My Experience With The IFB Cult (or Why I Am Writing This Blog)

My first experience with an IFB church happened in 1985. The man I was planning on marrying started going to one , 'got saved' and baptized and wanted me to go with him. 
After much debate, I gave in and went several times. 

Looking back, I'm glad I did go . I was like the man from Pilgrim's Progress....I was carrying a load of sin on my back and knew it. I asked Jesus to forgive me, come into my heart and we have had a steady, sometimes-rocky, love affair to this day.

Some may think I am anti-religious because of my stand today. In a sense, I am. However, I am NOT anti-faith. I feel that organized religion has become just another governed entity with shareholders, CEO's and corporate standards. Those are NOT God's standards. 

I also believe that IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist) churches  have become a blight on faith. Their doctrine is one that upholds the views of men as being holy. It also holds a demented view of family and child-rearing and a double-standard pertaining to the value of men and women.

No longer a true church, the IFB movement has become a cult.  I'm convinced of that. 
For instance, the pastor is held as the sole authority in all matters...not just spiritual.
You are expected to be at church whenever the church doors are open or else you are unfaithful.

A woman wearing pants, jewelry that draws attention, or one that doesn't wear long dresses and who cuts her hair short, is in rebellion. A dyed-in-the-wool IFB'er will remind his wife that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft so she'd better go read her Bible and pray about that !

The pastor I was once married to, said babies cry because they are liars. They 'just want to be held,' as if that is somehow wrong. It's ok to beat a child because bruising the body is good discipline, even if the child is a baby.

I don't know how it happened that I bought into that ideology at one time. I think a lot had to do with wanting to please God and believing that God wanted me to submit to my husband. At the time, I didn't understand the difference between submitting to a husband who is supposed to love you as his own body and one that wipes his feet on you like a doormat, and I sure didn't know that my husband was supposed to be loving me sacrificially, protecting me and putting his family in first place before his congregants.

What I found was that the insanity only became worse. My children were being alienated. My husband was absent and I became so depressed that I would cry the moment I awoke. My life seemed to be disappearing into a black hole and getting out was not an option. Our housing situation was deplorable. 
I was ashamed of my life.
Through desperation, attempting to feel like I was valued, wanted and desirable, when I was given the opportunity to stray, I did. I checked out emotionally. 

The saying, "God works in mysterious ways, " is certainly true because even though all those about me were being told what an adulterous woman I was, it was at that time that I met the man who helped me turn my life around. Yet it took a lot of terrible experiences to bring me to a place where I was so broken that God could now work on rebuilding me.

Amid all the pain, resentment and stress, I had learned that my preacher husband had molested my children over the years. The next thing I knew, the Department of Children and Families had been called and started a case against us. The children were removed from our home and sent to live with an adult sibling for almost 1 year. It was the longest year of my life.

I had also learned that my soon-to-be ex-husband was preemptively covering his hide by insinuating that it was my adultery that caused the children's removal. Never once did he come clean about his own incestuous actions.

It took me three years to get to a place where I could actually begin to take charge of my life and learn what it means to be in a healthy relationship. Of course I haven't 'arrived' yet. I am going through counseling still. I have had to learn to deal with my anxiety disorders and depression and I had to re-learn who I really am....not what someone says I should be.

The healing process is still going on for my children and I . I am taking things one day at a time
and learning to face my fears. One of the fears I had was facing the deeds committed by a man who was to be trusted by his family but instead he created a sick, dysfunctional cult full of sick, dysfunctional people.

Below are videos I made recently, exposing who he is and what he did because he still had the audacity to deny wrong doing, remarry a woman with younger children and preach on the internet and other media. Yes, just as if nothing happened! This link will take you to a page put together by another pastor who 'gets it'. He has been very instrumental in helping me get the truth out as he has also been victimized by my ex-husband's insanity.








Lighthouse Baptist Chapel

 




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