexual immorality among workers and leaders, child abuse, marital abuse, suicide, psychosis, terrible depression, nervous breakdowns, even a few murders and absolute confusion caused by Irvine’s system of errors.
Two other false beliefs, the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses were inspired by Masonry as well. William Irvine utilized some of their ideas, saying that Jesus is just a man, that his followers should spread the message going two by two and claiming that men must become LIKE Jesus. The Mormons and JWs utilize the same clichés that William Irvine used to quote. There are more similarities among the workers, Mormons and JWs that there are with true Christianity. All three groups teach or condition their followers to declare their faith in their leadership and cultic systems rather than in the Jesus Christ.
Our Creator gave us ultimate truth. Religion isn’t subjective. It isn’t just a matter of saying “What is good for you is okay for you and what is good for me is okay for me.” It has to be Truth or you are toast. My book isn’t about me and what I believe. It is about what the workers teach, why they teach it and how it affects people’s lives and a comparison with the literal understanding of scripture. I pray that more books will be written to tell the harm that has been done by Irvine’s fiction, allegories and deceit.
The workers’ system isn’t really a religion. The early workers often bragged about that fact. They said it is a way of life or a family. It isn’t really a church; it is a secret society, just like the Masons. It is a cult, classed by theologians as a pseudo Christian cult. It is mentally, spiritually and eternally harmful. Be warned. God is not mocked. Lying, deceiving and abusing people in the name of God leads to the pit of hell.
If people ever published how their lives were harmed by this group, the public would be shocked. I have been shocked. I was never abused or treated badly. I do not hold a grudge against anyone. I was once as blind as they are. At the time we left I had only heard rumors of problems. I didn’t personally know of any. Every time I read or hear a testimony of someone raised in an abusive professing home or about someone being molested or raped or seduced by a worker or elder, I grieve. As long as I live, I will do all I can to expose the workers’ beliefs. I want people to be free, to know God and find salvation. I want all those workers who are being used to bolster the egos and feather the nest of headworkers to be set free to live normal, well adjusted lives.
Kathy Lewis
Revised June 17, 2011