I see the charge of the Holdemans being a cult has come up on this forum again. I want to briefly defend the Holdeman government again. I don't believe they're a cult yet in the terms they're accused of. It don't fit their activies in their communities. Full blown cults are separate from their areas, living in compounds or closed communities, generally drawing a living untraditionally or living self sustainable. The Amish and the Holdemans don't live that way, with some universities even having Amish studies and Amish favorable looked on in the world. The Holdeman should become vigilant with the cult charge, because there's tell tale signs they're on the road there, and maybe even intentionally or resignationately to self fulfill persecution and self confirm their beliefs.

If the church could stay a Reuben Kohen type focus church {and I'm not sure that's a correct definition}, the church might survive what religious stout beliefs eventually pull their claimers into - renounce them or die with them. Even in house can a belief enjoy obscurity in a communication age?

Reuben Kohen was the only leader I took interest in besides now my uncle Milton whom history has distilled long enough to where I can see now he may have been a leader not so consumed or narrow in his beliefs about the church. I suppose more time will tell a better truth. But if the church falls into a cult, these late leaders will look good if one can remember and judge their character accurately. Of course there are always the issues of the heart that are terribly hard to decipher.

I haven't studied Reuben that close, and only in the "Selected Editorials", to know if his influence was all that spiritual. I do remember seeing some insightful and spiritual things in editorials like "The Ephesian Peril" and a few others. Although I don't deal in his writings anymore or that type of literature, I remember my day in it {which were few}, or that part of my journey in it, and still take some delight in it.

My uncle Milton, the renown Holdeman preacher, was one of those leaders that wanted to stop the encroachment of cultism, I believe, and I think Scott can vouch for this if he would.....Milton telling him once he felt his hands were tied concerning some directions the church was taking. As I reflect on who my uncle was and how well he was known and respected in the community, not any less by those he didn't shepherd, being respected by many pastors of other denominations, and even by old hippies and those that live on the fringe of the law and society, maybe it was God's will to take him early for what God was going to burn in the church. For every church government is going to face judgment.

If the Holdeman ever become persecuted, the exholdeman could suffer some form of it. Because people subconsciously and naturally think children are like their parents especially when there's a mob mentality going. No one wants to take time to investigate whether this offspring or that offspring is not part of the object of persecution. Segregation, confiscation, rights debarment, expulsion, exile, imprisonment, martyrdom is what plays out first. And if an offspring has truly overcome their religious heritage by long experience and revelation with the living of it, then they love and are hurt by the persecution of their families. Ties to family are never broken in the records and dockets. This son like father, daughter like mother, is not without merit. This should concern those in the church that have a clearer understanding, as well as the exholdeman who are children of devout members.

There are dark forces in the heart no one can stop. If that time has come for the church, they will become a cult. Some young members already appear to be exhibiting manners and spirit designated to publicly claim and force their beliefs, taking the church into a cult.

Instead of the exholdemans persecuting them with their bitterness, they should be trying to help them by either their silences or by their spiritual victories paid for by innumerable defeats, which the Holdemans will not be able to resist.

I know one thing, this is not a time for the exholdeman to persecute the church. It will surely come back to haunt them by world persecution, by their own children's rejection, or something. No one is going to escape their own errors and punishment.

Brent

>My uncle Milton, the renown Holdeman preacher, was one of those leaders that wanted to stop the encroachment of cultism,< <br>

Brent, I learned to know your uncle Milton fairly well. I really liked him. He had no pretense and was not assertive in things holdeman, just a good christian man that loved his neighbor as himself. I admired his free spirit and attitude.

I painted a big two-story house once in Greensburg across from Doug E. former shop and Milton stopped in there a couple times and visited a little, nothing spiritual, just as a friend. It always made my day.

When I had a business in Dodge City he stopped in several times. It is unusual for a minister to do that, especially one that is not from my locale and it just really impressed me.

Brent, here is my take, and so it is in my opinion, that you have no need to concern yourself with the world "persecuting" the Holdemans, they are the "world" Their system is as any other worldly system to the worldly, all they hold dear and more important to them than Godly principle. The leaders I knew would spit in God's face when given a choice between the Word of God, or their conference idolatries, and catechisms, though they give him lip service until confronted with facts.

This has cause them to become the persecutors instead of the persecuted.

GM,

Maybe he detected your spirit not all things Holdeman.

Milton was widely known outside the church. There was 700 people at his funeral, a lot of them nonholdeman.

Brent

Fred,

I know religion is all of the world. But the way you present persecution don't line up with the character and nature of man and what appears, in the sense I meant it.

Brent

Brent's definition of a cult is ad-hoc, and far over-tailored to aid and abet a specific agenda, or more specifically, an over-preoccupation with, and validation of, standing governments. According to Brent's definition, a group could be a cult on Monday, not a cult on Tuesday, and again, a cult on Wednesday, all according to the whim and caprice of the standing government...all according to the whimsical stroke of the legislative pen. This type of definition is only a personal definition, but clearly has no power to search the issue at hand, it has no power to reveal the inner and defining energies of the group. With a definition this weak, I have no choice but to utterly reject it. And furthermore, I would reject this label (it is not even a definition) on one basis alone, i.e., that it forces a group into the condition of either/or with no allowance of the continuum of encroaching cult-like behavior. According to this lablel, they either are, or are not a cult, and it can change in a day at the whim of government. Bullsh*t!

Now I agree that the Holdemans will all (to the last man) like Brent's definition because it excuses them, but in such matters, we must always consider the source. It is absurd to go behind the barn and cobble together a baling wire/duct tape definition which does not include personality erasure, exclusive propaganda, and most of all, the utter limitation of choice-making of the individual (and I've left many characteristics out).

If the Holdemans are not a cult, then there is no such thing as a cult!

This forum takes the cake. And then Hank comes along and says the Holdies are not a cult because they mumbled "Jesus" (or was it Church) once at revivals, while all the while demonstrating the diametric opposite of everything that Jesus stood for and taught. I would be hard pressed to find a group less Christ-like than the Holdies. The one thing we all know the holdies for is for being so "right". Is this what Christ taught, to be insufferably right in your own eyes? Not only no, but hell no. If the Holdies are full of Christ, then Twain's quip comes to mind: "heaven for climate and hell for company".

Fred;

Here is something to look at. There is an agressive violence and there is passive violence. A doctrine of non-resistance presses the violence in mankind down into the subconscious realm and transforms the thing into something passive. It is now we become the persecutors of the ones we perceive to be sickly. Whatever our doctrine is, is what we tend to walk or live out.

From the position of passive violence we can never see the collective church as a many warded hospital from which no one is thrown out. We avoid evil and darkness, we do not avoid those who sin. We have power over sin but we do not have power over people. If men or women sign out A.M.A. those of a good hospital leave the ninty and nine and go after them. I do cannot understand why men will argue this point while they anchor their argument in some mistranslated passages. Even our hearts know better!

Sometimes Jesus was agressive and sometimes He was passive. [He did not have a static doctrine concerning it]. His doctrine was Love and the remission of sins. He retained no one's sins, He had no such doctrine. Neither do I condemn you but go and sin no more is what He says the woman caught in the act of adultry! He sent those who wanted to retain this woman's sin and thereby judge this woman, scampering away. We have the power to do either remit or retain sins; what we do in this type matter reveals us!

Sometimes Jesus was angry and sometimes He was not angry. If we are not angry at the right things and at the right times, we are in a real mess.

If we have a doctrine of not being agressive and asertive, the expression of violence is pressed down into the subconscious and in turn becomes a passive form of violence. We now take it out on our own fellows by forcing a certain righteousness upon them albeit in passive ways, saying it's all for their best. The beast-nature will do this to their own when one of theirs is sickly. The beast will kill one of their own to get these out of their misery! You see, to validate our violence once we have turned it into a passive form, we invariably call it tough-love. This is of the beast who is finally cast into the bottomless pit along with the dragon in personal revelation of Christ Jesus!

There is a good and Godly place for non-passive violence and asertiveness. "The Kingdom of God suffers violence and the violent take the Kingdom of God by force".

It is good to be angry at what opposes God and His Love! God loves the sinner while He hates the sin. He is angry at what separates His creation from Him but He is not angry at His creation! This is a general truth.

To develope and embrace a static doctrine of non-resistance creates a passivity in a people to such degree, that the Kingdom of God cannot be taken ahold of with any real strength! Those with this type doctrine actually oppose themselves. Every group who embraces this doctrine reveal the same profile. All one has to do is observe.

It seems there's a front and a backside to everything. The back side of this doctrine is to develope ways in which a passive-violence can be applied to our own fellows once they're perceived to be sickly; this happens over and over. It's called discipline and it is a certain discipline, but it's a discipline of a beastly order.