It was around 2014 when we started seeing untruth in the workers’ religion, even though, during our life things had come up that we disagreed silently about, or scripture did not make sense, based on what the workers were preaching.
Our son, Spencer, called one day, and we had a conversation that was the beginning of a real eye opening. He and his wife and two children had left the workers’ religion around 10 years prior. We endeavored to keep love strong and manifest, and open conversation. That day he told me my granddaughter Hailey had been baptized by their minister in the river near them. During the conversation, I mentioned that at least the workers sold all and gave their life, like Jesus asked.
Spence said, “No Mom they left all.”
I argued it a bit, with him telling him, “I read it with my own eyes.”
He stuck to his stance.
As soon as I hung up, I went and got our Strong’s Concordance out and began to look up the calling of the apostles. To my dismay, I found he was right, and every one of the apostles left all, did not sell all. The only place anyone was asked to sell all, was the rich young ruler who had a money problem. Jesus told him to get rid of the money and follow me. The apostles were standing right there and said, “Lord we have left all.”
Then, I began to frantically look up everything else we believed. I found that Jesus did not call one woman into the apostle ministry. It just was not safe for them and would have been very unreasonable in those days. Women can minister, just from their own homes.
Most of the apostles were married. John, who took Mary, Jesus” Mother into his own home, Cephas, who was Peter, Levi, who was Mathew, and even Judas Iscariot had a wife and kids and homes. Paul, the apostle, said, “Do I not have power to lead about a sister, or wife as Cephas and other of the apostles?”
I found so many rules were worker-made and not scriptural. Like the rule to not wear jewelry and to only wear a wedding band. Abraham’s servant took jewels to Rebecca. The workers’ rule is no dancing. David played and danced when he came back with victory. Some of them like Aquila, one of the seventy, had a tent-making business, and Paul worked for him at times. Paul said, “I labored with my own hands to not be a burden unto you.”
God does not change. Workers make rules concerning baptism, of waiting for long periods of time before they baptize you. They drill you on your spiritual life before they agree you can be baptized. In the Bible, the only requirement was belief, and it was done immediately. The hair thing was spoked by permission and not commandment.
You had to be baptized to partake of the bread and cup. You have to live on the right side of what the workers think and believe. Jesus passed it the last night he was alive to all the 12. Judas had already sold him; Peter was going to deny him that night, and Jesus knew it; Thomas was a doubter; James and John, the sons of thunder and more. It was not about their sin, but about who Jesus was paying the price for that sin. The workers take it away from some they don’t think worthy. Paul said, “Let a man examine himself.”
We hung on for three more years. We tried to share something that would be bread on Sunday morning, but we felt that Wednesday evening was supposed to be a Bible study, so if there was something there that was controversial and was where our thoughts were, we shared it. We could feel some of the people giving us the cold shoulder and getting very angry with us.
One Wednesday evening, the study was Acts 6 where they chose seven men who could help the apostles out so that they would be more free to preach. Jim, my husband, said if the workers did that, they would not be so weary, and would be more free to read and pray. It made this one lady so angry that she got up and preached about all the virtues of the workers for about ten minutes.
After the meeting was over, we shook hands and went to the car. After getting our seatbelts on, we turned toward each other and said at exactly the same time, “I am not going back.” And we did not. After having meetings in our home for 40 years, not one worker contacted us. One young lady that came to our Sunday a.m. meeting wrote and told us how much she missed us and our testimonies.
Now after five years, we are happy and at peace. We miss some of our old friends, but we are finding plenty of people that we can have fellowship with. We listen to a couple of pastors, have a once-a-month fellowship time in our home, and I am in a weekly women’s Bible study group. We love reading our Bibles, and now everything makes sense, and we can read it for the truth it is. Our two daughters still go to meeting but know the untruth. I think one of them is on the edge and is trying to make the decision to leave the meetings. The other one’s husband is still hooked in, but she also recognizes the untruth.
James & Tamara Kinman
May 2022