Casting your pearls: When Pastors Attack

The other day, I was speaking with a lady who comes in to help with taking care of my Mother-in-law, and we were talking about how preachers, pastors, teachers, and other church leaders act as if they have the right to attack the congregants whenever, for whatever, and however they deem necessary to whip out the week’s sermon. She told me of her experience of her pastor passing judgement on her and condemning her in front of the whole congregation during a sermon for something her adult child was doing, and she said that was not the only instance of him doing that.

I felt led to write this article to let people know that if you are being abused from the pulpit, you are not alone, and you do not have to stay in that abusive relationship. Abusers come in all shapes and sizes and in all professions. The “church” is not exempt from that. In fact, many people, both male and female, are drawn to pastorship, preaching, evangelizing, teaching, being a bishop and other forms of leadership, because it is a position with power over others. Brothers and Sisters, I am here today to tell you that if you are in a “church” or other fellowship in which you are being verbally, mentally, or emotionally abused: that is just wrong, and it is neither Yahuah’s way of doing things nor His desire for you. While this is a different situation and a different relationship, abuse is abuse. I told my youngest sister over and over again until she died following a severe beating: “You do not have to stay.” Spiritual leaders who are abusive are more insidious than abusive husbands, because they attack your soul, not just your mind and body.

Can you just imagine Yeshua’s reaction if he saw one of his hirelings who is supposed to be taking care of his sheep willfully and wantonly abusing them whenever the opportunity or desire arises? Can you? Oh, I can imagine quite well, and I imagine that it would be a similar scene to that of Yeshua whipping the money changers out of the Temple.

I wish I could give a short and sweet answer on how to handle it if/when it happens to you, but I can only relate to you how the Holy Spirit led us to handle the situation. However, I will add that if a spiritual leader is comfortable abusing the people he is supposed to be leading and being a living example to, then he is not someone I want to be teaching me or my family, and I certainly do not want to subject my family to that bad example and treatment. You have to decide for yourself if this is the way that you want to be treated or the example you want your children to look up to.

I have to be honest the warning signs were all there. We should have expected to be directly attacked ourselves at some point. The “pastor” would make his sermon about

• current political events
• dressing down other people who were doing things he did not agree with like “drinking alcohol and singing in the choir” (which drinking alcohol is not a sin in itself)
• calling people stupid idiots who believe what the Bible says, what their senses tell them, and what math and science prove about the shape, form, and nature of the earth
• disparaging people for buying other translations of the Bible besides the KJV saying, “they hook you in, saying buy my book, buy my book,” all while he himself was endorsing books that subscribe to a millions year old earth world view
• Genesis 6: saying people are crazy for believing angels mated with women and the Nephilim came from the line of Seth, which is actually the “good” seed line versus the evil seed line that came from Cain.
• Sarcastically saying: You can’t keep the commandments of the Old Testament, what you are you going to do go out and kill a dove or butcher a cow?
• There were so many more that I cannot think of them all in time to get this article written.

What he did not do is address sin, which is transgression of the Torah, but he attacked the person. You will NEVER win someone or even get them to understand your stance on a subject (ANY subject) by attacking them personally. This is called an ad hominem fallacy. My next article will give a brief overview of the 15 types of fallacies which are false arguments used to support an argument or stance but are in fact, a deficit in reasoning. The key word there is FALSE the root word from which the word fallacy is derived.

When we first were attacked from the pulpit by the “pastor,” YAH whispered a portion of a verse to my heart (brought it back to remembrance): hold your peace. I thought it meant to keep my mouth shut, to be quiet, and if you know me, when I get angry or feel attacked, the last thing my flesh wants to do is shut up. The only place I have found this phrase in the bible is in Exodus 14:14 where the children of Israel were fleeing from Egypt with the Pharoah in hot pursuit behind them. They were trapped between untraversable terrain, the sea, and the Pharoah and his army. They had nowhere to go. 

Exodus 14:13-14 And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation (Yeshua) of the Lord (Yahuah) which he will shew to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever.  The Lord (Yahuah) shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.

God may not do anything until you calm down and be still. Like we tell our children, “If you will just calm down, then I can help you.”  YAH put us in the situation to learn to love, fear, and respect him more…not the minister, not the people, not the situation. Don’t fear, stand still, and watch what YAH will do. Hold your peace and calm down if you need to, but get your mind and heart centered on YAH. We do need to stay calm, because we really don’t have anything to fear as long as we are walking in obedience to YAH. 

Don’t fear!

Stand still!

See what YAH is about to do to bring you yeshua/salvation!

The phrase there “hold your peace,” we understand it to mean: be silent, don’t speak, but that’s not ALL that it means. The phrase is directly translated as “plow or engraven.” It’s a picture of digging in. God is telling the people to be deaf to the shouts and the cries of the Egyptians. Don’t listen to them! Don’t turn back to Egypt! Don’t jump in the sea and drown yourself! BUT dig in!

Don’t listen to bad leaders! Don’t turn back to the Egypt or sinful life you used to live! Don’t give up and don’t give in! Dig in to your Elohim, who has shown Himself trustworthy and much more faithful to us than we could ever be to Him! Dig in so that it takes great effort to move you!

Yahuah not only saved the children of Israel in a miraculous way, but YAH also avenged His own honour.

We did not verbally or passive aggressively attack the “pastor” in revenge, though our flesh truly wanted to. We wrote him a letter letting him know why we were leaving (as if he couldn’t have guessed). We did not drag him through the mud to the other congregants or on the website, even though I believe if you treat people poorly then you deserve to have your transgressions called out in a public way. We did not. Why? Because we do not know whether he was at one time called by YAH for a work, and just like David would not kill King Saul who was trying to kill him, because he was once anointed by YAH (I Samuel 26:9-11 KJV) when he told Abishai regarding King Saul:

“Destroy him not: for who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless? David said furthermore, As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and perish. The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lord’s anointed…”

Let the revenge belong to Yahuah; He can handle it a lot better than we would and he is a better judge of the heart….and that is what He told us to do.

Now let’s take a look at what the Scriptures say that specifically addresses a minister’s job duties.

We see one of YAH’s intended purposes for ministers in Deuteronomy chapter 20 verses 1-4. 

Deuteronomy 20:1-4 KJV When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the Lord thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.  And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, And shall say unto them, Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; For the Lord your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.

When you’re in a conflict with someone who has authority over you or someone who has more power than you, when you have raging waters in front of you and your enemy is at your back breathing down your neck, remember Elohim who brought you out of slavery and bondage to sin, the lifestyle you were living, all the messes that you were embroiled in. The same YAH who brought you out of all that is the same one who will bring you out of this.

Trust YAH. Fear YAH. Revere YAH. 

As we see in Deuteronomy 20, there is supposed to be ministry involved in our walk here on earth. The minister’s job is to encourage you to not be afraid, to remind you of what YAH has already brought you through, to know that YAH is with you. When you’re going through a battle or a trial, sometimes that battle or trial is all that you can see. The minister’s job is to lift you above the battle so you can see the bigger picture, what is beyond this battle and who is really in control of this battle. 

The minister is there to remind you that the same YAH who brought you through in the past will do so again. Fear YAHUAH! Not the battle, not the opponent, and not the situation. We all have a wilderness to walk through to learn to become humble so that YAH can use us. That is why YAH tests us to prove whether it is in our heart to keep his commandments (Deuteronomy 13:3). In the Renewed Covenant, we are told that we are to be “ministers” of the gospel of Yeshua if through no other method, than through others seeing our daily walk. The very definition of minister is to take care of the needs of others. Is that not one of the things Yeshua called us and set us apart to do?

Part of a minister’s job is to be a watchman, to warn people when danger is approaching. This is true. The problem is that too many leaders today are not leading the way YAH intended them to lead. They have corrupted leadership.  Not all, but most of today’s ministers and leaders are motivated by greed, by dominance, by pride, by control. That is not the way Yahuah designed it to be. The leader is there to serve and obey Yahuah in the position he is in. Yeshua demonstrated the servant leader, how the leader is to be the servant, in John 13. Please take the time to read that chapter!

Back to Deuteronomy 8:2 YAH’s expectation is not that we are perfect in obedience, but that we WANT to be obedient.

 “And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no."

There’s no expectation of perfection. He wants to see if it’s in your heart to want to obey Him. When you try to find excuses to why you don’t have to obey, when you try to bend and twist the law to your own will, to your own desires so you can do what you want, you are showing Him that it’s not in your heart to obey Him. If you’re trying to find out what is the very minimum that you can do to scrape by with the skin of your teeth, it is not in your heart to obey Elohim. If you are rationalizing why you do what you do, if you are having to twist the scripture to fit your desires, then you are already condemned in your heart. You know you’re doing it. This is not done in ignorance. You know you are trying to find a way to rational-lies your behavior. YAH knows, too. You can fool people, but you cannot ever fool Yahuah. 

Don’t try to condemn someone else because they want to be obedient to YAH. Do you see how ridiculous that is? You’re trying to usurp authority over Elohim. It’s what you say, not what the Word of Yahuah says. As for me, I want to do more, go the extra mile, not to lord it over someone to say that I did more than you did, but to show Yahuah that it is in my heart to honor and obey Him. YAH does not want to spend eternity with a people who are rebellious in their heart. YAH sees the very intent of the heart, and that thought alone should put the fear of Elohim in all of us. 

Matthew 23:8-12 Yeshua said to call no man your master, father, or rabbi (teacher).  Why? Because that puts the master, father, or rabbi in the position of Elohim. I did address this in an earlier article titled ‘Anointed Appointed: Master, Teacher, Rabbi’ which is definitely worth the read!

John 16:13 tells us this: Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Ministers are to instruct us, but we should always defer to the holy spirit, the spirit of truth which comes from Messiah and Abba Father. 

We see in the Old Testament so many examples of when the leader or the king, turned away from Yahuah, became evil, became corrupt, abused his authority, and then what happened? The corruption worked its way from the top down. The king would lead the people into sin, into idol worship, into abominations. Yahuah would then judge the whole nation. Why? The whole nation had become corrupt from the top down, just look at the world around us and see how the corruption trickles down. We need to respect authority, but when authority is corrupt and abused if we stay under that leadership we will fall under the same judgement of Yahuah that the children of Israel did when they followed their evil kings into the paths of idol worship, abominations, and disobedience. 

For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected Yahuah, he has also rejected you as king. Samuel 15:23

And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. Deuteronomy 8:2

Yahuah’s expectation is not that we are perfect in obedience to His law but that we WANT to be obedient……”to humble thee, and to prove (test) thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.” There is NO expectation of perfection in there. Yahuah wants to see if it is in your heart to WANT to obey Him.

Do you want to obey Him? Or do you have a rebellious, hard heart?

A Stern Warning to Ministers and Leaders:

What irritates my very spirit is when YOU who claim to be pastors, preachers, teachers, bishops, or whatever self-important title you give yourself, when YOU teach others to do the same rebellious, lawless acts that you do yourself. But that’s not even enough, is it? So, you get up on your platform (Was it ever Yahuah’s?), and condemn those who desire to obey His Law, His Torah, verbally stoning Yahuah’s children.

Shame on you! When we are warned by Yeshua that we will give account for every idle word (Matthew 12:36), what do you think YAH is going to do with those when you intentionally abuse his little children (Matthew 18:6)?

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Matthew 23:13

Do NOT try to stand there and attempt to condemn someone else because they WANT to be obedient to Yahuah. Do you see how ridiculous, how sinful, how pride-full that is? In doing so, YOU are trying to usurp authority over Elohim.  That always ends well, doesn’t it? It is NOT what you say (doctrines of men), but what the Word of Yahuah says that is the truth. It is NOT your interpretation of the Bible that is true or what you have been programed to regurgitate in seminary.

That is not what the Word says. Over and over again it says: keep my commandments, observe the Sabbath and keep it holy, observe YAHUAH’S feasts forever, throughout your generations. The Bible doesn’t say it is Jewish feasts. It says they are Yahuah’s feasts, with the direct translation being that they are rehearsals. These commandments are in there from cover to cover. Obeying Yahuah’s law is not hard. It is not grievous.

I will leave you with this question:

Elohim does not want to spend eternity with a people who are rebellious. Would you?