Transcript
It’s time to start our service today, and I am so glad to have you here with us.
I send my greetings to our friends all over the world.
Today, I especially want to send greetings to our friends across Europe.
I appreciate all the different ones who have reached out over the past week—the brothers and sisters in Norway, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, Belgium, and Switzerland.
We send you our love and greetings.
I am so thankful for each one of you.
I know that many are facing difficulties and struggles because they have chosen the truth, and I want you to know, we stand with you in spirit, and we appreciate you.
I also send greetings to our friends in the Philippines, and I ask you all to keep the Philippines in your prayers.
They have been on my heart for quite a while, and we are finally starting to hear some really good reports coming out of the Philippines.
Based on the reports I am hearing, I believe a big breakthrough is just around the corner, and I thank God for that.
If this is your first time joining us and you wonder who we are and what we are up to—my name is Charles Paisley.
I, and most of our listeners here, are formerly members of the cult following of William Branham known as The Message.
The Message is a global doomsday cult with millions of members.
The Message started here in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and spread all over the world.
I am formerly the associate pastor of the second-oldest message church in the world, which was the flagship church of one of the oldest and largest international sects of The Message.
And this is a little mission we operate to offer encouragement to those leaving The Message and to take a look at the plain reading of scripture.
For the past few months, we have been on a Message Question series.
And today, we are coming down to the final item on that list that I will be looking at in this series.
For a text today, I will be reading from Daniel chapter 9.
You can turn there with me—I will read from verse 3 down to verse 11 from the English Standard Version.
We are picking up right after Daniel has read from the prophet Jeremiah.
Daniel has come to understand the great sins that Israel committed.
The sins and repercussions of those sins have sunk in.
As the gravity of the situation weighs on Daniel, and as we pick up here in verse 3, we read how Daniel reacted when the gravity and weight of the situation really dawned on him and when he really came to understand just how bad the situation was.
We pick up reading in verse 3.
Daniel 9 (ESV):
3 Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
4 I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments,
5 we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules.
6 We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.
7 To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame, as at this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you.
8 To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you.
9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him.
10 And have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.
11 All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath that are written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out upon us because we have sinned against him.
Let us pray.
Lord God, as we approach this simple thought today, help us, Lord, to have a humble heart before you.
Help us to see ourselves as we are.
Help us to know how much we need you.
Bless our reading of the scripture.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Introduction
Today, I have just a short little subject I want to tackle.
And this is going to be the last lesson in our Message Question series.
There is a question I have been asked a lot by people that I am going to try and answer in part today.
The question goes like this:
“Brother Charles, we have spent so much of our life in a cult. Some of us spent decades—twenty, thirty, forty, even some fifty and sixty years—in a cult. And on this side of things, we look back and we see all the terrible things that happened. How do we deal with that? How do we come to terms with our involvement in all of that?”
That is a very good question.
Those of us who were in The Message, especially those who were in it for many, many years, and especially those who were in leadership positions, we have responsibility in what happened.
While some of us certainly have more responsibility than others, most all of us who were adults in The Message have some level of responsibility for what went on.
What I am talking about is not something that is even possible for people in The Message to grasp or understand.
Because for the people who have been brainwashed there, or who are still struggling with the brainwashing, this lesson today is probably best for you to skip.
But for those who have gotten free of it and really can look back and realize what happened—there are some really bad things that happened over the years.
Even leading up to people being severely abused, and even people dying.
And on top of that, we believed, shared, and preached things that were very, very wrong.
All the people we impacted with that—we were deceiving them and misleading them.
And in our lives, we took action, we made decisions, and we did things in the name of those false beliefs that harmed other people.
Worst of all, we were in rebellion against the truth of the Bible and in rebellion against God.
Everything I am saying there is true of the overwhelming majority of people who have left The Message.
And that is a big deal.
It’s a really big deal.
I firmly believe that coming to grips with that and dealing with that in our personal lives is a very important step to leaving The Message.
Not everyone can do that.
Some of us are very fragile because of how The Message community treated us.
And it is a tricky thing because we can’t force each other to deal with these things either—it has to be a personal thing.
But I firmly believe it is an important thing.
On this side, it is the people who have failed to come to grips with their own responsibility in these things who—
Even though they have good intentions—
They are difficult to trust.
And when we see them repeating some of the same bad behaviors we saw in The Message, it is concerning.
The Message was a cult.
And the cult has harmed millions of people.
Either through direct abuse or through misleading them with a very serious religious delusion.
And that is not a little minor thing.
That is a huge, major, massive thing.
The magnitude of what happened to us and through us in The Message is a massive, major sin.
Being in The Message was a major sin.
Believing The Message was a major sin.
And many of the things we did in the name of The Message were also major sins.
It’s not small little things.
It is major things that have impacted countless lives in a harmful way.
Internalizing that, realizing that, and dealing with it is a very important step for us to take when we leave The Message.
Because if we don’t, we will be setting both ourselves and others up to repeat past mistakes.
And, most importantly, we will not deal with the magnitude of the problem in the eyes of God.
And that is what you and I are guilty of, from having been in the message.
It’s not a small minor little thing.
I know a lot of us struggle when we see other people who want to just sort of sweep it all under the rug and move along like it was not a big deal.
So what is the right way to respond? How do we deal with our involvement? And that is why I have titled this lesson, Sackcloth and Ashes.
When we look into the Bible, we see that whenever people realized the seriousness of their situation, they took action. One common way we see that they took action was by putting on sackcloth and ashes.
Doing that was an act of humbling themselves, of lowering themselves. You can think of it as putting themselves down low, making a clear statement to God and man that they were in mourning, that they were deeply sorrowed, and they were in deep grief over their situation.
And it was a genuine thing. It was not just a put-on. In their heart, they deeply felt that grief over their situation, and they outwardly manifested it by putting on ashes and sackcloth.
We see it with King David, when his sins were so terrible that his own son died. We see it with the two witnesses in Revelation, over the sins of the people. We see it with Jeremiah, concerning the sins of Israel. We see it in Obadiah, and Ezekiel, and Isaiah, and Hezekiah, and Elijah.
It happened a lot—even the wicked people in Nineveh acknowledged the seriousness of their sins. They mourned and agonized over what had happened, and they repented.
And it was something genuine.
I am not telling you to go put on ashes and sackcloth. I think that would be inappropriate. But what is very appropriate is for you to feel bad over what happened.
It is appropriate to feel very bad. And it is appropriate that those feelings are reflected in your behavior.
As long as you feel that grief and sorrow, it is appropriate to grieve and express that grief.
And as long as that lasts, is as long as it lasts. If it is a week or a month or a year—however long that lasts is how long it lasts. We are all different people. But it will last a while.
And to everything there is a season. A time to mourn and a time to rejoice. And that season will pass.
When it passes, we move on.
David mourned and wept and wore the sackcloth and ashes, and then his son died. And when it was over, he moved on.
Daniel wore sackcloth and ashes and mourned and grieved until he got an answer from God.
Jeremiah did it until he died.
But as long as you feel that grief and need to mourn over it, then you do that. It is appropriate.
And we are right to be wary of people who have never expressed remorse. We are right to be wary of people who just want to put it under the rug and move on.
That is not to say they are bad people. They just might not be able to deal with it because it’s a heavy, heavy thing to deal with.
But when I see someone moving ahead, full steam ahead, trying to do all kinds of big things, and there is no real period of mourning and grieving, and re-grounding, and rethinking—I am going to be wary and not get too involved with that.
Because if someone thinks that what happened in the message was not that big of a deal, they are prone to repeat the same mistake again. And that is not something I want to be part of.
I know many of us have been out of the message for several years. We have spent our years in sackcloth and ashes already. Some of us are still going through it.
And I want you to know there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is just what I think is the normal thing to do.
It is the godly thing to do.
How many years did Paul spend in the desert after he woke up and realized how wrong he was? It was three years. Paul spent three years.
It’s normal, brothers and sisters.
It’s healthy.
It is godly to spend a season of time in mourning and repentance, and reflecting over what happened.
That is an appropriate thing to do.
Spending some time in mourning over what has happened is appropriate for the level of sin that was committed by us and the people around us in The Message.
And I know that is exactly what many of us have done, on this side of things. It is a proper and a healthy response.
And, as we consider this question today—What do we do with our past in the message?
What do we do with the realization of all the harm that was caused?
I believe the right answer is, metaphorically, to put on the sackcloth and ashes, and to mourn over the grief as long as you feel it within you to do so.
And that is a personal thing—everyone is a unique person.
But acting on that remorse you feel, in terms of repentance toward God, is an appropriate and good thing to do.
And I know that can be a difficult thing to even try to do when you have hundreds or more brainwashed cultists harassing you.
And there is grace for us, in each of our own unique situations.
So what do you do with the realization of the seriousness of what happened in the message?
You repent over it.
That is the place to start.
Amen.
I know this has been a heavy lesson today, but I hope it helps those who have asked the question.
On a housekeeping note:
I am going to be involved with other engagements for the next two weeks.
So, for two weeks, I will not be posting any lessons.
You pray for me, and I will pray for you.
And I want to encourage you, as always when I am away—that is a great opportunity to check out some of your local churches.
You can at least check them out online, listen in, and see if you can find a healthy place to listen.
There are also other brothers online who share our background and path—they are great to listen to.
And I know you can be encouraged by checking them out too.
I will keep you all in my prayers, and I hope you will keep me in yours.
God bless you!
Prayer
Let me close in prayer:
Lord God, you said, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
You said blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Lord, you said blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Father, help us to find ourselves in those things.
And help us to find You in those things.
Give peace and comfort to my brothers and sisters.
Shower them with the grace that only You can bestow.
And let them find peace in You.
This I ask, in Jesus’ name.
Amen.