Thursday, December 20, 2012

FGBC Concerns Pt. 4: The Temple Visit Troubles


The Temple Visit Troubles

At this point I took a bit of a hiatus. Things were still being promoted and I just couldn’t keep up with it. Many were thanking me for my stands and I went to India for three weeks in 2009 to teach and discern whether or not the Lord was calling me to move there full time. He wasn't, but while there I read of GBIM's (Jay Bell's) revived initiative of taking teens in to Hindu temples, Sikh temples, and Muslim mosques. I had already first commented about this is 2006 when teens were being taken there at Momentum conference. I had been in several meetings with Jay Bell about this when I went to Winona Lake to see my folks. Bell also told me that I was out of line for criticizing this and that I would not stop it. Needless to say, because of my involvement with India as a missionary, my knowledge of Hinduism and Islam, knowledge that this practice potentially could and does stumble some Indian believers, and being married to an Indian woman who was taken to these temples as a little child I knew something needed to be said so I wrote these articles from India and posted them on my blog in 2009:

In July 2010, my wife Supriya wrote this article after a meeting with Jay Bell. This article has literally been viewed GLOBALLY because it was featured on a very famous discernment website (moriel.org):


I was pre-approved by Tom Avey to write on this subject but when I did my blog was pulled from the FGBC website. Despite a follow-up conversation in which I was told that certain people were upset with what I had written my blog remains taken off the FGBC site to this day. It is evident that certain folks associated with doing this practice do not want dissent among the FGBC on this but many have contacted me privately agreeing with the concerns they read about the short time they were available to be read on the FGBC website.

I decided to go YouTube on this subject and we posted this statement as well as a full sermon I delivered at Garden City GBC on our YouTube site:

watch everything on this site if you have time. I haven't yet posted Part 2 of that sermon but will shortly.

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