Some in the LA chapter called me a UBF man. I had once been proud of that moniker. Then I was ashamed of it. When I changed my mind however, people strangely forgot how gung-ho I was for the ways of UBF and talked to me as if I had not known the organization or its teachings at all.

So now, I have a lot of loss as baggage I feel like I’m carrying around. I would not dare to go into another church and tell anyone I was a Bible teacher for 15 years, that I had done daily bread and wrote page after page for how many years without missing a day, or that I was a Sunday messenger for 7 years without a break. I could not say so without adding “…in a cult” at the end. I was a Sunday messenger for 7 years in a cult. I was a Bible teacher and leader in a cult.

Now, I try to remember the words to love others and to keep hold of that. It has helped me to open my mind in ways I hadn’t imagined, in many ways I had closed it as a UBF man.

Matthew 22:39-40 NIV
[39] And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ [40] All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

What did I see in and from, and do, in UBF? In the name of loving God, we didn’t stop at pruning ourselves. We started pruning others and teaching them self-pruning in the name of loving God and having faith in him. However we abused them and hurt them just as we were hurt because our teaching wasn’t sound. We took people away from their families, friends, schools and jobs. We physically and emotionally abused them. We took away their identities and gave them new ones.

Yet we didn’t care for them when they were hurt or cried out. Instead we made them to feel guilty about being hurt and to continue to honor their abuses as their senior servants of God. We taught them that it God’s will for them so they ought to shut up and wait for something to happen to make them happy and take their pain away. We taught them to forgive us who didn’t ask for forgiveness and who keep on hurting. And then they go and do the same and we praise them for it and promote them in the organization.

I clearly told the LA director and the LA planning committee in 2014 that we were hurting others without repentance and recourse, that we were doing what Jesus said of the Pharisees in Matthew 23:15 NIV,
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.”

The whole end game was to make endless self-pruners and abusers like yourself, masked as “shepherd.”

1.) My uncle told me that people mix up the results of the gospel for the gospel for the gospel. In Koch’s book, What we believe and why, in chapter four, he says that salvation is the essential, the if and only if, while sanctification is contingent off of it. The example that he gives is that being alive is the essential, while living a healthy lifestyle is not. Living a healthy lifestyle is important but it is not essentially important. Evangelism is good, daily bread is good, conferences are good, memorization is good, but they are not of first importance, as you wrote, dwelling with Christ is essential. (The book can be downloaded for free here, he does a much better job of explaining. http://www.whatwebelieveandwhy.com/Free_PDF)

2.) Have you heard about the book The Cure by John Lynch. It has been a game changer in my life. In the book he talks about two rods: a.) please God or b.) trust God. They both sound good, but the former leads to the room of “good intentions” and the latter to the room of grace. I don’t know about you, but I know what room I want to be in. If you cannot read his book he also has a wonderful youtube clip just type in “two faced John Lynch.” Here’s his web site: http://truefaced.com/

God bless you brother! And keep writing, keep sharing!

UBFism confuses you with this self-pruning, breaks you down and then sculpts a new identity that fits into KOPAHN.